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Talking God and Evolution
When the Rev. Peter Plagge of the Waterbury Congregational Church finished his Sunday reading of Romans 7:15-25, he stepped out from behind the lectern and asked the children to join him at the front of the church..
“Why don’t you come all the way up,” he said to the children, inviting them to sit down on the wine red carpet of the pulpit.
Plagge has ministered to the Waterbury congregation for more than seven years and for the past two has dedicated one Sunday in early February to preach something not often heard in the house of God – the topic of evolution.
On Feb. 10, 2008, as part of a nationwide effort to combat what Plagge called an “anti-intellectualism, rampant,” he and his congregation, along with 809 Christian congregations across the country, celebrated the 199th birthday of naturalist Charles Darwin, author of the famed “On the Origin of the Species.”
The effort, known as “The Clergy Letter Project,” began in 2004 as a reaction against the Grantsburg, Wis. school board’s decision to teach intelligent design as science.
Michael Zimmerman, dean of the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, began the project by circulating a letter to Wisconsin-based clergy in an effort to rally support against the Grantsburg school board. Since then, 11,183 clergy members across the country have signed the letter.
In 2006, Zimmerman initiated the tradition of Evolution Sunday -- one day in early February when congregations across the country could unify in their support.
The letter reads: “We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. 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.”
Plagge said he came across the letter by accident while surfing the web and immediately signed.
He said that he is “frightened at the prospect of religious people taking over school systems and teaching creationism or intelligent design right beside, or in place of, evolution.”
God is an inspirational force rather than a string puller, Plagge said, and this belief is entirely compatible with science. Science tells us why, he said, while religion tells us how.
“Ultimately, religion to me is about freedom, the freedom of human beings to form valuable relationships,” Plagge said.
“The reason that I bristle a little bit at the creationist and the intelligent design folks, is that I think it is an agenda for a different moral project that is grounded in contingencies, either historical events or a text. And in general it is used as a club and I find that terrifying.”
With the children settled on the floor at his feet, Plagge paused a moment and considered his words.
“Today,” he began, “well, let’s see, let’s start with, how many of you know the story -- the stories-- in the bible about how human beings were made?”
“I do,” chimed one small boy.
“Yes,” Plagge said, “How does it go, how does one of them go?”
“God makes Adam out of clay,” the boy said, his voice barely audible, “and then he takes a rib from Adam and makes Eve.”
“Okay, great,” Plagge intoned. “So basically God says, ‘all right, hey, I am little lonely and need a partner around here, someone to keep me company,’ and makes a human being out of clay. And then, he rightly says, ‘that guy’s a little lonely,’ so he takes a rib out.
“Do we think that really happened that way?” Plagge asked the children.
“Probably not,” one child said.
“Probably not,” Plagge agreed.
A small murmur then passed through the huddle of children and Plagge laughed.
“That would be a bloody rib, yes, yes,” he said.
Plagge then asked the children if they knew what had really happened.
“Evolution,” offered one child, the tail of the word curling into question.
“Evolution?” Plagge asked. “What’s that mean?”
For a long moment the children said nothing. A few at the front seemed to drift off, their gazes glazing over, until a small, tentative voice rose out of the back of the group.
“Something evolves into something else,” the little-elfin voice proposed.
“Something evolves into something else, yeah, that’s right,” Plagge said for the whole of the congregation to hear.
photo from newscientist.com
Last year, Plagge said he measured out the circumference of the sanctuary and divided it by the age of the universe, and then, for his sermon, he walked the outer wall and described from a scientific viewpoint where humans stood on evolution.
“You get all the way back to the pulpit, and like an inch on the pulpit is where human beings are,” said Plagge. “It was just like, oh wow.
“And if you do as we do, put God into that mix, then all of a sudden God is much more than we perhaps thought before.”
That’s what religion should be, said Plagge, “like wow, oh wow, instead of coming down on us.”
Plagge went on to tell the children about an article he’d read recently that linked his opposable thumb with the fins of a fish.
“We swam in the water then crawled up on the land, and we became creatures who walked on four feet then two feet,” Plagge told the children.
“The story of evolution,” he continued, “is complex and the Bible and other religious traditions have told a simplified version of that – God making a human out of clay. Not the way it really happened.”
But when Plagge carried on to say how thankful he was that he wasn’t a fish any longer, and that fish, he thought, had a much more boring life, one small boy had finally had enough.
“Parts of it are very interesting,” the boy said in defense of fish.
“Parts of it are very interesting,” Plagge agreed, “I grant you that.”
Plagge, following in the centuries -old tradition of Congregationalists (once known as separatists and independents), came to his beliefs through his own studies, beginning his college studies in biology before switching to literature and then finally religion. He earned his master’s in religious studies from the University of Chicago’s School of Divinity.
When asked if he was concerned that such teachings might lead children away from the church, Plagge said, “I take very seriously the conviction that truth has nothing to be afraid of, as long as we don’t disarm it of, as Thomas Jefferson said, its natural weapons of argument and free debate.”
He said that despite some parents bristling at the idea, he often tells his seventh and eighth grade confirmation students, “This is not about me telling you what to believe. This is about me encouraging you to get involved in the conversation with your peers and people in other religions.”
“I may find it in Christianity, you may not,” he said.
Drive-By Reviews
“The World Without Us”
By Alan Weisman
Join Weisman on his quest to find out what a post-human Earth would look like in this book, named “Time” magazine’s best nonfiction book of the year in 2007. According to Weisman, the Earth will slowly stitch itself back together until only a few relics and some radioactive hotspots remain. Perfect for readers who think they can inexplicably survive the crisis that kills off the rest of humanity.
“My Tank is Fight!”
By Zack Parsons
In this absolutely twisted book, Parsons examines some of the strangest war machines that never saw the light of day in World War II. These machines, many of which were designed by the increasingly desperate Reich, are first explained and then “deployed” in a running series of short stories interlaced with the non-fiction descriptions. Perfect for readers who want to see the militaries of the world try to outspend common sense.