Evolution Sunday
The day after tomorrow is Evolution Sunday, a national event organized by Michael Zimmerman (a professor at Butler) and others with an aim to get pastors talking about science from the pulpit. Its an event of the larger Clergy Letter Project which asks clergy around the world to sign off on the idea that science and faith are not incompatible and, explicitly, that evolution is the best theory out there for explaining life's origins. To quote part of the letter:
While virtually all Christians take the Bible seriously and hold it to be authoritative in matters of faith and practice, the overwhelming majority do not read the Bible literally, as they would a science textbook. Many of the beloved stories found in the Bible – the Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the ark – convey timeless truths about God, human beings, and the proper relationship between Creator and creation expressed in the only form capable of transmitting these truths from generation to generation. Religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey scientific information but to transform hearts.We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as “one theory among others” is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children.
The letter has over 10,000 signatures and on Sunday over 550 churches in the nation will hear a message about science (and possibly about evolution explicitly) from their pulpits (the date, btw, was chosen to approximate Darwin's birthday which is on the 12th).
My feelings about Evolution Sunday are mixed. On the one hand, I think the event is a good thing since it at least conveys to the media and population at large that it is actually possible for serious Christians to accept evolution as valid. The percieved division between faith and science is very often propelled by the media, so the fact that the media has picked up on the event is a good thing, I think.
On the other hand, a glance at the signatories of the Letter and those taking part in Evolution Sunday reveals that the vast majority are from mainline denominations. Presbyterian, Lutheran, and especially the United Church of Christ are well-represented (as well as, of course, unitarian churches). Precious few evangelical congregations have even signed the letter much less agreed to preach about science. The project thus exaggerates a division already present in the church and reinforces the stereotypes of the 'enlightened' mainline Protestant vs. the ignorant, backward evangelical. When I brought this up on the Panda's Thumb, Zimmerman reponded to me that "the clergy letter project is not designed to change the minds of fundamentalists..." but to "educate the vast majority of Christians who, if told they have to choose between religion and modern science, are likely to opt for religion."
This betrays, to me, a basic misunderstanding of what makes evangelicals evangelicals (disregarding his inaccurate use of the term 'fundmanetalist'). One of the (if not THE) defining characteristics of an evangelical christian (vs. a mainline protestant) is that for evangelicals the head pastor of the local church is the final authority on all things spiritual and theological. If anyone is "telling" a Christian that they have to choose between religion and science, it is the pastor. Zimmerman doesn't know it, but if the Clergy Letter were to accomplish the goal is sets for it, the result would be a serious undermining of the basic infrastructure of the majority of churches in America. This isn't a condemnation of the project (I said above that I'm in favor of it). But it does create a deep pessimism that the project or any other like it could ever hope to "educate" evangelical Christians. After all, the theory of evolution doesn' t have any serious impact on most people's daily lives, and certainly not more than their church does. Given the choice between their church and evolution, evangelicals will choose their church every time.
So what is the solution here? The only way to actually change the minds of evangelical Christians about science and evolution, I think, is to convince evangelical pastors that science is a proper subject for theological reflection and Sunday morning preaching. Now, I have no idea how to do that. After all, I'm not a pastor; and I wouldn't be jealous of any pastor who agrees with me on these things.
posted by Lame and Blind @ 10:55 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
I am glad you are thinking and writing about these things. I often struggle with the question of what my responsibility to this issue is. I used to write about this alot, but have moved on to other issues in recent years, still wanting to come back to it often but not finding the time. Something is badly needed, I think, something that is sympathetic to the evangelical cause and yet distant too--in the way that Tillich talks about theologians needing to be in the circle but write from outside it. And something that at the same time avoids the pitfalls of the so-called reform movements (the emergent movement, for example) which see to throw out the best of evangelicalism and keep the worst of it.
"the theory of evolution doesn' t have any serious impact on most people's daily lives"
You do jest don't you? Just because one is dumb as a boot when it comes to science, doesn't mean that science doesn't impact your life.
Anonymous:
I did not say science doesn't impact people's lives; I did not even say evolution doesn't impact people's lives. I said the theory of evolution doesn't.
My sister is a high school math teacher. Probably she doesn't believe that evolution is correct, though she wouldn't know why other than that it seems to conflict with the Bible. But lets say she decided to accept evolution. How would her life change? Not much. She'd still be trying to teach geometry to tenth graders.
Science impacts our lives daily. But the status of scientific theories do not; at least not in any direct way.
Evolutionary biologists have failed to translate well. Evolution really is one of the 'legs' of biology, on which biological method and theory is predicated, without which it does not stand. The misconception that evolutionary theory does not inform the daily workings of science is not just a misconception held by the public but also by many scientists who pay lip-service to evolution but do not incorporate it into their experiment-planning. This is a major failure of science pedagogy and explains in some ways why we are in the predicament we are in today.
Of course, I completely agree on both points. The movie 'Flock of Dodos' is being shown tonight here in Gainesville. One of its points is not just the ignorance of the IDists, but also the failure of real scientists to communicate their ideas in public and educational settings.
One problem I think is also central here, which I hope to explore more fully. Often in explaining their conclusions, scientists assume that everyone knows how to think scientifically - that people understand what makes a convincing or unconvincing argument, that they 'get' why some theories are better than others. But the fact is that in daily life this kind of thinking isn't all that important, or at least not necessary. Most of the decisions we make aren't based on scientific reasoning where pros and cons are weighed objectively. Often they are based on approximations to purely logical thinking, or even solely on intuitions or analogy from past experiences.
So, first and foremost, scientists need to communicate what scientific thinking is, how it works, and why its an important way for gaining knowledge about the world. Without being convinced of that, the average person has no basis for thinking one particular theory better than another.
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