Clergy Letter Project -- Science and Faith

A battle seems to be raging between science and religion. Nearly half the nation ascribes to a young earth creationist perspective; this despite the evidence! But not everyone has bought into the war. Some of us believe that it is possible to affirm the existence of God and affirm evolution as the scientific explanation for how things have come to be.

More than 10,000 clergy, biblical scholars, and theologians have signed the Clergy Letter Concerning Religion and Science. I'm among those signers and will again lead my congregation in the recognition of Evolution Sunday (February 11, 2007).

The letter is posted below. If you'd like to know more about the project or become a signer yourself, check out the website: http://www.evolutionsunday.org/.


Within the community of Christian believers there are areas of dispute and disagreement, including the proper way to interpret Holy Scripture. 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. We believe that among God's good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator. To argue that God's loving plan of salvation for humanity precludes the full employment of the God-given faculty of reason is to attempt to limit God, an act of hubris. We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge. We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth.

Signed by 10,418 Christian clergy member as of 26 December 2006

Comments

Popular Posts