Darwin Anniversary

When I was nineteen I kicked around Britain and France for a few months on my own. My wanderings included a few days in London where I visited some of the big tourist attractions, including Westminster Abbey. Many famous people are buried beneath the paving stones of the nave and transepts and the one whose marker really surprised me was Charles Darwin. How did the guy whose work on natural selection and the theory of evolution turned biblical literalism about creation on its ear in the mid eighteen hundreds make it into a church?

Darwin had considered the Anglican priesthood at one point but he eventually moved to an agnostic position. The death of his daughter in childhood wiped away the last of his faith, but his wife remained a deeply committed Christian. She was also a member of the Wedgewood family of fine china fame, and the Wedgewood's were staunch abolitionists, seeing slavery as contrary to the will of God. Darwin took up this cause and actually pursued his exploration of evolution as one way to prove that blacks were not of another inferior species but shared the same origins as whites and other races.

This year, 2009, marks the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth. Long ago I made my peace between belief in a creator God and evolution. I don't see the two as contradictory, nor do I believe that the first two chapters of Genesis were intended to be science. How about you?