The Evolution of a Christian
by Justen Whittall
The inspiration for this message arose out of a discussion with Pastor Jane over dinner at a member’s home, in which we were debating the potential conflict of Christian beliefs and evolutionary biology. At Jane’s encouragement, I’d like to share my personal experience of being a Christian and an evolutionary biologist. Although this exercise has allowed me to explore and clarify how I reconcile my spirituality with my career, I didn’t do it alone. In preparing for this, my daughter asked, “Are you reading this alone?” Then added with an intimidating tone, “Just you and the silence of the sanctuary?” Then she suggested, “You could just move out of the country.” You can imagine why she didn’t want to share in the reading.
I am a Christian AND an evolutionary biologist. For some, this may seem like a conflict. How can one believe in the Bible AND trust the facts of modern science? In fact, according to a poll reported in American Scientists, only 20% of prominent evolutionary biologists said they believe in God. Even Darwin himself knew his ideas were dangerous. They conflicted with his personal faith (he was trained as a minister after having shown no tendency for medicine as his father had hoped), and he wrote candidly about how concerned he was that his ideas conflicted with those of his wife, Emma Wedgewood (of the famous china producers).
Here is one of the most poetic quotes describing the Tree of Life from Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859):
“The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree… As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications.”
