Awakening in the News:
The News-Leader writes about our Bible Belt alternative...
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by Phil Snider
 

In 1922, the legendary American preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick preached a sermon titled, "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" Fosdick was concerned that the great traditions of the Christian faith and its progress into the future were in jeopardy because of increasingly narrow views of what one must believe in order to be a Christian, particularly in the areas of religion and science.

Fosdick spoke in the midst of the build-up to the Scopes Monkey Trial (which pitted creationism against evolution), and with all of the recent discussion concerning Ben Stein's film, "Expelled" -- as well as the many attempts to place intelligent design in science textbooks across the U.S. -- we're having remarkably similar conversations today.

We are told that evolution and faith are incompatible; or that we must choose between Genesis and intelligent design or evolution and secular humanism.

However, as one of over 11,000 clergy persons who have signed an open letter that supports the view that faith and science should be seen as complimentary instead of competing, and that it is possible for God to have created through the means of evolution, I am deeply troubled by those who would say I cannot hold such a perspective and still consider myself a faithful Christian.

The point of contention, of course, rests on a literal reading of the book of Genesis. If a person is open to the concept of evolution, as I am, then it would seem that chapters one and two of Genesis are called into question, and if Genesis is called into question, then what of the Bible as a whole? All of a sudden, the whole house of faith threatens to fall.

I've been there before, and I know the interpretive gymnastics it takes to try and keep things from crashing down. Many others have been there as well, and if being a Christian requires one to "believe twelve unbelievable things before breakfast," as Mark Twain once put it, then many -- for good reason -- don't want much to do with it.

The truth of the matter is that it doesn't take evolution to threaten a literal reading of Genesis, for Genesis undoes itself. As virtually all modern biblical scholarship points out, there are actually two creation stories in Genesis written by two different authors (1:1-2:4a and 2:4b-2:25). A close reading will show that God doesn't create in the same order in each, but rather each story has its own unique features.

This may lead some to think that the ancients were foolish to miss such obvious discrepancies, but we'd do well to remember that they were looking for a different kind of truth that goes beyond the kind of banal literalism that traps so many today. Indeed, to have the courage to put two varying accounts in the same set of Scriptures (something that happens quite often in the Bible) requires the courage to be open to various perspectives -- something modern Christians desperately need to remember.

Even more importantly, when the ancients approached Genesis, they weren't confined to the kind of wooden, literal, scientific truths we try to squeeze out of it. Instead, they were trying to understand more profound truths like what it means to be human and what God calls us to do in the world. It's only recently, in response to the Enlightenment, that we've become so accustomed to privileging "literal facts" over and above profound theological thought. Hence our obsession with things like creation science and the location of the dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden, not to mention the infamous question of how in the world Adam and Eve's children had children! But all of this misses the point.

To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton: "Myths are not true -- they are more than true. Not because they tell us that, for instance, dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated." In other words, they speak on a deeper, more profound level.

Similarly, the beginning of Genesis may not be scientifically true, but rather -- by speaking on a different level -- more than true. It tries to say that we live our lives somewhere east of Eden -- meaning that something has gone wrong, and we long to return to that place where things are made right. It tries to say that everyone -- both male and female -- is made in the image of God. It tries to say that God ordered the primordial chaos so that the gift of creaturely life might be possible, and that human beings are responsible for being stewards of such a magnificent gift.

These aren't scientific truths, they are religious ones. And people of faith can give thanks for the gift of life and creation -- in all of its beauty, wonder, mystery and complexity -- without sacrificing the integrity of the Bible or their intellectual convictions.