Geoscience Research Institute

The Geoscience Research Institute (GRI), founded in 1958 and currently located on the campus of Loma Linda University in California, is an official institute of the Seventh-day Adventist Church that specializes in the study of creation science and serves the church through research and communication. The institute employed four PhD researchers as of late 2015.

The Geoscience Research Institute owes its existence to Adventist science teachers in the late 1950s who were concerned about a lack of Adventists credentialed in the Earth sciences. The church responded to their concerns in 1957 by forming the Committee on the Teaching of Geology and Paleontology, which selected biologist Frank Lewis Marsh and chemist P. Edgar Hare to inaugurate courses in those fields. The GRI was officially founded in 1958 and was originally located on the campus of Andrews University in Michigan.

After comparative anatomist and paleontologist Richard M. Ritland was added to the group in 1960, differences in approach soon led to disagreements over whether it was permissible to reinterpret biblical and prophetic accounts in light of scientific evidence, with Hare and Ritland supporting that view while Marsh favored the historic Adventist interpretations. After a number of years of acrimony, Hare decided in 1964 to remain with the Carnegie Institution, where he had gone to conduct laboratory studies. Although Hare chose to continue in the Adventist church, his views leaned toward theistic evolution. Also in 1964, Ritland outmaneuvered Marsh to become the head of the institute, and Marsh was transferred to Andrews University.

By the late 1960s, Ritland's more flexible approach fell out of favor with a new and more doctrinally rigid church president, Robert H. Pierson, who laid down the following guidelines:

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