The history of creationism is tied to the history of religions. The term creationism in its broad sense covers a wide range of beliefs and interpretations, and was not in common use before the late 19th century.

Following the spread of Christianity and then the rise of Islam, most people in Europe, the Middle East and other areas of the Islamic world believed that a supreme being had existed and would exist eternally, and that everything else in existence had been created by this supreme being, known variously as God, Yahweh, or Allah. This belief was based on the account of Creation according to Genesis, the Qur'an, and/or other ancient histories.

From the days of the early Christian Church Fathers there were allegorical interpretations of Genesis as well as literal readings. The Protestant Reformation introduced lay people reading the Bible in translation and more literal understandings, leading to a new belief that every biological species had been individually created by God. The Baconian method introduced the empirical scientific method. Natural theology sought evidence in nature supporting Christianity. The development of geology in the 18th and 19th centuries found evidence of an ancient Earth. Catastrophism was favoured in England as supporting Noah's Flood, but was found to be untenable. By 1850 all geologists and many other Christians had adopted various forms of old Earth creationism. In 1844 Lamarck's concept of transmutation of species was popularized by Vestiges of Creation, then in 1859 Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species provided evidence from an authoritative and respected source, and gradually convinced scientists that evolution occurs. He showed that there were changes within the species of finches on the various islands of the Galapagos group and proposed that macro-evolution from one species to another species might occur by natural selection, but he did not have the proof himself. By 1875 most American naturalists supported theistic evolution, often involving special creation of human beings, and by the 1910s evolution was widely accepted.

In the 1920s the term creationism became particularly associated with a Christian fundamentalist movement opposed to the idea of human evolution, which succeeded in getting teaching of evolution banned in United States public schools. From the mid 1960s young Earth creationism proposed "scientific creationism" using "Flood geology" as support for a purely literal reading of Genesis. After legal judgements that teaching this in public schools contravened constitutional separation of Church and State, it was stripped of biblical references and called creation science, then when this was ruled unacceptable, presented as intelligent design.