Mainline Protestants and the Catholic Church reconcile modern science with their faith in Creation through forms of theistic evolution which hold that God purposefully created through the laws of nature, and accept evolution. Some groups call their belief evolutionary creationism.[5] Less prominently, there are also members of the Islamic[11][12] and Hindu[13] faiths who are creationists. Use of the term "creationist" in this context dates back to Charles Darwin's unpublished 1842 sketch draft for what became On the Origin of Species,[14] and he used the term later in letters to colleagues.[15] In 1873, Asa Gray published an article in The Nation saying a "special creationist" who held that species "were supernaturally originated just as they are, by the very terms of his doctrine places them out of the reach of scientific explanation."[16]
^Gunn 2004, p. 9, "The Concise Oxford Dictionary says that creationism is 'the belief that the universe and living organisms originated from specific acts of divine creation.'"
^Brosseau, Olivier; Silberstein, Marc (2015). "Evolutionism(s) and Creationism(s)". In Heams, Thomas; Huneman, Philippe; Lecointre, Guillaume; Silberstein., Marc (eds.). Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences. Dordrecht: Springer. pp. 881–96. ISBN9789401790147.
^Brosseau, Olivier; Silberstein, Marc (2015). "Evolutionism(s) and Creationism(s)". In Heams, Thomas; Huneman, Philippe; Lecointre, Guillaume; Silberstein., Marc (eds.). Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences. Dordrecht: Springer. pp. 881, 884. ISBN9789401790147. Creationism is not a single homogenous doctrine ... Evolution, as a process, is a tool God uses to continually create the world. Here we have arrived at another sub-category of creationism called 'evolutionist creationism'
^Haarsma 2010, p. 168, "Some Christians, often called 'Young Earth creationists,' reject evolution in order to maintain a semi-literal interpretation of certain biblical passages. Other Christians, called 'progressive creationists,' accept the scientific evidence for some evolution over a long history of the earth, but also insist that God must have performed some miracles during that history to create new life-forms. Intelligent design, as it is promoted in North America is a form of progressive creation. Still other Christians, called theistic evolutionists' or 'evolutionary creationists,' assert that the scientific theory of evolution and the religious beliefs of Christianity can both be true."
^Numbers 1998, p. 50 "Since at least the early 1840s Darwin had occasionally referred to 'creationists' in his unpublished writings, but the epithet acquired little public currency." – sketch written in 1842 – "if this had happened on an island, whence could the new forms have come,—here the geologist calls in creationists."
Darwin, Charles (May 31, 1863). "Darwin, C. R. to Gray, Asa". Darwin Correspondence Project. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Library. Letter 4196. Retrieved 2010-08-11.
^Numbers 1998, p. 50 "In 1873 Asa Gray described a 'special creationist' (a phrase he placed in quotation marks) as one who maintained that species 'were supernaturally originated just as they are'," – The Nation. J.H. Richards. October 16, 1873. p. 260.