Adam & Eve
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There's a bit of controversy developing in conservative evangelical colleges and universities. Apparently, some professors actually doubt the literal truth of Genesis, at least where the story of Adam & Eve is concerned. It's sad that this is any sort of controversy or debate at all -- it's a sign of just how regressive Christianity in America has become that any Christians would feel the least bit hesitant to publicly accept and acknowledge any facet of scientifically proven reality.
"Evangelicalism has a tendency to devour its young," says Daniel Harlow, a religion professor at Calvin College, a Christian Reformed school that subscribes to the fall of Adam and Eve as a central part of its faith.
"You get evangelicals who push the envelope, maybe; they get the courage to work in sensitive, difficult areas," Harlow says. "And they get slapped down. They get fired or dismissed or pressured out."
Harlow should know: Calvin College investigated him after he wrote an article questioning the historical Adam. His colleague and fellow theologian, John Schneider, wrote a similar article and was pressured to resign after 25 years at the college. Schneider is now beginning a research fellowship at Notre Dame.
Several other well known theologians at Christian universities have been forced out; some see a parallel to a previous time when science conflicted with religious doctrine.
"The evolution controversy today is, I think, a Galileo moment," says Karl Giberson, who authored several books trying to reconcile Christianity and evolution, including The Language of Science and Faith, with Francis Collins.
Giberson -- who taught physics at Eastern Nazarene College until his views became too uncomfortable in Christian academia -- says Protestants who question Adam and Eve are akin to Galileo in the 1600s, who defied Catholic Church doctrine by stating that the earth revolved around the sun and not vice versa. Galileo was condemned by the church, and it took more than three centuries for the Vatican to express regret at its error.
"When you ignore science, you end up with egg on your face," Giberson says. "The Catholic Church has had an awful lot of egg on its face for centuries because of Galileo. And Protestants would do very well to look at that and to learn from it."
Source: NPR
No one who grounds their beliefs on science and reality accepts that the Genesis account of creation is literally true -- that position is limited solely to those who place religious ideology ahead of reality. This is perhaps one reason why we have this conflict described above: theologians and others who teach at conservative evangelical institutions are expected to put their religion ahead of reality just like the most ignorant and misled of believers.
But some can't quite do it. To one degree or another they have created for themselves a life of learning and scholarship, In such a context, it's difficult to hold back and limit oneself to only those ideas and conclusions which have the approval of ecclesiastical leaders.
Reactionary forces within conservative evangelical Christianity have not remained silent, of course. The "dissidents" insist that Christians need to accept reality in order for Christianity or Christians to have any sort of respectability in the modern world. Christian Right leaders, though, don't want "respectability" -- they just want to rule.
"This stuff is unavoidable," says Dan Harlow at Calvin College. "Evangelicals have to either face up to it or they have to stick their head in the sand. And if they do that, they will lose whatever intellectual currency or respectability they have."
"If so, that's simply the price we'll have to pay," says Southern Baptist seminary's Albert Mohler. "The moment you say 'We have to abandon this theology in order to have the respect of the world,' you end up with neither biblical orthodoxy nor the respect of the world."
Mohler and others say if other Protestants want to accommodate science, fine. But they shouldn't be surprised if their faith unravels.
It's important to remember that Christians are taught in the New Testament that they will be persecuted for their faith. Many treat disrespect as a form of just such persecution -- and any persecution is a sign that they are on the right track. So for such evangelical Christians, losing the "respect of the world" is a validation that their reality-denying faith is correct, not an indication that they require any correction.
So for Harlow and others to talk about "respectability" is probably a mistake -- one that I'm surprised a person with this sort of background to make. At the very least the words would have to be chosen much more carefully if they wanted to raise the issue. But I'm not sure that even raising the issue is the right thing to do.
I doubt that these "dissidents" will make much, if any, headway within either their institutions or within evangelical Christianity generally. Their best arguments are scientific and that a reasonable person should accept the conclusions of the best science we have. None of that will be convincing to the average conservative evangelical in the pews.
This means that their churches won't budge. Since the churches fund the colleges, universities, and other institutions, then the institutions can't budge without the the board of directors being fired or the funding being withdrawn.
So one way or another, the deliberate ignorance that Christians leaders have fostered for decades in their followers will prevent much progress from being made. The best that can be hoped for is a gradual erosion of some of the ideological supports of the science-denying ignorance at issue. How that will happen I'm not sure, but I think that's where Harlow and others need to focus.
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