....The big issue facing the church was that heliocentrism contradicted what they saw as the plain meaning of scripture and that was why the Inquisition condemned it.
Again this is just factually inaccurate. Theologians were split on the issue about 50/50 at that time. The Pope did not go after all heliocentrists. He had a beef with Galileo, particularly for the disrespect Galileo had for him. So he slapped him down with heresy on the issue of geocentrism. But again, it's false to say this was a consensus belief in the church.
It is possible if Galileo had been of a more pleasant disposition that the church would have come around, given time as evidence for heliocentrism mounted up, but that wasn't Galileo, and the geocentrists church condemned him for heresy. It is worth noting they there were pretty vocal geocentrists in both the Catholic Church the Lutherans and Calvinists. Even after Galileo's Dialogue was removed from the Index of Prohibited books, it was being printed into the nineteenth century with notes criticising heliocentrism. The Missouri Lutheran Synod were arguing for geocentrism up until 1920.
There was a geocentric faction, just as there is a TE faction today. There were theologians that were quite dogmatic, and theologians much less dogmatic. In most cases you'll only find 1 or 2 quotes from theologians in the matter back then. That to me speaks volumes on the enthusiasm for geocentrism.
And I actually have a theory as to why. Geocentrism was a difficult model for many ancient theologians to swallow, even though it was considered mainstream science. For it put earth, God's footstool at the center of the world, with heaven, God's throne, revolving around it. That just didn't jive with scripture. In fact, descriptions of heaven began to change from a physical place to a spiritual non-corporial place in order to resolve the conflict and prevent God from revolving around us on earth. Heliocentrism resolved the issue a little, but modern views of a vast heavens fit the biblical text much better. It's no wonder to me geocentrism died a quick theological death.
Any new scientific theory has to face that reaction from the scientific mainstream. It is how you separate the genuine new science from all the crackpot stuff. The more radical an idea is the stronger the evidence needed to establish it. But science does come around and the new ideas become mainstream themselves if they are good.
When it comes to observational issue like like this, they certainly do. But when it comes to historical miracles, like creation, science can never come around. It violates the very core of its philosophical nature.
You seem seem to unusual for a Creationist. Most YECs cannot see how people back then could read scripture that way and assume they were twisting the text to fit their cosmology. Can you see how Joshua 10 would be understood by a geocentrist? Or Ecclesiates 1:5? The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises?
To tell you the truth, I don't think most theologians thought about this event in cosmological terms at all. They were simply looking at it as an event of motion the way all events of motion must looked at—via a point of reference. Now some did use it to express cosmological views, or reinforce their own cosmological beliefs. Most didn't.
We use this kind of language to describe events like this every day, and cosmology often doesn't come to mind. It is a literal and accurate way to describe things.
I don't think the writer, either, was expressing a belief in cosmology any more than the writer admonishing us not to move ancient border stones. Nor did the eunuch when he ordered his chariot to be stopped in order to be baptized by Philip. Nor does the police office who orders you to stop your vehicle. There's really no other way to describe motion events.
