EARTHKEEPING NEWS A NEWSLETTER OF THE NORTH AMERICAN COALITION FOR CHRISTIANITY AND ECOLOGY Volume Thirteen, Number One Winter 2004 GIVING GOD GLORY IN EVOLUTION: How Science Will Usher the Church into Its Greatness Excerpts from a paper written for the Lent 2004 issue of Benedictine Bridge St. Benedict Center, Madison, Wisconsin. by The Rev. Michael Dowd (www.TheGreatStory.org) Many Christians over the last century and a half have understandably rejected evolution because, until recently, evolution has been depicted as a chance, meaningless, mechanistic process. The growing edge of evolutionary thinking today, however, points to a very different understanding of the cosmos. We now see a universe of nested creativity (atoms within molecules within cells within organisms within planets within galaxies, like Russian nesting dolls) perfectly suited for life and reflective consciousness. Is this just a happy coincidence? Doubtful. Scientists themselves are thus moving out of a mechanistic way of thinking to an organic, or living systems, worldview. Evolution, from this perspective, can be embraced as God-glorifying, Christ-edifying, and scripture-honoring. In the words of literary critic and historian Gil Bailie: "It was not those closest to the historical Jesus who first gave the gospel its geographical breadth and theological depth. It was Paul, who had never known him. . . . If the life and death of Jesus is historically central, then people living a hundred thousand years from now will be in a better position to appreciate that than we are. Furthermore, when they look back they will surely think of us as "early Christians" living as we do a scant two millennia from the mysterious events in question. They will be right, for the Christian movement today is still in the elementary stages of working out for itself and for the world the implications of the gospel. There isn't the slightest doubt that the greatest and boldest creedal assertions are in the future, not the past. "As well as strengthening our faith in God, the new cosmology offers a renewed passion for honoring and preserving the sacredness of all life." To think that we can "love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love our neighbor as ourself" without cherishing our environment is to deny the very immanence and omnipresence o fGod. Who is our neighbor: the Samaritan? the outcast? the enemy? Yes, yes, of course. But it is also the frog, the whale, and the forests. Our neighbor is the entire community of life, the entire cosmos. A bioregion is a self-propagating, self-nourishing, self-governing, self-healing and self-fulfilling community. --- Thomas Berry in The Dream of the Earth Home     Table of Contents