To follow up on George's important point, I think Christian education at both the young and adult level has to begin with a clear and accurate presentation of theology of creation. This is a topic that has been ignored in many denominations, including my own. Or, it has been conflated with a creationist "portrait" (to use Howard Van Till's term) of creation. A clear distinction between doctrine and portrait needs to be made, so that those receiving this education can see that the creationist portrait is not the only one that can be associated with the doctrine. And, in fact, a portrait of creation that the scientific presentation of evolution offers is quite consonant with creation theology rightly understood, and is distinguishable from a philosophy of evolutionism. A number of persons have done the work of associating theology with evolution in a variety of Christian traditions--Catholic, liberal, and evangelical: people like Howard, John Haught, Ian Barbour, Ted Peters, Denis Edwards, among others, come to mind.
In my own church, the Episcopal Church, many dioceses and individual parishes have begun to set aside the last eight weeks of the Pentecost season, before the beginning of Advent, as a kind of "Creation Season." The liturgies incorporate themes from creation, and Christian education can emphasize such matters as theology of creation, God's charge that we be good stewards of the earth, and so forth. This past year I gave two presentations for adult education, one on biblical and theological perspectives on the creation, another that surveyed some of the contemporary theologies of an evolving creation. A committee of my Church, which I serve on, will be developing educational materials on theology of creation that include perspectives on evolution as creation.
I hope that other ASAers and others on this list would take George's comments to heart and work to develop good educational materials for their churches and denominations on creation.
Bob Schneider
----- Original Message -----
From: Shuan Rose
To: glenn.morton@btinternet.com ; Walter Hicks ; gmurphy@raex.com
Cc: Asa
Sent: Friday, April 05, 2002 2:43 PM
Subject: How to teach about evolution in the church. Was" Utley v Dawkins"
Glenn Morton wrote:
I am not sure that is why people become YECs. I knew the arguments for an
old earth before I became a YEC. I became a YEC because my religious
beliefs required it. The reasoning is that if God's word says this
happened, and if we trust God, then we should believe what is written. Same
reasoning goes to many other parts of the Bible such as, God's word says
that Jesus arose, If I trust God, then I should believe that. The
parallelism of this type of argument is why YEC arguments have force in
Christianity. It is not merely a matter of knowledge. I know lots of YECs
who know the arguments for an ancient earth--indeed, Allen knows them
also--e.g. light from distant stars.
And I might add that this misunderstanding is why so often our arguments
fail to reach their target.
Glenn, you are on target. The main reason people become YECs is not because they believe that creation science is superior, but because they believe that if Genesis is not literally true, then the entire Bible is a lie. Often they hear this from the their pastor, or some other chuch leader. Which leads to George's point:
The best way to "deny others the tools" is for churches to incorporate
evolution into thei theology, teaching, proclamation, & worship. By this of
course I do not mean that evolution should be the heart of the church's message,
that it should be considered an ultimate truth, or anything like that. But if
people heard evolution being discussed in positive ways in the church, and if the
doctrine of creation were presented with evolution in view, then children would
learn to see it as part of a Christian understanding of the world. Then when
they got to high school and some atheist biology teacher said (as was the
experience of one of my parishoners) "Forget what you've learned in Sunday School
- now we're going to learn how it really happened", their reaction would be,
"What are you talking about? Evolution is how we learned it in Sunday School."
In contrast, the way too many churches have dealt with this issue amounts
to painting a target on their chests and then handing atheists a gun.
I agree with George that the best way to counter what Walter Hicks described as "flagrant atheism, liberalism $ humanism taught in many public schools in my state" is to do a better job of teaching about evolution in church. Church leadersare often the problem here , however. Quite a few are YECs or YEC sympathizers.Even if they might be inclined to teach positively about evolution, the issue is so controversial that leaders do not want to go into it. I know some YECs who are so committed on the issue that they are quite capable of instigating a church split over the issue.Not too many church leaders want to be accused of introducing " liberal, godless, apostate, evolutionistic" doctrine into the church.Those of us who are from a conservative evangelical background know what I am talking about.
Shuan Rose
2632 N Charles Street,Baltimore MD 21218
[410]467-2655
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