Dear EN,
Around 18 months ago the UK government started to restrict what could be taught about origins in UK classrooms:
(cid:129) During January 2012 the UK government revised guidance to free schools such that schools teaching intelligent design rather than evolution would have their funding removed.
(cid:129) In July 2012 the UK Government effectively banned discussion of any alternative to scientific views ‘contrary to established scientific and/or historical evidence and explanations’ — i.e. discussion of intelligent design in any class was effectively banned.
(cid:129) During November 2012 the UK Government further revised its guidance for free schools such that the teaching of evolution become mandatory.
(cid:129) During July 2013, Michael Gove, Secretary for Education, announced that the teaching of evolution would become mandatory in primary schools.
I have a three-year-old who will, in just over 12 months, start attending a UK primary school. I wonder what this decision will mean for my son.
I can teach him about the scientific basis of a historical interpretation of Genesis at home, but this will be consistently undermined by school teaching over many years. I would like to be able to say that the church community will support a historical interpretation of Genesis — but I have found that providing this kind of information or entering into conversations of this kind in churches is generally considered to be divisive or unnecessary.
I wonder whether the UK evangelical community is sleepwalking itself into irrelevance? We split the Bible into ‘gospel’ issues and secondary issues and firmly place the interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis as a secondary issue. I believe it is not a secondary issue but fundamental to a correct grasp of the gospel.
(cid:129)Without Adam and Eve there is no original sin.
(cid:129)Without a first Adam corporately bringing man into sin why is there a need for a second Adam to save mankind from sin?
(cid:129) Without Adam and Eve there is no basis for marriage being between one man and a one woman.
(cid:129) If the first Adam didn’t exist, then does this mean that Christ died for the sin of a person who didn’t exist and is reversing a curse that never happened?
(cid:129) If evolution is true then this means that before Adam and Eve existed there were millions of years of death and suffering in the world. Yet God described this as ‘very good’!
Richard Dawkins has suggested that he wants evolution to be taught from the pulpit — I’m afraid I think this is largely the case at present anyhow. Now that intelligent design and ‘creation’ are banned from UK classrooms surely it’s time that the church took more responsibility to educate its people better in this area?
As evangelical Christians, do we know how science suggests the earth is much younger than evolution requires? Do we understand why natural selection + mutations + time will not transform pond slime into mankind? Do we know why fossils are important evidence for a global flood and a problem for evolution? If we don’t know how to answer these questions then our children may reject the gospel because they asked a question about these things and we were not able to ‘give an answer’.
Yours sincerely,
