Welcome to Evolution
Weekend. The weekend closest to Charles
Darwin’s birthday is celebrated in hundreds of congregations around the world
as Evolution Sunday. Evolution Sunday,
now Evolution Weekend is the brainchild of Dr. Michael Zimmerman. His
goal is to break down the barrier to learning that has been erected by certain
forms of religion that deny science. He
thought if he could get ministers and churches publicly to endorse evolution
that perhaps the resistance would decrease.
Over 13,000 clergy and
hundreds of congregations have signed on to support the teaching of evolution
in public schools and to declare that evolution is not incompatible with
religion. This is the seventh year that
we have acknowledged Evolution Sunday through worship services, classes, and
field trips honoring the contributions of science and in particular evolutionary
theory to human knowledge.
Today we will take a
field trip to the Bays Mountain Planetarium for a 2 p.m. show called “Appalachian
Skies.” You might consider stargazing
as a sacrament.
Is Christianity
compatible with evolution? Many will
say no. That is why there are creation museums everywhere. Certainly it is true that from their
standpoint, evolution is a threat to Christian truth. When someone understands evolution and
acknowledges its claims, the truth of Christianity is denied. So for them, Christianity is incompatible
with evolution.
Someone wrote the
following comment on my blog yesterday:
Although not a Christian I fail to see how a Christian could ever agree with evolution, if we evolved from apes at what point did we acquire a soul? The core belief of a Christian is to believe in a literal Adam and Eve because without Adam and Eve there would be no sin, without the existence of sin there would be no need for Jesus to die on a cross, as I see it Christianity falls apart for a Christian who accepts evolution.
The commenter touches
on the real problem that evolution has presented to Christianity. Many of us in this room self-identify as
Christian. I would guess since you are
in this church that you affirm evolutionary theory and if a non-scientist like
me, you understand it as best as you can.
So we don’t really understand what the silly creationists are going on
about.
But they are probably
right in that evolution is a major threat to their faith. As that commenter said, without Adam and Eve
and original sin and Jesus dying on the cross to save from sin, Christianity
falls apart. Why doesn’t Christianity
fall apart for the rest of us? I think
the reason is that for many of us Christianity has changed, evolved if you like.
There are many
variations of Christianity alive today.
While this congregation may have some similar traits to the Presbyterian
congregation up the street from us, there are differences. Think of the similarities and differences
between this congregation and a Roman Catholic congregation in Brazil or a Pentecostal
congregation in West Virginia. What
differences and similarities might there be between us and Augustine’s
Christianity of the 4th century or that of Christopher Columbus,
Martin Luther, or John Calvin? What
about the Mormon Church of Mitt Romney or our nearby friends at the Unitarian
Universalist church. Similar yet different? Many
Christians don’t call other Christians “Christians.”
For the coming two
weeks on the radio program, Religion For
Life, I speak with philosopher, Daniel Dennett. He said that dinosaurs in one respect have
not died out. You find many of their
traits, for example, in modern birds.
Similarly, religions change or evolve, taking on some characteristics of
their ancestors and leaving others behind.
At some point we wonder if what we see really fits our definition any
longer. Can what has evolved be called religion?
Or in the case of Christians who care little
for Adam and Eve, original sin, and the substitutionary atonement theory. Is it
Christianity?
These questions are
intense and they involve a great deal of skirmish. Congregations split from one another and new
denominations form because of the perception that one group or another has crossed
a line and has given up on an essential tenet of the faith. Eventually new “species” of church
develop. Obviously I am playing. I am using biological evolution as a metaphor
for religious change. I think that metaphor
can be helpful.
Richard Dawkins, in his
book The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence of Evolution, suggests that
Plato and the Platonic ideal has made it difficult for us to accept
evolution. Plato’s concept of forms and
ideas has been a barrier. We think of a
rabbit, the form of a real rabbit, and the idea of a rabbit. In evolutionary thinking there is no idea
of a rabbit. There is a rabbit and if
you were able to trace its ancestry you find imperceptible changes from one
generation to the next until you were able to compare say 100,000 generations
and the current rabbit and you would see that they different animals
altogether.
I have photos of my
father and my grandfather and my great-grandfather. While there are some changes between my
great-grandfather and I, we are still of the same species. What if I had a photograph of every ancestor
back to my 1,000 great- grandfather.
Different? Yes but still the same
species. Back further to my ten
millionth great-grandfather? That “great
to the ten millionth” grandfather would look quite a bit different from me, in
fact, not even the same species.
Imperceptible changes from generation to generation, yet over
generations, different in kind. Yet
what we call “kind” is based on our snapshot of time in the present and how we
categorize “kind.”
That change in
thinking
away from Plato “for every form there is an idea,” to “imperceptible
changes
over generations” is changing the way we think about all kinds of
things. We are connected and fluid. We are related, that is
everything on Earth
is related. When you can acknowledge
that you and the banana you had for breakfast have a common ancestor we
have
moved a long way from the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas who had
everything in
hierarchical order from god to angels to humans to animals to plants to
rocks.
What might this do to
Adam and Eve? Think of Christopher
Columbus, Martin Luther, and John Calvin all in the late 15th and
early 16th centuries, 500 years ago. For these three highly educated
men, the
creation of Earth had taken place about 5,500 years before them. Adam
and Eve were real people. There would have been no reason to doubt
that. In fact, Columbus in his trip to
China, not knowing that North and South America were in the way, thought
the
globe was much smaller. When he was traveling up the coast of what is
now Venezuela, he thought he was approaching
the Garden of Eden, literally.
We look back at that
and find that amusing. Their
understanding of the world is 500 years different than ours. Imperceptible changes over time have occurred
since then. Between the time of Columbus
and Calvin and our time, the advances in knowledge have been so profound that
we hardly appreciate them. In their
time, they are just starting to get their minds around the possibility that
Earth was not the center of the universe.
Darwin was yet to come, several centuries ahead. Chemistry, biology, geology, physics, and cosmology
might as well have been science fiction for them. Of course, our Christian faith will evolve
as well and it has. How we look at the
Bible, the concept of God, Jesus, everything will of course evolve and they
have.
The struggles that we have either within ourselves or between us have to do with this struggle between evolutionary thinking and essentialist thinking.
I remember when my son
was about eight and he asked me if dinosaurs were mentioned in the Bible. Apparently, his friends were having this discussion
at school. I told him no, that dinosaurs
were not mentioned in the Bible. He
asked me why and I told them that the people who wrote the Bible didn’t know
about dinosaurs. That is an obvious
answer when we look at religion from an evolutionary point of view. The Bible is not a revealed word from a
divine being. It is a creation of human
beings writing their story as they know it from their point of view.
From an essentialist
viewpoint, the Bible, like God is unchanging.
The doctrines are unchanging. The world must be explained in light of an
unchanging Bible. The idea of looking
at religious doctrines as essential tenets makes it difficult for Christianity
to change.
“We must hold on to this. We cannot let go of that.”
Yet the ‘this’ and the ‘that’
might be different from one person to the next. I am sensitive to this. I understand the angst that change
brings. However, I think if we accept
evolutionary thinking, the metaphor of imperceptible change through time, we
can navigate this with more grace.
When
we apply an evolutionary
point of view to Christianity, we see that no doctrine is unchanging or
essential. We can be all along the spectrum without a
particular need to classify if some view or another is “Christian” or
not. You can let go of original sin and
substitutionary atonement if you like.
You can let go of an inerrant Bible and of Jesus as a divine being. You
can let go of supernatural theism. You can let go of all of the
doctrines and
focus on the ethics or the community.
You don’t even need to make conscious decisions about it. You can
notice that it is simply
happening.
You can do all of that
and still retain your Christian identity if you wish. Or you can let
that go too. It is really OK. You can take a breath and evolve. We
can allow others to evolve as well. We
can all interact and influence and learn from one another in a
non-essentialist, evolutionary community.
Or one group may take a different direction and in a different
environment
will evolve into another “species” of Christian, like the new
denomination that
is now breaking away from the Presbyterian Church in order to retain
certain
essentials they perceive as important.
My biologist friends
must be cringing that I am being so loose with their terms. I am using this fascinating and important
theory of biological evolution and seeing through it a way of looking at other
aspects of life including our faith. Again, I am highlighting that imperceptible change
over time leads to something quite different but only when seen from the
perspective of many generations of change.
Since this is the
season of the via creativa, the way
of creativity and imagination, I am taking that seriously and imagining and
creating and mostly just noticing how the Christian faith has evolved. I speak from my experience. This
isn’t just about me. In being forthright
as I can be about my experience, I trust that others will resonate.
One
of the changes I am
seeing is the notion of sacrament. I
remember learning in seminary that sacraments, which for those of the
Protestant evolutionary stream include baptism and communion, are
quote: “visible signs of invisible grace.” The water of baptism and
the bread and wine
of communion are visible things, yet they signify an invisible reality
of
grace. They confer belonging, community, embrace, forgiveness,
a sense that we count, that we matter, that life is worth taking another
breath
for, that we can be loved and can love.
There is more to say, but my experience of spending time with
communities that practice these sacraments has done that and more for
me.
I’d like to add a
sacrament. Maybe I can secure your vote
on this. I would like to vote in
stargazing as a sacrament. The trick is
we have to do it together. This is that
Protestant evolutionary stream speaking, but sacraments are those things we do
in community. We have to stargaze
together or watch the moon together.
I think stargazing in silence with others followed by camaraderie, good
cheer, and maybe even a song, give us a sense of grace and belonging. Stars are a visible sign of invisible
grace. I think it is our Christian
duty to take sacred time with them.
This amazing universe that
science is presenting to us can be overwhelming in a negative way if we don’t
put our energies into making it and those who inhabit it sacred. The beauty of religion is that at its best
it does take the time to notice the sacred and to provide rituals for the
sacred. If our religions can evolve out
of their doctrines and into the world, into the universe, into life, we can do
a lot to help offer a sense of the sacred and a sense of sacred ritual to the beauty
that surrounds us and to help us embrace even that which is not so beautiful.
On this Evolution
Sunday, I honor the patron saint, Charles Darwin, and I honor the world that he
opened up to us. I honor stargazers and
scientists, poets, artists, and music-makers, pastors, priests, and
parishioners, all of us, who open minds and hearts to life in all its splendor.
Amen.
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