St. Peter's Lutheran Church
In the village of Brodhagen
Pastor Rev. Steve Johnston
R.R.1 Bornholm, ON N0K 1A0 Ph:519-345-2535

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Sermon 18th October 2008

St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, Brodhagen

Theme: Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution Historical And Theological Reflections 150 Years Later

Prayer of the Day
Almighty God, Creator and Redeemer of all that is,
source and foundation of time and space,
matter and energy, life and consciousness;
grant to all who study the mysteries of your creation,
grace to be true witnesses to your glory
and faithful stewards of your gifts;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
(Adapted from the Collect of the Society of Ordained Scientists)   (Footnote a.)

Text: Genesis 1: 1- 13 ; 2:2-4a: Psalm 8 :Luke 4:16-22a

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is one of the most influential ideas to our understanding of how the world of nature works. Darwin’s theory has caused much debate in the Christian community over the years and some of those embers of controversy are still alight even in today’s age of micro-biology and genetic engineering. What attracted me to talking about Darwin’s theory of evolution this morning was our 150th anniversary and the fact that Darwin first published his ideas about evolution on 1st July 1858 – 150 years ago.

1) Charles Darwin – Background

Charles Darwin was born on 12th February 1809 and baptised on 15 November at St Chad's Anglican Church, in Shrewsbury. At the age of nine he became a boarder at Shrewsbury School, a Church of England school which had become one of the best in the country. His father enrolled him at Christ’s College, Cambridge to read theology in 1827, and Charles was intended for the Anglican priesthood. Darwin’s mentor in Cambridge was the Reverend John Stevens Henslow. However Reverend Henslow’s main passion was botany, and he was the Professor of Botany at the time of Darwin's studies in Cambridge. In fact much of the botanical study of the day was carried out by clergy, and in particular – Church of England clergy. This was a very exclusive college of botanical learning restricted to a select few in the Church of England.

Now, Darwin did not originate the concept of evolution – he was not the first to develop that idea. Several scientists of the time knew that evolution occurred since fossil records showed evidence of life forms that no longer existed. Even Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus, had suggested the idea evolution idea as a possible process to explain living things. But yet, no-one knew how evolution happened?

What Darwin did was to provide evidence for a feasible mechanism for evolution to occur. Darwin’s contribution was that of natural selection or “survival of the fittest” as it was later dubbed. Darwin had been working on his theory since 1837 following his five year scientific expedition on the survey ship HMS Beagle which included his time on the Galapagos islands. “However in June 1858 he received a letter from Alfred Wallace, an English naturalist working in Malaysia, who had dashed off a quick paper on the subject of evolution and mailed it to Darwin asking him to refer it for publication if it seemed good enough. Darwin was about to lose credit for two decades of work?” (Footnote b.) So together Darwin and Wallace wrote a paper, and on 1st July 1858, the Linnaean Society of London heard a reading of the paper on how natural selection accounts for the evolution and the variety of species. 1st July 1858 marks the moment, 150 years ago, when modern biological study is born. Darwin’s full theory was published over a year later on 24 November 1859 in his book titled “The Origin of Species”. (Footnote c.)

For Darwin’s theory of evolution to be able to work, that is for the natural selection process to be able to occur, the earth needed to be much older than was it thought to be in the mid 19th century. This idea of an older earth is what the fossil evidence was leading Darwin to realise. Darwin proposed in the “Origins of Species” that the world was 306 million years old. (Actually Darwin’s enthusiasm for detail put the date at 306,662,400 years old) This was a marked change from Archbishop James Ussher’s calculations in 1650 when he dated the birth of the earth to 23 October 4004 BCE But even though the scientific community of the 19th century didn’t hold that as true this was still a sensitive theological and thus societal issue. (Footnote d.)

2) Reaction to Darwin’s Theory 

And there were other reactions to Darwin’s theory. Evolution in itself was not a problem. However the thornier theological issue that Darwin’s theory raised was that of human origins. Darwin had put forward the idea that human kind and monkeys had a possible common ancestor. This challenged the biblical understanding that humans had been created different, special and separate from the rest of the animal kingdom. It was not surprising then, that the establishment – the Church of England theologians -should react and attack Darwin’s theory. Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, was an early opponent. 

There was a famous public debate on June 30th 1860 at the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Oxford. That debate included Samuel Wilberforce the Bishop of Oxford, who was also known as “Soapy Sam” due to his passion for public debating (the soap box was the main tool of public debaters of the time). Wilberforce was arguing bitterly against the pro-Darwin voices of botanist Joseph Hooker and biologist Thomas Huxley. Darwin himself was not part of the debate. Huxley was a rising biologist who had been excluded from church based Universities. So this also became a chance to oppose and destroy the church‘s grip on science. Darwin did get caught up in this politicking but was a very reluctant contributor. 

The words of that debate were not recorded and both sides claimed a victory – sounds just like modern politics. The debate is best remembered today for a heated exchange in which Bishop Wilberforce supposedly asked Huxley whether it was through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed his descent from a monkey. Huxley is said to have replied that he would not be ashamed to have a monkey for his ancestor, but he would be ashamed to be connected with a man who used his great gifts to obscure the truth. 

The Anglican church of the day was critical of Darwin and even used its power to block Darwin’s name being on Queen Victoria’s Honours List with the prospect of a knighthood. Her husband Prince Albert supported the idea, but the Queen’s ecclesiastical advisers, including Bishop Wilberforce, were opposed, and the request was turned down. A few others around the globe also objected to Darwin’s theory people like:

• Louis Agassiz was a French Protestant geologist and Zoologist, who came to the USA in 1846, persistently opposed Darwinism.
• An other would be William Dawson a Canadian Presbyterian and a highly acclaimed geologist at McGill University in Montreal. 
• A final example of Darwin’s opponents would be Charles Hodge, Principal of Princeton who argued that Darwinism was atheism.

Yet other theologians supported Darwin like: Charles Kingsley the author and Anglican clergyman wrote in support of Darwinism glorifying a Creator “who made things make themselves” . And again William Temple who later became Archbishop of Canterbury spoke positively of Evolution in his University sermon on the day following the June 30th 1860 Debate. 

The disputes about Darwinism in the late 19th century were really debates about opposing world views not so much about a conflict between science and faith. 

Moving on a few decades, with rise of a new form of Christian interpretation in the 1920’s that became know as Fundamentalism, Darwin would come under opposition again, although not at first. The fundamentalist movement was a specifically American phenomenon. It was concerned to preserve the fundamentals elements, of orthodox Christianity. Their concern was to maintain essential doctrines like the deity of Christ, the Incarnation, the Resurrection and Biblical Authority. The special or separate creation of humanity as distinct from the rest of creation, was not one those original fundamentals that the early founders promoted. 

In one source I read, after the first world war the changing social, moral and political position in the USA was blamed on the theory of evolution.  (Footnote e) The anti-evolution stance then became a mark of the fundamentalist movement and political activism started to prevent its propagation. William Bryan was the high profile leader of this political movement. The three times presidential candidate and an outspoken fundamentalist, led the legal battle to prevent the teaching of evolution in schools. In 1925, the law in Tennessee, as well as in a number of other Southern States, prohibited the teaching of evolution in schools. A challenge was mounted by civil liberties contenders, but John Scopes, the deliberately offending teacher, was charged and convicted. However the anti evolution statutes prohibiting the teaching of evolution were eventually removed but that was actively opposed and covertly restricted in conservative states in the USA. 

The fundamentalist biblical teaching also changed in reaction to the theory of evolution and in particularly the idea of an older earth. McCready Price, a Canadian from Nova Scotia, promoted a strict biblical literalism and a flood geology that states that all fossils are of the same age and that the fossils were all laid down during the flood of Noah described in Genesis. Price’s ‘Creation Science’ teaching persisted in the Creation Science Movement founded by Henry Morris in the 1960’s . 

Then a big change in the USA was the arrival and the “defeat of the USA by the Soviets in the race for manned space flight. This goaded US education system into a rethink of science education policy. This brought about a much more aggressive approach to modern biology in schools. Evolution was now taught actively in schools, with non- sanitized text books instead of the half hearted compromise that had prevailed.” (Footnote e.) The original battle of competing world views had turned into a battle of faith verses science. 

“In several US States status mandated the teaching of “Creation Science“ along side evolution in state schools.” However “ in a celebrated case in 1982 Creation Science was judged to be a religion and not science and therefore inadmissible in the US Education System for science classes.”  But that battle is still smoldering in the Southern United States. In 2000 in Kansas laws were enacted to make it non obligatory to examine evolution in biology examinations. 

Some of the latest battles and thoughts around Darwin’s theory include the idea of Intelligent Design. This does not disregard modern scientific knowledge like: the theory of evolution, the scientific evidence that shows the close similarities of human and chimpanzee DNA, the carbon dated fossil evidence and the estimates for the age of the earth – which is about 4.5 billion years old. But what the intelligent design argument uses is the idea that the detail and complexity in nature could not have occurred by chance and must be the work of an intelligent designer. 

Then of course there are the modern atheists like Richard Dawkins who seem to work with similar fundamentalist method of binary absolutes. These modern atheists hold up Darwin as complete proof for the denial of the existence God.

And where is the Anglican Church who were in the thick of things in the beginning of all of this? Well they have offered an apology. “Rev. Malcolm Brown, director of missions and public affairs for the Church of England, wrote in an essay entitled "Good Religion Needs Good Science: "Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still," (Footnote f.)

3) Theological Reflections 150 Years On

Darwin’s ideas have received much support from scientific evidence from the 1940s onward – particularly in geologic dating of the fossil records and of course with modern study of how DNA works and transmits heredity information. Darwin’s theory is basically unchanged in the last 150 years. But the world is also beginning to understand that our world views are not always in competition with one another. 

Our post-modern understanding is that multiple world views may in fact be a useful thing. In 1988 “Pope John Paul II wrote: "Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish."' In doing the research for this sermon – or mini lecture if you will – I was struck by the coincidence of the timing of scientific discovery. The geological age estimates of the earth were part of Darwin’s theory and that movement toward an much older earth was important to allow Darwin’s theory of evolution to take hold. But also the idea that Darwin did not come with his theory out of left field. The evolution idea was being discovered coincidentally in other places. 

From a theological stand point:

1) I often see coincidence as a holy act – an act of the spirit working through scientists in this case. For me, these are holy coincidences. 

2) There was also there was a de-linking in this historical journey of church and state – we see this in the movement away from the Church of England control of the Biological Universities of the mid 1800s. This also set the stage for Darwin’s ideas to be more acceptable. Theologically speaking – that is reformation – a good Protestant tradition. While the intertwining of civil authority and the church has shaped our world and society, the church is no long a central part of civic authority and we are freed to be a voice used for good in other ways. 

3) Also scientific knowledge and thinking are God’s gift to us and is intended to be a benefit for the whole world. 

4) My final theological reflection comes from a common critique of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. The idea of “survival of the fittest” does not account for: - love of other humans, - the idea of altruism - and self-sacrifice. These behaviours fly in the face of the “survival of the fittest” idea. That is a significant part of what Jesus’ mission on earth was about: Loving others like Jesus loved us. A calling to self sacrifice in the name of Jesus who sacrifices himself for us. Caring for the “less fit” in our society – in a way we could say “survival of the least fit”. 

Amen 

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:7

Prayer: Thanks be to God for the scientist and thinker Charles Darwin, may his teachings help us to continue to understand the beauty and complexity of God’s creation.  Amen.

Notes