For over thirty years Answers in Genesis has been a leading force in Young Earth Creationism. It was founded by an Australian Ken Ham, who is slowly stepping down, and handing over the reins of leadership. His anointed successor is Martin Iles, who is too extreme for many conservative Australian Christians.
Iles, wrote a book on human identity “Who am I?” to expound his viewpoint, which from a right wing perspective is extremely right wing!
Paul Braterman, whose writings on creationism are always thoroughly researched and seek to criticise rather than to knock, has written a review.
Rightly he notes a change in emphasis. Previous creationists, whether Ken Ham, Henry Morris or even McCready Price focussed on trying to demolish the science with very limited success. Iles takes a different approach and focusses on social issues which concern many (some of which both Paul and I share!). By doing this he presses the right button for many conservative Christians and puts everything from challenging post-modernism and gender identity to the stolen presidential election in one bag and leaves the “science” of creationism for later. This will be persuasive for some and divisive for others.
Ultimately the book is a subtle or crass appeal for an extreme creationist fundamentalism under the guise of moral concern. I think it will appeal to many concerned evangelicals but is no better than what they reject. This is a continuation of Henry Morris’s old idea that evolution is the cause of all morals ills today, but I presume that does not include genocide, slavery, corruption, rape or anything else!!
I have not read the book but Paul is thorough in all his research. I would be happy to receive a free copy!
The church of St Michael’s, Cockerham near Lancaster is often called the church in the fields. Until recently it was some distance from any houses and surrounded by fields which usually had sheep or cattle. The farmland belongs to Cockerham Hall of which parts go back to the 15th century, but most is 16th century or later.
It is a church which keeps falling down! The tower is probably 16th century, but the church had to be replaced in 1814 and then by Austin and Paley in 1910-1. Its list of vicars goes back centuries, but only one concerns us – the Rev John Dodson jr who was vicar from 1835. While he was vicar, or rector then, he built the vast Cockerham vicarage/rectory out of his own pocket in 1843. Fortunately I never had to live in it!
The architect was Edmund Sharpe, who took on Edward Paley as a pupil in 1838. After Sharpe retired Paley took on Austin and the firm was known as Paley and Austin and then Austin and Paley existing until the 1930s. That firm designed a large number of churches and buildings in Lancashire.
Dodson was an evangelical, and probably a Recordite(!) and rejected any idea of regeneration in baptism. He was nearly refused ordination over this. For him matters came to a head after 1847 after Bishop Philpotts of Exeter refused to induct Gorham to a new parish on account of his views on baptism, thus giving rise to the Gorham Controversy. Thirty years earlier he stood as a candidate for the Woodwardian professor of geology at Cambridge but fellow evangelical Adam Sedgwick was elected but that is another story. Anyway Sedgwick said that Gorham’s geology was all wrong! Sedgwick’s geology was all right!
Gorham then appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which caused great controversy about whether a secular court should decide the doctrine of the Church of England.[10] The ecclesiastical lawyer Edward Lowth Badeley, a member of the Oxford Movement, appeared before the committee to argue the bishop’s cause, but the committee (Knight Bruce, V-C dissenting)[11][12] eventually reversed the bishop’s and the Arches’ decision on 9 March 1850 and granted Gorham his institution.[13]
Phillpotts repudiated the judgment and threatened to excommunicate the archbishop of Canterbury and anyone who dared to institute Gorham.[14] Fourteen prominent Anglicans, including Badeley and[citation needed]Henry Edward Manning, requested that the Church of England repudiate the opinion that the Privy Council had expressed concerning baptism.[15] As there was not any response from the Church apart from Phillpotts’ protestations, they quit the Church of England and joined the Catholic Church.
By 1849 Dodson had left the Church of England ministry and hived off to his family lands at Littledale above the Lune Valley. He was involved in some expensive building there. He first built Littledale Hall in 1849. The family left years ago and it is now Littledale Hall Therapeutic Community.
It seems that the architect was 1849 E.G. Paley, grandson of William Paley of Natural Theology and the main architect of the design argument. Oddly Paley is not mentioned in Hartwell and Pevsner’s book Buildings of England – North Lancashire. Thus I am not sure! Hartwell and Pevsner do not ascribe either the hall or the chapel to Paley so a doubt must remain. That year he built Littledale Chapel so he could preach without baptismal regeneration. I first came across twenty years ago while walking in the area. I think there were sheep in it. Little did I realise it was built by one of my predecessors at Cockerham. Much of the building still stands but is used by a different kind of flock! Baa. No mention is made of the architect but I would suggest Paley.
At about the same time Dodson’s brother in law Rev Joseph Armytage and probably his sister worked on a project to build St Thomas’s Church, Lancaster which was designed by Sharpe
New Evangelical parish church built 1840-1841, a project driven by two members of John Dodson’s family, his son-in-law Rev. Joseph Armytage and Elizabeth Dodson Salisbury, probably his sister.
Now this is a remarkable amount of building by one family, so we may ask “Where did the money come from?”
John Dodson Sr was a wealthy businessman from Lancaster and in the late 1830s he received much money form the Slave compensation Act of 1837. That notorious act was to pay off slave-owners who had lost their slaves after the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 1st August 1834. About £20 million was allocated for it. The Slavery Compensation Act can been seen as either horrendous – paying off immoral slave-owners – or a necessary compromise to ensure the emancipation of slaves. I incline to the latter and wonder whether Abolition would have got through parliament without it. Maybe it was the best possible solution, but very far from perfect.
Like so many rich people in Britain, Dodson Sr claimed compensation and here are the details in the University College London website on beneficiaries;
Mortgagee of Lancaster, awarded compensation in that capacity in British Guiana, and also one of the trustees and executors of Thomas Gudgeon (q.v.) for Plantation Litchfield in Berbice.
Will of John Dodson Esq. proved 27/10/1842. His death was registered at Lancaster Q3 1842. He left his estate of Tongue [or Tonge] Moor in the township of Littledale and £8000 to his son John; he left £7000 each to two other sons, Thomas Gudgeon Dodson (also godson and legatee of Thomas Gudgeon) and Charles Potter Dodson in addition to the money they had already received. He left sums of £13,000, £13,000 and £15,000 on trust to his three sons and his sons-in-law John Edmondson and Joseph North Green Armytage, the first two sums to support the marriage settlements of John Dodson’s daughters Margaret and Harriet with John Edmondson and Joseph North Green Armytage respectively, and the third to be held for the benefit of his daughter Mary Ann.
Probably the John Dodson of Lancaster, merchant, eldest son and heir of John Dodson late of Ulverston, deceased, shown 13/02/1798 as trustee of a lease and release of Spark Bridge Ironworks in Cumbria.
Robert Dodson of Robert Dodson and Jacob Ridley, who were individually bankrupt in 1811, was probably John Dodson’s brother. The Robert Dodson who had been a slave-captain and slave-trader out of Lancaster 1757-1771 was probably their uncle.
Marriage of Harriet Dodson spinster St Leonard Gate Lancaster with Joseph North Green Armytage clerk of Castle Park, father was John Dodson, Esq. 06/12/1837.
Sources
T71/885 British Guiana claims no. 196, no. 219 (Plantation Hampshire), and no. 289. T71/1610 letters from JD Lancaster dated 18/11/1835 and 9/1/1836: setting out claims as mortgagee on British Guiana 196, 262 [?], 219 and 289.
PROB 11/1969/138; FreeUKGen, England and Wales Free BMD Database, Deaths, 1837-1983 [database online].
Dodson was awarded about £25,000 which is worth about £4,000,000 today and that was just for about 250 slaves attached to Plantation Hampshire and Williamsburg situate on the West Sea coast of Corentyne. As Dodson was a rich businessman it was probably a fraction of his wealth and when he died a few years later Rev John Dobson Jr Rector of Cockerham received a bequest of £8000 (£1,250,00 today) plus the Littledale estate above Caton in the Lune Valley. So thus when he was theologically offended by Philpotts over Gorham and baptismal regeneration he could afford to walk out of the church and settle into his lovely estate and build another lovely house.
From my sketchy researches I cannot conclude that Dodson was pro-slavery, but some in the Church of England were. An example is that in 1833 a vicar sent a pro-abolition article to the very evangelical journal The Record. It was rejected but then published in the evangelical journal The Christian Observer with a note to that effect. William Wilberforce was one of the founders of the CO thirty years previously and thus the journal was pro-abolition. It also supported the new science of geology.
However it does show how at least two churches, one thriving and one defunct, near Lancaster directly benefited from slavery and at least one fine building also.
Perhaps I can conclude with a quote from the most well-known member of a family of strong abolitionists going back to the 1780s. I absolutely agree with his last sentence.This he put at the end of the 2nd edition of The Voyage of the Beagle in 1845 as he had just had an argument with the geologist Charles Lyell over American slavery. And some even accuse him of being a racist.
On the 19th of August we finally left the shores of Brazil. I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country. To this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate. I suspected that these moans were from a tortured slave, for I was told that this was the case in another instance. Near Rio de Janeiro I lived opposite to an old lady, who kept screws to crush the fingers of her female slaves. I have stayed in a house where a young household mulatto, daily and hourly, was reviled, beaten, and persecuted enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal. I have seen a little boy, six or seven years old, struck thrice with a horse-whip (before I could interfere) on his naked head, for having handed me a glass of water not quite clean; I saw his father tremble at a mere glance from his master’s eye. These latter cruelties were witnessed by me in a Spanish colony, in which it has always been said, that slaves are better treated than by the Portuguese, English, or other European nations. I have seen at Rio de Janeiro a powerful negro afraid to ward off a blow directed, as he thought, at his face. I was present when a kind-hearted man was on the point of separating forever the men, women, and little children of a large number of families who had long lived together. I will not even allude to the many heart-sickening atrocities which I authentically heard of;—nor would I have mentioned the above revolting details, had I not met with several people, so blinded by the constitutional gaiety of the negro as to speak of slavery as a tolerable evil. Such people have generally visited at the houses of the upper classes, where the domestic slaves are usually well treated, and they have not, like myself, lived amongst the lower classes. Such inquirers will ask slaves about their condition; they forget that the slave must indeed be dull, who does not calculate on the chance of his answer reaching his master’s ears.
It is argued that self-interest will prevent excessive cruelty; as if self-interest protected our domestic animals, which are far less likely than degraded slaves, to stir up the rage of their savage masters. It is an argument long since protested against with noble feeling, and strikingly exemplified, by the ever-illustrious Humboldt. It is often attempted to palliate slavery by comparing the state of slaves with our poorer countrymen: if the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin; but how this bears on slavery, I cannot see; as well might the use of the thumb-screw be defended in one land, by showing that men in another land suffered from some dreadful disease. Those who look tenderly at the slave owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves into the position of the latter; what a cheerless prospect, with not even a hope of change! picture to yourself the chance, ever hanging over you, of your wife and your little children—those objects which nature urges even the slave to call his own—being torn from you and sold like beasts to the first bidder! And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one’s blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty: but it is a consolation to reflect, that we at least have made a greater sacrifice, than ever made by any nation, to expiate our sin.
Was Darwin right is saying expiation has been made?
One of the most popular ways of debating is to parody a view to ridicule it. You know most won’t see past your misrepresentation. It is even easier when some extremists adopt what you parody.
Here is a good example
When this meme appeared on my Facebook feed I presumed Zindler was a typical young earth creationist, repeating the usual claims of young earthers to bludgeon people into accepting Young Earth Creation as necessary as a result of faith in Christ.
But before considering the apparent plausibility of the meme we need to ask who is Frank Zindler. Being British I cannot keep up with all American Creationists and the atheists who take them on. I know of many and have met some, and some like Ken Ham have written against me! However this meme is from an atheist. Zindler was born in 1939 and was president of American Atheists in 2008. for more read; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Zindler
among other things he had a debate with the creationist Duane Gish in 1990
Many of these are unsatisfactory partly as a result of the way Gish galloped through everything in his famous “Gish Gallop”. That is a useful tactic as it gives the impression of omniscience, without giving the opponent time to respond. I had a similar problem in 2003 when I debated the Australian John Mackay, who likewise used a scatter gun approach. I attempt to correct some of his terminological inexactitudes, and was accompanied by boos from his acolytes. Were I not a Christian, Mackay would have persuaded me to be an atheist!! However the purpose of Creationists in debates and presentations is to win an argument not to present truth.
At first, I thought this was a Creationist Gotcha meme, as Ken Ham, Mackay, Gish, Morris and so many others put forward similar ideas. Here Zindler takes the same ideas and lobs them back like an unexploded grenade to Christians who may not be Creationist. At first sight the arguments here seem to be orthodox Christianity, but….
In this meme Zindler makes five points which lead to the next and clinches the argument against Christianity, or rather any version of Christianity which is not dogmatically wedded to Young Earth Creationism. All five points are made by creationists like Ken Ham.
Adam and Eve were never real people
Well, did Adam have a navel when he was created that October in 4004BC? A serious question! In all fairness before 1800 belief in in a historical Adam and Eve was a most reasonable belief, and few Christians questioned it, though many from 1680 onwards realised the earth was slightly older than Ussher reckoned! Even when the earth was reckoned to be millions of years old some serious Christian theologians believed in a historical Adam and Eve.
For many the image of Adam and Eve is provided by John Milton in Paradise Lost. Here Milton takes early Genesis in a most literal way and put it into an epic poem. Milton has unhelpfully influenced the understanding of Genesis for centuries.
When we consider the interpretation of Genesis historically from 1600, we find that first chapter one was interpreted to allow more than six days. This was most often by a “Day-Age” theory or a Chaos-Restitution stance. By 1780 most educated Christians including the “orthodox” from both Protestants and Catholics favoured one of these to a 6-day creation. By 1859 hardly any educated Christians thought the earth was created in 6 days. Details on this;
In the 17th century most European savants thought that most strata were laid down in the Flood, but by 1800 Noah’s contributions were limited to the top 30 ft of strata. Perhaps the last geologist to take the geological efficacy of the flood seriously was William Buckland in some illegible notes in 1842/3. He suggested the flood was a result of melting ice from the Ice Age, later taken up in the 1990s by Ryan and Pittman in Noah’s Flood.
In the 19th century the more conservative still insisted on a historical Adam and Eve but it was getting more fraught especially after radiometric age dating after 1907 showed that humans had been around for hundreds of thousands of years. B B Warfield’s attempt to keep Adam and Eve was not convincing, nor Denis Alexander.
2. If no Adam and Eve, then no Original Sin
What is Original Sin? It was not held by Christians until about 400AD, largely due to St Augustine. Eastern Orthodox churches have no doctrine of Original sin, but have a deep awareness of sin. Original sin is the belief that we inherit sin from forbears i.e. Adam and Eve. In the hands of Augustine and successors Sin is both Original and what humans do which is sinful. There is much discussion over this, which I will leave to one side. Even so all stress that Jesus died for you and your sin and forget Adam while you consider yourself!!
Here we have the classic YEC misrepresentation. Jesus died on the cross for Original Sin, rather than all human sin, present and past. Doing this takes away the fact that every human is sinful and needs forgiveness. That is ignored by focusing on Adam and Eve and Original Sin in an overly narrow sense. If that is what Sin is, then we are not responsible for sin as we can do nothing about what we inherit.
(Whoopee, we can go out and sin to our hearts’ content!!)
Far better is to see that every human is sinful and sins. Any understanding of Original Sin which underplays individual sin effectively removes our responsibility for our actions.
3.If no Original Sin then no need of salvation
This implies that salvation through Jesus is ONLY for Original sin and not our actual and continuing sin. That is most odd. If that is right then we are not sinners in ourselves, never need to admit to or confess our sins. It makes a mockery of almost every hymn on Jesus’ death on the cross, as all point to the individual sinner, rather than something way back in time, which could have no effect on our sinning today. Frankly it is a muddled view of salvation and what Jesus did on the cross, as well as distorting what Original Sin is.
The extreme evangelical view that Jesus would have died on the cross for you, even if you were the only sinner, crassly makes a valid point.
No, every human is sinful and has the HPtFtU as Francis Spufford said.
This is somewhat earthy but brings out the squalor of human sin in non-theological language. It shows where we are wrong and need forgiveness from Jesus, not for some guy who went scrumping in 4004BC, but that nasty thing we did a short while ago.
We need salvation because we are shits, sorry, sinners, not because of neolithic scrumpers
4. If no need of salvation, then no need of a saviour. Jesus is unemployed
Well, if Jesus only died for scrumpers, then the rest of us have no need of a saviour and the whole Christian edifice tumbles down. Yes, Jesus is on the dole. We may as well go scrumping.
That is not the case, Jesus died for YOUR salvation, for YOUR sin and that makes him fully employed and doing overtime. That is, of course, what Christians of all shades have said for 2000 years in contrast to this meme.
5. Evolution is the death knell of Christianity
First, Evolution does not affect the nasty nature which show easily surfaces in each one of us. That is called SIN, and is the fault of the person.
Only if our focus is on the sin of scrumping does Christianity come crashing down
This is a good survey of astronomy and the Christian faith going back to the New Testament, then the early fathers and stopping at Isaac Newton. It also has a nod to earlier Greek philosphers
On St Paul he reckons that as an educated Greek he’d be a typical Greek geocentrist of his day, but could go for a three-decker universe. I argue that Paul and Luke rejected a three-decker universe and were typical geocentrists. I would not be surprised if fishermen, tax-collectors and builders/carpenters in Galilee were flat-earthers. Not that would matter if we believe Phillipians 2.
Now to the blog. Cleb Poston was a pastor in the Southern Baptists for a time and is now an english teacher.
He gives a good overview and my suspicion is that he is reacting to Creationism, which he has seen through. Much is standard to those familiar with the subject but it is good summary
In 2009 on the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth I went to a conference near Frankfurt.
The papers were collected in a book Streitfall Evolution ed Angela Schwarz (2017 Bohlau Verlag) and I contributed a chapter in English which was translated into German.
Below is the German version but here is the English one
I am afraid it had to be translated for me as my German has been totally lost!! In my chemistry course I had to sit an exam on German translation and passed. But that was the end of my German, I am afraid.
On 12th September the controversial Bishop Spong died at the age of 89. I’d known of him for decades and in the 80s he helped at a wedding at a Welsh church where the vicar was a very conservative evangelical, which gave us a smile.
As someone who is fairly conservative and orthodox I have never been partial to Spong with his extreme liberal views almost throwing out every item of the Christian faith for a progressive faith. He is a person whom people either loved or loathed. Spong raises many issues and especially the absurdities of extreme fundamentalism, but throws the baby out with the bathwater. I will not give a general assessment of him but focus on one issue.
That issue is his understanding of Charles Darwin and the effect of his science on the Christian faith. Way back in the 1990s he explained some of the reasons why he rejected “orthodoxy” and much hinged on Darwin. He claimed that until 1859 all Christians believed in a literal Genesis and then with The Origin of Species Darwin torpedoed that making it totally untenable.
Probably most people would agree with Spong on that and it has been the received view among most who consider themselves educated. In his book and TV series of the 1980s The Sea of Faith Don Cupitt came out with same arguments. Many thought it wonderful, but his history had a bit to be desired! A similar view comes out in older church histories and among writers of popular science, including Richard Dawkins.
I never kept the article where I read Spong’s views on Darwin but at some lectures in 2018 he repeated the same line. These were lectures he gave at the Chautauqua Institution and reported in The Chautauquan Daily – their official newspaper.
“On Tuesday in the Hall of Philosophy, Spong explained how Darwinian and Christian values came to divide the Christian faith in his lecture titled, “The Assault of Charles Darwin and Why the Christian Church Retreated before Darwin.” Spong continued Week One’s interfaith theme, “Producing a Living Faith Today?”
Here is what the report said of his lecture, when he dealt with Darwin. It all sounds so familiar
One of the scientists who pushed the status quo was Charles Darwin, who Spong called the second “obsession of the church.”
Darwin began his work in 1831 when he got a job as a naturalist on a five-year survey voyage around the world on the HMS Beagle. It took him 25 years after the trip, but Darwin claimed his place in history when he released the Origin of Species.
The book sold out immediately and raised questions that had previously been debated, but were never analyzed from a perspective like Darwin’s. Christians did not welcome these findings with open arms, Spong said.
“The war was on,” Spong said. “Darwin was now an enemy to the Bible, as the Bible was interpreted literally, and he was an enemy to the church in the way (Darwinism was) interpreted theologically.”
In an attempt to set the record straight, a debate took place in 1860 between Thomas Huxley, a biologist and an avid defender of Darwin’s, and Samuel Wilberforce, the bishop of Oxford and an advocate of biblical literalism. Wilberforce resorted to ridicule and at one point asked Huxley which side of his family was descended from apes. Wilberforce won the debate, but Spong said it was not enough to earn him a lasting legacy.
“Sam Wilberforce was hailed as a hero, but what’s interesting is that heroes don’t last forever,” he said. “He was very popular in his lifetime, but his reputation has faded.”
After the debate, Darwin’s theories made their way into the bloodstream of western civilization. At first, evolution was taught in small, private settings, but as it began to gain momentum in 1910, the Christian Church decided to tackle the issue head on.
A group of Presbyterian divines proposed a series of pamphlets on the fundamentals of the Christian faith. Once the project received funding, more than 500,000 were sent out each week. As time went on, the pamphlets became more popular, and by the 1920s, every church in the world was divided over being classified as fundamental or modernist.
“You can’t force truth into popularity,” Spong said. “Darwin seemed to have the truth, and after a while, these fundamentals of the Christian faith did not seem fundamentalistic after all.”
The Presbyterian leaders published five fundamentals all Christians were required to believe in order to identify as Christian. Among them were the ideas that the Scriptures are the infallible word of God and human beings are created perfect but fell into sin. Spong said those fundamentals were too similar to the myths of the religion to survive.
“They were so absurd, no one in the academic world would give them credibility,” he said.
The problem facing modernists, on the other hand, was that they knew too much to be fundamentalists, but did not know how to be Christian, Spong said.
“That is reflected in the world today,” he said. “The major mainline Christian churches are all in a frantic of political decline. The fundamentalistic churches are strong, but they are also declining. The world is catching up, and fundamentalism is not a viable option any longer.”
The fall of these ideals caused a rise in Darwin’s ideals. At that time in history, there was no longer a medical school in the western world without a foundation built upon Darwinian principles, and hardly a science department in the United States that was not embracing evolution. That was until the public school system implemented “creation science,” Spong said, designed to be a fair alternative to Darwinism. Although creation science is not taught in public schools anymore, Spong reminded the audience it was not that long ago that former President George W. Bush endorsed it.
“Bush wanted people to be fair, to have a chance to voice an opinion,” Spong said. “He thought you could decide by majority vote what truth is. It doesn’t work that way.”
After Bush’s endorsement, the U.S. Supreme Court declared creation science unconstitutional.
“By virtue of its own strength and integrity, Darwin became stronger and stronger,” Spong said. “There is hardly an educated person in the western world who does not accept Darwin’s point of view as truth.”
Spong asked why Christians fought so hard when they knew they were wrong. The answer, once again, was Darwin.
“There was something about Darwin that challenged not just the Christian story, but the way in which we told that story,” he said. “Darwin said there was ‘no perfect creation,’ but the church said we were ‘created perfect and then all fell into sin.’ You can’t fall into sin if you are not perfect to start with.”
Spong acknowledged how difficult it can be to accept the similarities humans have with the apes, but in a time where millennials check “none” for their chosen denomination more than the rest of the other options combined, he believes the dialogue has to continue between Darwinism and Christianity in order for the faith to survive.
“I think we have a wonderful faith,” he said. “Not the only faith, but a wonderful faith. And we have to work hard to make it live in our generation, and I think we can.”
[Clearly this is an account of what Spong said and not his actual words. However from what I’d previously read what Spong himself wrote on Darwin, it seems to be an accurate and trustworthy account. Thus as I have no reason to doubt its authenticity I shall treat as Spong’s views of 2018, which are similar to those he held two decades earlier.]
On the surface this seems reasonable and historically accurate both with regards to Darwin’s life and work and the effect on the Christian church.
But it is not!
As he started in 1831 he could have mentioned that Darwin receieved the letter inviting him to join the Beagle after a few weeks geologising in Wales with the Reverend Professor Adam Sedgwick of Cambridge.
Rev Adam Sedgwick, father of the Cambrian system. Susan Darwin had a crush on him.
Sedgwick was one of the great Anglican clergy-geologists. He was one of the most significant geologists to elucidate the Lower Palaeozoic and Devonian from 1831-1845. But, horror of horrors, he was also an evangelical. Now what was an evangelical doing as a professor of geology and doing fundamental work. Like most evangelicals of his day i.e. before 1859, he had no problems with geological time and did not see it as destroying his faith. He was very scathing about those who rejected geology and tried to insist on a literal Genesis. Here deal with some of his spats, which are quite funny too.
It’s a pity Spong did not know about Sedgwick and his many Christian geologists! And so he dug a bigger hole;
“The war was on,” Spong said. “Darwin was now an enemy to the Bible, as the Bible was interpreted literally, and he was an enemy to the church in the way (Darwinism was) interpreted theologically.”
My question to Spong is simple. Who in the churches interpreted the Bible literally? For 40 years I have tried to find some examples and beyond slave-holders in the Southern States and other nuts, I am still wandering around in the wilderness looking for one.
Quite simply, virtually no Christians with a modicum of education in the 1860s took Genesis 1 literally and denied geological time. I think that is slam dunk against Spong. I’ll now go slam dunker and gently point out that Samuel Wilberforce was not a biblical literalist.
Bishop soapy Sam Wilberforce
He was a competent amateur scientist and while at Oriel College , Oxford in the 1820s he went to William Buckland’s geology lectures for three years running. (The attendance records are in the Oxford museum. From my brief study of it, he was the only one who went every year.)
Buckland checking out glacial Striae at Rhyd Ddu in Snowdonia 1842. Buckland introduced ideas of an Ice Age to Britain
Rev William Buckland giving a geological lecture at Oxford
His review of the Origin in the Quarterly Review is competent scientifically and is similar to what most scientists would have written in 1860. Wilberforce was no literalist and no fool, but was a rather soapy bishop! Spong could have mentioned Christians who accepted Darwin from 1859 including the evangelical Rev H B Tristram, Charles Kinsgley and others. Read this for the British scene from 1859
Spong next dealt with The Fundamentals of 1910 “At first, evolution was taught in small, private settings, but as it began to gain momentum in 1910, the Christian Church decided to tackle the issue head on. A group of Presbyterian divines proposed a series of pamphlets on the fundamentals of the Christian faith.” Really! Head on? Many may know the series of brown paperback booklets called The Fundamentals. So much for taking Darwin/Evolution head on. One or two articles did, but most which dealt with Darwin or Genesis at least accepted geological time and in the case of James Orr, evolution as well. Spong simply had not doen his homework and was woefully inaccurate. So much for saying, “They were so absurd, no one in the academic world would give them credibility,” In fact many had academic credibility from competent conservative scholars, but some were not. Spong cannot have studied the background or content of these leaflets. If anyone was absurd it was Spong!
He continued “Darwin said there was ‘no perfect creation,’ but the church said we were ‘created perfect and then all fell into sin.” When did the church say that? Some fundamentalists did, and still do, say that but they are not the church but just a small part!
He ought to have known that humans ARE apes, and thus have similarities with all the other apes. A lack of biological knowledge here.
So what should we say about Spong’s encounter with Darwin?
Most obvious is that he has adopted a popular and extreme form of the Conflict Thesis of science and religion and out- whites White. To claim that the church was literalist in 1859 is simply completely and utterly false. Just to take the Anglican church, the vast majority of clergy had accepted geological time, and thus a non-literal Genesis way before 1859. In fact a higher proportion of Church of England clergy in 2021 are literalist than in 1860.
The best that can be said is that his confirmation bias to buttress his understanding of Christianity is to assume what he claims. This is simply not scholarly and is a very shoddy way of presenting an argument. Sadly others like Don Cupitt have done the same but he did (mis)quite contemporary authors! I agree with Spong on how awful Young Earth Creationism is in every way, but we need to ensure that what he say about others is accurate. He does not.
In 1998 Spong nailed his 12 Theses to the internet and Rowan Williams dismembered the lot with simplicity and clarity.
Williams exposes the shoddiness and wrongness of all his arguments both theological and ethical. I don’t need to repeat Rowan’s arguments.
On the positive side Spong is good at raising questions and especially those which come as a result of being swept up in fundamentalism. But he is not so good at understanding and tilts at the non-existent strawmen of ultra-fundamentalism and includes all the mainline orthodox in his tilting. His dealings with Darwin are just that. His ideas may resonate with those escaping from fundamentalism, but for the rest of us (who often have serious questions about our faith) he provides nothing of merit and an easy target for a hatchet job.
What Bishop Spong gives is not a new and progressive Christianity for a the 21st Century but an incoherent and muddled rejection of the faith. Sadly some would disagree with me and Rowan Williams!!
A friend asked me why I bother about creationism. This article spells out my reasons. It has had some 150,000 reads since first published in The Conversation in February, and has been featured in Snopes and Yahoo! News, and attacked by Ken Ham and Bodie Hodge of Answers in Genesis, Jake Hebert Ph.D [sic] at the Institute for Creation Research, and others.
A replica of Noah’s Ark from the biblical tale at the Ark Encounter theme park in Kentucky.Lindasj22/Shutterstock
Many people around the world looked on aghast as they witnessed the harm done by conspiracy theories such as QAnon and the myth of the stolen US election that led to the attack on the US Capitol Building on January 6. Yet while these ideas will no doubt fade in time, there is arguably a much more enduring conspiracy theory that also pervades America in the form…
So often thinkers and activists of the past are co-opted for projects today which would make them turn in their graves.
Here Steve Hayes shows how the libertarian right of the USA are trying to co-opt C S Lewis for the weird right-wing semi-Trumpism.
In the USA many have tried to claim Lewis as a good conservative evangelical – when he was not – he was simply a sensible Anglican from a time when Anglicans were sensible!!
On a personal note I met Steve in Windhoek in 1969 while I was working for a mining company. At that time he was a radical Anglican priest who later got banned. He is now orthodox.
Study the post and consider how often we twist historical personages for our own ends
In comparison to contemporary ‘progressive’ Christians such as Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo, Ronald Sider, and Brian McLaren, who clamor for the foolish and disastrous notion of achieving ‘social justice’ through gigantic government powers, was Lewis just ignorant or naive about modern realities, or was he aiming at a deeper and more significant purpose? (See Robert Higgs’s book refuting the ‘progressive’ myth in American history, Crisis and Leviathan, and his book on the disastrous ‘progressive’ state since 1930, Depression, War, and Cold War; see also Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr.’s The Decline of American Liberalism and The Civilian and the Military, and Jonathan Bean’s Race and Liberty in America.) In this article, I only…
Five years ago I gave a paper at the first of the Christian Leadership in an Age of Science project conferences at St John’s College Durham. It was originally supposed to be on geology and Genesis etc, but then I was asked to do the controversial issue of fracking.
Rev William Buckland looking at Glacial striae in Snowdonia in October 1841. The Nantlle ridge in the background
During the conference I was interviewed by Prof David Wilkinson on me being a geologist and vicar. I deal with my coming to faith, whether I found any conflict of geology and Christianity, my resolution of the two, and the value of geology. We ended up n fracking, when I said all the things I shouldn’t – or should!
Very aptly I was interviewed in the Tristram Room in the college, named after the clerical naturalist Canon H B Tristram who was the first to use The Origin of species in a scientific paper – on the larks of the Holy Land.
I was interviewed looking at Tristram (and thinking he agreed with me!)
Here is the site of ECLAS with many interviews and other resources, mostly from those more high powered
I attempt to give a history, an exposition and criticism of the content of YEC and then a bit on Intelligent Design. Here is a blog on the Church of England and Creationism.
However it is not the only evangelical understanding of science as chapter 8 will show. But now open this link for a brief account of Creationism from 1961
Peddling and Scaling God and Darwin 