Marty Caivano Cathy Russell, right, shows off her Epic of Evolution Blessing Beads, which detail events from the Big Bang to the present, with Reverend Pete Terpenning, left, at the Community United Church of Christ in south Boulder. Terpenning and Russell, a congregation member who holds a Ph.D in microbiology, are preparing for Evolution Sunday, a national event that explores evolution as part of the Christian faith.

Event brings the science-faith debate back to the pulpit

February 11, 2006

When Rev. Pete Terpenning steps before his congregation at Community UCC in Boulder Sunday, his sermon will address a topic he has talked about before: evolution and religion.

When Rev. Greg Garland of the United Church of Broomfield addresses churchgoers, the topic will be the same, as will its familiarity.

The two pastors are participating in a nationwide event known as Evolution Sunday, in which more than 425 churches nationwide will give voice to a viewpoint that the event's organizer says has frequently been lost in the politically charged debate over evolution. Specifically that many Christians say that acceptance of the theory of evolution and a belief in God can happily co-exist.

"No one is trying to take faith away," says Michael Zimmerman, dean of the College of Letters and Science at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. "Science is fully compatible."

Zimmerman has spearheaded Evolution Sunday — timed to coincide with the 197th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin — as an outgrowth of the Clergy Letter Project, which he also started, in which more than 10,000 Christian ministers nationwide signed a letter affirming the importance of the theory of evolution to America's education system and culture. In part the letter reads:

"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 believe that among God's good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator."

Evolution Sunday comes amid several Boulder events focusing of the collision between the secular and the religious, that seek to counter what some regard as the disproportionate clout of the religious right. Today, as part of the annual meeting of the Rocky Mountain Section of the American Scientific Affiliation at the University of Colorado, forums and lectures will address the topic, "How Can a Scientist Be A Christian?" On Sunday, Chris Mooney, author of "The Republican War on Science," will lecture at CU's Fleming Law School at 6 p.m. Last week, an interfaith group, Common Voice, met in Boulder to discuss social justice.

Evolution Sunday's goal is similar. But, it puts the debate squarely back in church. Both Terpenning and Garland say they have addressed evolution and that the idea is generally accepted by their congregations, yet both say it is important to, in essence, preach to choir.

"There's a power the church has in blessing things," Terpenning says. "That is an awesome power."

Says Garland: "I think it's important for the church ... to clarify the theological issues that are involved. I think that's a social responsibility of the churches."

Garland, whose wife teaches seventh grade science in a Jefferson County school, says faith and science have different things to contribute to human understanding.

"The accounts presented in the scriptures were not ever intended to be scientific. ...Religion clearly has areas of expertise that science does not have. You just can't prove or disprove God, and that takes it out of the realm of science."

Terpenning agrees, saying he doesn't read the Bible to learn the specifics of how God created the Earth. Rather, he reads it for its larger truths.

"The creation story is that God created the Earth," he says. "There is a vital force in the universe. There is a creative energy in the universe ... God created and is creating the universe, is today working in me and working in the trees outside my window. God is present in every bit of creation, this process of life, at the very core."

To accept evolution as a mechanism of God's creation is not a contradiction, he says.

One of the members of Terpenning's church, Cathy Russell, will be giving a presentation after the service. Russell, who has a Ph.D. in microbiology, believes many people have equated the theory of evolution, which posits survival of the fittest as one mechanism of evolution, with social Darwinism, which has been used to justify eugenics and other destructive human impulses.

Her talk will focus on the cooperative aspects of evolution, in which single cells joined with others to become multi-cellular organisms, and in which human societies also evolved toward cooperation as the best way to ensure survival of the species. In the process, human compassion is one of the traits that has evolved, she says.

Russell, who was raised to believe in the literal truth of the Bible, struggled for a long time to reconcile faith in God and science.

She now views God as the ultimate reality and doesn't see a conflict between the two.

"Not only are they compatible, but the two world views for me provide a much richer way to view the world and a much more helpful world view to navigate through the world," she says.

Sharing that viewpoint is an important function of both Evolution Sunday and the Clergy Letter Project, Zimmerman says. He has been heartened by the more than 10,000 clergy signatures and says he knows of no other effort that has received the endorsement of so many Christian clergy members.

"When you get 10,000 quiet voices singing from the same hymnal, they're going to drown out those shrill ones."

Contact Camera Staff Writer Cindy Sutter at (303) 473-1335 or sutterc@dailycamera.com.

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