In a report entitled, "Protestant Pastors’ Views on Creation," LifeWay Research reports its findings on the attitudes of Protestant pastors concerning evolution. LifeWay researchers interviewed over 1,000 pastors across several denominations and found that 64% strongly disagreed with the statement that, "God used evolution to create people." Conversely, some 74% strongly agreed that, "Adam and Eve were literal people." These figures varied by region of the nation with pastors in the Northeast more likely to agree that the human race is a product of evolution and disagree with the idea that there was a literal Adam and Eve. Mainline pastors also were more likely to hold a positive view of evolution as were pastors who had a postgraduate education, but in all cases the majority of pastors across all regions, levels of education, and whether evangelical or mainline affirmed anti-evolution beliefs. For a good summary of the report, see Ed Stetzer's LifeWay blog (here).Now, evolution is what they call "settled science," which means that denying its reality is precisely the same as "not believing" in gravity or the "theory" of a heliocentric solar system. The root cause of the rejection of evolution is, of course, the desire to preserve the "truth" of Genesis 1-2. In any event, it is discouraging to see such larger numbers of Protestant pastors rejecting evolution—assuming of course that LifeWay's findings accurately represent the views of Protestant pastors. Without accusing the report of being inaccurate, we might still wonder just a tad since LifeWay Research is an arm of the Southern Baptist Church, a strongly anti-evolutionary denomination.
Regular readers of Rom Phra Khun will have heard much of this from me before, but these statistics are worrisome for a number of reasons. First, in their rejection of evolution the participants in the study reject the reality of Creation. God creates the universe and life on Earth by means of evolution. Evolution is God's plan for Creation. Second, in rejecting the findings of settled science, the participants only serve to drive a wedge between the faith of the church and contemporary worldviews, the worldviews we must be able to speak to if we want to bring Christ to those who hold them. In our age, the scientific view of the world is already dominate and will grow only more so. The same pastors who reject evolution regularly avail themselves of the benefits of medical science, which is built on evolutionary principles. They ignore the mountains upon mountains upon mountains beyond counting of scientific data confirming evolution, which could not possibly provide the coherent picture of the reality of evolution it does if it were built on a false foundation. Third, in their zeal to affirm the Bible as the Word of God, these pastors stand always in danger of bibliolatry, the worship of the Bible in place of God. The great modern form of idolatry is ideology, and bibliolatry is what we might call a "stealth-idolatry," a form of idolatry posing as theology. The Bible is God's word written, which has been preserved for us from ancient times. It's inspiration is in the manner in which it cogently tells the Story of God's gracious, holy history with humanity. It is a story told through the medium of ancient worldviews and values many of which simply do not make sense in 2012, but the Story itself remains powerful. Indeed, by clinging ideologically to some of those ancient worldviews we only manage to obscure the meaning of the Story for the 21st century and make it harder to tell it to the world today.
I'm shouting down a deep dark well. I know. But, from time to time it is important to shout down the well, if only to remember that there are many different paths to faith in Christ. One need not reject settled science in order to be his follower. In fact, we can affirm settled science as a repository of clues into the nature of God's plan for humanity and Creation, if only we have the wit and wisdom to read what our forbearers in the faith called, "The Book of Nature." Amen.
