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Some in my faith community can get a little testy when Charles Darwin’s name comes up.  So when Carl Safina, my friend the atheist and ocean conservationist, told me that Jesus and Darwin were his two heroes, I decided it was time to read Darwin’s Origin of Species for myself. After all, I’ve often challenged those who have any prickly opinions about Christianity to temper said opinions by reading the gospels.  Much can be learned by going to the source documents.
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Many of you are cringing. Not to worry, this post won’t be a laundry list of American evangelicals at our worst.   There’s only one thing worth mentioning and it trumps all the others: at our worst, we’re more concerned with being right than being evangelical.  It’s the saddest thing about American evangelicalism today, how much passion we have for being right and how little for being evangelical.  Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with being right, unless it keeps you from being what you are meant to be.  And in this case it does.
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If I were a thoughtful reader of this blog, I could imagine being annoyed by the message coming through. What’s got this guy so hot and bothered?  Why does he even bother to identify as evangelical if he’s got such a withering critique of  American evangelicalism?  He talks as if he’s a Jesus freak, but most of the time (lately) he’s talking about issues: climate change, birth control, Darwin, and the rest. Why doesn’t he just listen to NPR instead of criticizing evangelicals for tuning in to Rush so often? I can imagine being annoyed by this, not because I have such empathy skills, but because I have dear friends who wonder about me.  People I respect and have the highest regard for. So here’s what’s bothering me: I think without really intending to, American evangelicals, as a movement, have turned half the country into the new Samaritans.
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Advice to young pastors: to be a pastor in the context of the evangelical landscape is a privilege. By all  measures evangelical Christianity is the most vibrant form of faith in the United States. Evangelical Christians volunteer more, give more money to their churches and give more to non-church charities than any other group.  Nothing says “I love you” like time and cash.  Evangelicals get things done, so you could do worse than to be a pastor in an evangelical setting. But there’s also a cross to bear and your being truly evangelical requires that you bear it. You must be willing to face and confront religious hostility in the camp.
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Today marks the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin, a man whose name has been much maligned by many in my own American evangelical tribe.

My friend, Carl Safina, an ocean conservationist and author of the acclaimed Song for the Blue Ocean told me that his two heroes are Charles Darwin and Jesus; Darwin for revealing the unity of all living things, and Jesus for teaching us to love our enemies. Would that my fellow believers understood as well the rule of Jesus, a rule which demands that we bother to understand each other.
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Nine years ago today we were all breathing a sigh of relief about the Y2K disaster that didn’t materialize. Evangelicals more than most. Because for some reason many evangelicals and fundamentalists bought the idea that the world was headed for a techno-cataclysm.  Why would we be so alarmed by Y2K and so apathetic about the environmental crisis we are facing, including climate change?
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