I have secretly read the chapter on evolution even though we were not supposed to yet, and there are pictures of fossils and skeletons, human bones too old to be Adam and Eve."1 The characters and the story in Laura Moriarty's The Center of Everything are fictional, but the situation is real. There are many people like Evelyn who struggle with the question, "Who is lying? The preachers or the biology teachers?" In the run-up to Charles Darwin's 200th birthday, National Public Radio aired a wonderful article on ministers and rabbis who were celebrating the anniversary with their congregations. One of the ministers was Pastor David Weber of First United Methodist Church in Jacksboro, TX. He looks out his office window at oil fields where many of his members work. "These people have been sitting on top of oil and fossils and the evidence of the carboniferous period all of their lives," Weber says. "They know it. They kick over fossils daily. They see ocean water that is 200 million years old coming out of the ground daily as new wells are drilled. They've had a hard time all their lives putting all of that many, many million-years-old evidence into 4,000-year-old stories.2
Many people struggle to reconcile their faith and science. And the teaching of evolutionary theory in public schools continues to divide communities across the nation. Though it has suffered many defeats over the years, the Christian Fundamentalist attempt to insert the Biblical Creation story (or Creation Science or Intelligent Design) into public school science curricula as an alternative to evolutionary theory remains ubiquitous.
On June 26th, 2008, Governor Bobby Jindal signed the Louisiana Science Education Act into law. The act was written and promoted by the Louisiana Family Forum, whose mission is to "persuasively present biblical principles in the centers of influence on issues affecting the family."3 While the new law does not directly enable the teaching of Biblical concepts in public schools, it uses the language of "promoting critical thinking skills" to support teachers and parents who want to raise doubts about evolution and global warming for religious reasons. Similar bills have recently lost in Alabama and Florida but are currently under consideration in Missouri, South Carolina, and Michigan.4
Unitarian Universalists tend to bristle at such measures-at attempts to undermine the spirit and the process of scientific inquiry-at the misrepresentation or rejection of verifiable scientific data. The Unitarian Universalist living tradition draws from many sources including "humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science."5 Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries and certainly today, Unitarians and Universalists have sought to live faithful lives that account for and embrace scientific discovery. While preparing this sermon, I went to a book by Cynthia Grant Tucker called Prophetic Sisterhood, a history of the lives of the first cadre of women ordained to Unitarian and Universalist ministries in the late 19th century. Again and again, as Tucker explores the themes of their ministries, Darwin and evolution figure prominently. Listen to this passage about Elizabeth Gordon, an educator teaching in a public school and a Unitarian Sunday School in Humboldt, Iowa less than two decades after publication of The Origin of Species.
As a 'modern' educator.Gordon insisted.her students approach whatever was studied in the scientific spirit.. [She] maintained that her rational method never caused any problems at [the public] school.but she was frequently called before the school board by its trinitarian members for teaching.flagrant 'Unitarianism.' Generally, this meant teaching evolution or anything that smacked of it..
There were, of course, no such problems in Gordon's Sunday School, where the youngsters were molded on their elders' liberal ideals. The children were studying Darwin and Emerson and reading Scripture in the light of the higher biblical criticism before they had reached the age of twelve."6 I offer this passage to remind us that the embrace of science and openness specifically to evolutionary theory are not knee-jerk reactions to the latest fundamentalist attempt to sneak the Bible into public schools, but rather are longstanding hallmarks of our tradition.
If you are concerned then, like I am, about efforts to blur lines between church and state-about a Christian Fundamentalist political movement attempting to insert Biblical ideas into public school science curricula-I want you to hear some good news. There is a growing, global movement among people of faith which seeks to uphold the integrity of evolutionary theory. Twelve days ago, Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Culture, declared that Darwin's theory of evolution is compatible with Christian faith. According to the Times of London, the Vatican also "dealt the final blow to speculation that Pope Benedict XVI might.endorse the theory of Intelligent Design.. Organisers of a papal-backed conference next month marking the 150th anniversary of Darwin's The Origin of Species said that at first [they] had even.proposed [banning] Intelligent Design from the event, as "poor theology and poor science." Intelligent Design [will] be discussed at the fringes of the conference., but merely as a "cultural phenomenon," rather than a scientific or theological issue.7
In September the Church of England issued an apology to Charles Darwin, admitting it had misunderstood his theories in the 1800s and had encouraged such misunderstanding throughout the 20th century.8 The Church of England now has an extensive section on its website devoted to the study of Darwin's life and work.
Then there is the Clergy Letter Project, the creation of Michael Zimmerman, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Butler University in Indianapolis. He says that "for too long, the misperception that science and religion are inevitably in conflict has created unnecessary division and confusion, especially concerning the teaching of evolution. I wanted to let the public know that numerous clergy from most denominations have tremendous respect for evolutionary theory and have embraced it as a core component of human knowledge, fully harmonious with religious faith."9 The Clergy Letter Project has produced three open letters-one Christian, one Jewish, one Unitarian Universalist-which articulate this sentiment. More than 12,000 clergy have signed onto these letters. Here is an excerpt from the Unitarian Universalist letter:
We.believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and other scriptures may comfortably coexist with the discoveries of modern science. 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 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.10
Let me pause to reflect on these two very different, but complimentary forms of truth. The heart of the debate over evolution-and to some extent the heart of the United States culture war-has its origins in the failure to distinguish two very different, but complimentary forms of truth, mythos and logos. 11 Mythos is the truth at the heart of myths: the enduring values, the timeless themes, the stories that help us make meaning of our lives and give us a sense of purpose. Logos is the truth resulting from scientific inquiry and the exercise of reason. It gives us cold, hard facts about our world and the universe. We apprehend Mythos through intuition; we verify it through the heart. We apprehend logos through logic. We verify it through the mind. Mythos is metaphorical. It responds to and expresses human passion, desire, longing, fear. Logos is empirical, based on evidence. It seeks to explain the physical world. Mythos is timeless, eternal. Logos is bound in time, historical. Mythos seeks to inspire. Logos seeks to inform. The stories that give rise to mythos-myths-are not to be taken literally. These ancient stories don't need to be factual or historically accurate for their truths-their mythos-to play a useful role in peoples' lives. On the other hand, the only way logos can play a useful role in peoples' lives is if it is taken literally.
The truths of the creation story in the book of Genesis rightly belong to the realm of mythos. As mythos this story is about values, character, human and divine nature, human and divine struggles. It is the story of a people and their relationship to their God. For me it is a story that identifies creativity as a primary characteristic of divinity. All of this is mythos. But look what happens when mythos becomes confused with logos. To read Genesis as logos is to accept as fact that the earth is approximately 5,000 years old. To read Genesis as logos is to accept as fact that there is a God who created the earth in seven days, placed the sun and the moon, made a dome separating the waters below from the waters above, created human beings in God's image, created Adam and Eve as the first human beings 5,000 years ago. But "I have secretly read the chapter on evolution. and there are pictures of fossils and skeletons, human bones too old to be Adam and Eve." The theory of evolution obliterates Genesis as logos. If we are descended from apes then Genesis is factually incorrect. If all known species evolved from earlier species, then the order of creation as presented in Genesis is factually incorrect. If there is 200 million-year-old ocean water leaking out of Texas oil wells, then Genesis is factually incorrect. If one reads Genesis as logos instead of mythos, and really believes it, then Darwin's The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man are the most terrifying, dangerous books ever written, and it makes sense that 150 years later people are still fighting over what is true, still wondering, "Who is lying, the preachers or the biology teachers?"
Yet if we as a society can learn to not confuse these two very different yet complimentary forms of truth, then neither the preacher nor the biology teacher is lying. When I say I believe it is possible to reconcile science and religion-when I say a life of faith is compatible with evolutionary theory-I mean we can have both mythos and logos in our lives. In fact, we need both. The fullness of our spiritual lives depends on it. We need logos to inform us about our world; we need mythos to teach us how to live in it. We need logos to show us how things work, mythos to teach us how to use them wisely. We need logos to ground us, to remind us of our limits, to show us how we are connected to the earth. We need mythos to set us free, to inspire us to reach beyond our limits, to help us honor our connections. We need logos to understand the origins of life. We need mythos to teach us how to treat life with dignity and respect. We need logos to apprehend that which is finite; we need mythos to apprehend that which is eternal. You might say we need the head and the heart, the body and the spirit, roots and wings.
I have secretly read the chapter on evolution.and there are pictures of fossils and skeletons, human bones too old to be Adam and Eve." As the good news of evolution continues to spread in these early days of the twenty-first century, it is my prayer that this confusion of mythos and logos that plagues our larger culture will begin to wane, that each form of truth will have its proper place, that both religion and science shall flourish in positive ways, and that together they shall continue to make our lives whole. Amen and Blessed Be.
1 Moriarty, Laura, The Center of Everything (New York: Hyperion, 2004) p 227.
2 National Public Radio article, Feb. 11, 2009.
3 See the website of Louisiana Family Forum at: http://www.lafamilyforum.org/.
4 Branch, Glenn and Scott, Eugene, "The Latest Face of Creationism," Scientific American (January, 2009) pp. 92-99.
5 See the Bylaws of the Unitarian Universalist Association at: http://www.uua.org/aboutus/bylaws/articleii/6906.shtml.
6 Tucker, Cynthia Grant, Prophetic Sisterhood: Liberal Women Ministers of the Frontier, 1880-1930 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990) p. 51.
7 Owen, Richard, "Vatican Buries the Hatchet With Charles Darwin" Times On-Line, Feb. 11, 2009. See: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5705331.ece.
8 See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/2910447/Charles-Darwin-to-receive-apology-from-the-Church-of-England-for-rejecting-evolution.html.
9 See Dean Zimmerman's comments on the origins of the Clergy Letter Project at: http://www.butler.edu/clergyproject/Backgd_info.htm.
10 See the full text of the Unitarian Universalist clergy letter at: http://www.butler.edu/clergyproject/Unitarian_Universalists/UnivUnitarianClergyLtr.htm.
11 For an excellent, accessible description of mythos and logos, see Armstrong, Karen, The Battle for God (New York, Ballantine Books, 2000) pp. xv-xvii.
