LONDON, March 21— The Archbishop of Canterbury opposes teaching creationism in school and believes that portraying the Bible as just another theory devalues it, he said in a newspaper interview published Tuesday.
"I think creationism is, in a sense, a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories," the archbishop, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, told The Guardian. "Whatever the biblical account of creation is, it's not a theory alongside theories. It's not as if the writer of Genesis or whatever sat down and said, 'Well, how am I going to explain all this?' "
The issue of what children should be taught about how the world began has been sharply divisive in the United States, where many evangelical Christians believe that creationism — the belief that the world was created by God as recounted in the Book of Genesis — should be on the curriculum, alongside or instead of the theory of evolution.
Some American Christians — including, apparently, President Bush, who spoke approvingly about it last year — also favor teaching the theory of intelligent design, which holds that the world is so complicated that its inception could have been orchestrated only by an intelligent spiritual force. Although the question has come up in Britain, there is nothing here like the American evangelical movement and no move to give creationism or intelligent design equal footing with evolution in schools.
The archbishop, the leader of the Church of England and the worldwide Anglican Communion, which includes the American Episcopal Church, made it clear that in his view, science is compatible with religion.
"For most of the history of Christianity, there's been an awareness that a belief that everything depends on the creative act of God is quite compatible with a degree of uncertainty or latitude about how precisely that unfolds in creative time," he told The Guardian.
In January the official Vatican newspaper said a decision by a judge in Pennsylvania that intelligent design should not be taught as a scientific alternative to evolution was "correct."
Asked specifically whether creationism should be taught in schools, the archbishop responded, "I don't think it should, actually." But he added that opposing creationism in the curriculum was "different from discussing, teaching about what creation means."
"For that matter," he said, "it's not even the same as saying that Darwinism is the only thing that ought to be taught. My worry is that creationism can end up reducing the doctrine of creation rather than enhancing it."
