"Darwin & Liberal Religion"

Rev. Bruce R. Russell-Jayne

A good idea doesn’t care who has it.  Think about it.  Don’t you think a good idea will stand out on its own, no matter who comes up with it?  That’s what I used to tell people when leading a brainstorming process - where we were really wanting everyone to just do a brain dump - to just open up and freely pour out the ideas into the room and not let anything get in the way.  Often in working groups, I’ve seen competition for whose ideas will get attention, for who will gain notoriety or power because their idea gets used.  It’s important to remove the impediment of egos from a creative group process.  Now this is true when a group or community is working together to create something new, but there are also times when a good idea, a very important idea, needs an individual person with integrity and vision to champion it.  Evolution, an idea which certainly stands on its own today, needed Darwin to formulate it and tell the world about it.
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Today, we are one of hundreds of congregations across the country celebrating Darwin’s legacy - not only his intellectual contributions, but alsohis bravery in publishing his seminal work, On the Origin of Species.  Northern Hills Fellowship is listed on a website called “EvolutionWeekend” which lists participating churches and temples and which contains an open letter from thousands of clergy which I have signed.  Here is an excerpt from the UU version of the Clergy Letter:
“While most Unitarian Universalists believe that many sacred scriptures convey timeless truths about humans and our relationship to the sacred, we stand in solidarity with our Christian and Jewish brothers and sisters who do not read the Bible literally, as they would a science textbook.  We believe that religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth.  Its purpose is not to convey scientific information but to transform hearts.
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… We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge. We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth.”

Darwin himself, understood all too well that his scientific theories would likely have a profound impact on the church and would be met with resistance from traditional religionists.  In his era as in ours, science and religion are not always seen as complementary forms of truth.  He knew an evolutionary process which did not require God to control every step along the way would be perceived as a threat to church doctrines.   Darwin, whose grandparents were members of Joseph Priestly’s Birmingham Unitarian church certainly was aware of the dangers of publishing controversial theories.  Priestly, the discoverer of Oxygen, who believed in the free and open exchange of ideas and toleration for religious dissenters, nevertheless was forced to flee England after an angry mob burned down his laboratory and home.  Darwin, afraid he would be called a “Judas,” one who brought about the death of religion, delayed the publication of his book for two decades.  However, even though there were vigorous debates following publication, after a few years his countrymen accepted his theories and Darwin received many honors.  After his death he was buried beside Sir Isaac Newton at Westminster Abbey - two renowned scientists interred in a cathedral.

Darwin’s ideas created strong reactions in his time and have impacted people emotionally ever since.  There are those who feel threatened by Darwin’s theories who have oversimplified them, called them an ideology and made them an object of scorn.  On the other hand, some Darwin promoters try to turn his ideas into an orthodoxy.  They say Darwin’s theory of evolution was the single best idea anyone has ever had, and it set the direction for much scientific exploration that followed.  But Darwin’s original ideas have too much poetry in them to be captured by either side.  He expressed his ideas not to favor or oppose an ideology; he proposed ideas to goad others to test them and to inspire others to take them further.  He understood how the Tree of Life had branched and created more complexity, and he knew it would take many minds and much more exploration from the scientific community to fully flesh out what he had begun.  And, oh boy have his ideas been tested!  They have been scrutinized and questioned for  over a century and a half, and they have not been discredited - quite the contrary - they continue to be affirmed.

His theories on the origin of species have proven to be exceedingly fruitful.  Evolution helps explain much more than natural selection in plant and animal life.  It has been applied in many other scientific fields, and beyond, including the development of the human brain, human social interactions and the our ability to create larger and more complex human communities.  Darwin did not mean for his ideas to establish a closely held explanation for a static order; he meant for them to be shared and used to examine the unpredictable growth of new forms of life.  Use of the theory of evolution has expanded and has generated new constructive insights in a wide range of areas.  The theory of evolution has born more fruit than even Darwin could have imagined. 

On three previous Evolution Sunday’s we have celebrated here I have preached about the religious controversy over evolution, about why science can’t be excluded from ethics and the process of meaning making, and on humankind’s evolutionary purpose in the world.  Today we won’t re-open the so-called controversy between church and science.  Instead, we’ll look at the messages Darwin’s personal, spiritual journey has for liberal religion.
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Darwin’s scientific discoveries compelled him to re-examine his faith.  His life story is an example of a classic conundrum which turns many people toward liberal religion.  My text this morning is a book entitled The Whole World Kin: Darwin and the Spirit of Liberal Religion, edited by Rev. Fredric Muir, one United Church of Christ and eight Unitarian Universalist ministers contribute essays which “illuminate the spiritual as well as the intellectual achievement in Darwin’s great paradigm shift.”   He gave us a new way to view our underlying connection to all living creatures and our place in the evolution of the universe.  Darwin’s faith was rooted in his best scientific knowledge and a commitment to a continuing search for more, a standpoint which enhanced and deepened the spirit of liberal religion.

Darwin never said his theories applied to everyday living, but once we understand the laws of evolution it is hard to escape that conclusion.  For example, one fact that defines evolution is: change never ends.  If there’s one thing you can be sure of, it’s things will change.  Change makes life interesting, and often disconcerting.  If everything around us can change, then stability is not assured.  The Church of England of Darwin’s day taught God was in charge and had ordered everything according to his plan.  Anglican clergy thought Darwin had limited God’s role. Darwin struggled with that for a long time before he became firm in the conclusion that God didn’t control evolution.  As an agnostic he respected the law of change and embraced flexibility as the best response to it.  William Blake, Darwin’s contemporary wrote:
            Every night and every morn
            Some to misery are born;
            Every morn and every night
            Some are born to sweet delight.

            Joy and woe are woven fine,
            Clothing for the soul divine:
            Under every grief and pine
            Runs a joy with silken twine.

            It is right it should be so:
            We are made for joy and woe;
            And when this we rightly know,
            Safely through the world we go.

Rev. Muir says a second article of evolutionary faith is: while change is a constant, and sometimes changes can be far reaching, we can depend on nature to seek a balance.  Nature has its own strategies for coping with change which tend toward sustainability of the whole.  When the population of mosquitoes goes up, the bats get fatter and take it back down.  Seeking balance and working toward sustainability are part of evolution’s process of creating new life, and they are pretty good guidelines for our behavior, too.  When we put all our energy in one area - our jobs, our kids, or even our church, other parts of our life can suffer.  When we take care of our whole selves, we have more zest for life, and we are more likely to survive for the long haul.  One thing’s for sure, if we don’t, evolutionary processes will do it for us.   

Darwin drew a diagram showing the forks and turns of speciation over the eons.  His was a scientific Tree of Life, and it taught us that we all came from the same tree trunk.  All life on Earth is connected thru our common history.  What his Tree of Life also showed was humans were not the trunk, we’re not even a main branch.  For folks who had been taught humans, and only humans, are made in the image of God and therefore had dominion over nature, this was a hard pill to swallow.  Darwin and his contemporaries did not intend to create a religious divide.  To them, “evolution unified all living things; it made sense of life by describing how everything alive is one strand in the web that connects us all.”  In evolution, there is no hierarchy of life, with one animal being worth more than another.  All of evolution’s children are important & precious.  “All God’s Critters Got a Place in the Choir.”  Edward O. Wilson said, “In freeing our minds from our imagined demigod bondage, even at the price of humility, Darwin turned our attention to the astounding power of the natural creative process and the magnificence of its products.”  Rev. Muir concludes, for religious liberals, “Humility, not narcissism, egotism, or anthropocentrism, is the appropriate response to being a twig-not even a branch-on the Tree of Life.

Through much of his life, Darwin was all work and no play, and he suffered for it.  In his autobiography, he reproached himself for not living a more balanced life.  He said, “My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding the general laws out of a large collection of facts.  If I had to live my life again I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.”  He missed more than the arts; he lamented having little time for deep human relationships.  The last lesson from Darwin I’ll hold up to day is not from his life’s example, but from his reflections.  If he could have, he would have immersed himself more fully in the web of life, trusting it to nurture his spirit and bring him joy.  He could have used a little more of a sense awe that what is inside us is from the stars.  His most beneficial lesson for us is that we should “Live in wonder, openness, and exploration with the community of life where we make our home.”

I said at the beginning that a good idea will be seen for what it is, but that sometimes an idea needs a champion to bring it to fruition.  Both of these things certainly were true about the theory of evolution and Darwin.  What’s even more important about an idea is that it be shared with and used by a broad community of people.  With the theory of evolution we moved from “revealed” static beliefs to a “theory” that has been thoroughly tested and modified in the light of evidence and concerted attempts to disprove its claims.   It is now trustworthy and communal knowledge.   This is the way both science and liberal religion want us to treat ideas. 
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We religious liberals are heirs to Darwin’s expansive thinking, and we can apply the lessons of his spiritual journey ourselves right here at Northern Hills.  Our vision of a Beloved Community is an expression of the kind of nurturing place and deep relationships we want to see here.  It is not a plan or a guideline; it is poetry.  It includes a sense of the best of our past, and it’s purpose is to help us create our future.  We want to build from our spirit of fellowship an environment which embraces change, elicits innovative ideas, and appreciates the contributions of all its members.  A healthy, growing religious community thrives on originality - which can come out in many ways - the way one person walks the Labyrinth and another rides thru it on his mower; a new leader’s ideas for an old program or an older member coming to a New UU class to think anew on her spiritual journey; new members bringing different energy to our church and helping us make new music together.  Our Beloved Community does not exist until it is expressed.  We do not so much belong to it as much as we create it.  The purpose of Beloved Community is to create more of it.  Let us look for more ways to include more people and their ideas as we continue to build a vibrant and fruitful community.  And may we dream big, not limiting ourselves to looking only at the viability of ideas, but envisioning what a truly spirited, dynamic and worthwhile congregation we can be.