ATLANTA––After a lifetime in the church, the Rev. William L. Rhines Jr. lately has started to question one of the Bible’s fundamental teachings, that God created man.
ATLANTA––After a lifetime in the church, the Rev. William L. Rhines Jr. lately has started to question one of the Bible’s fundamental teachings, that God created man.
It’s an especially touchy topic in his Wilmington, Del., congregation, where generations of Black worshippers have leaned on faith to endure the indignities of racism.
But as the world marked the 200th birthday of evolution theorist Charles Darwin on Thursday, Rhines figures its time for even the most conservative congregations to come to terms with science.
“We’re becoming more middle class, upper middle class, so we have more free time … to ponder these eternal issues,” said Rhines, who will encourage a discussion at Ezion-Mt. Carmel United Methodist Church.
Hundreds of churches this week will revisit the question of whether man evolved from lower order species or was created whole by a higher being as part of Evolution Weekend.
Participation through sermons, Sunday school lessons and even evolution dances has expanded into 974 congregations across the country, more than doubling since the weekend began in 2006, said founder Michael Zimmerman, dean of the college of liberal arts and sciences at Butler University in Indianapolis.
Organizers said the churches include a growing number of conservative groups, among them Black and Muslim groups typically linked to more traditional views.
Participants say they’re not abandoning the Bible’s story of Adam and Eve. Rather, they want to blend theories in a way that helps today’s faithful reconcile their modern world with Biblical teachings.
“We have to give God a lot more credit than we give him now. We need to give him the benefit of the doubt that his word includes evolution,” said Mike Ghouse, president of the World Muslim Congress, a Dallas-based union of 3,000 Muslims that hosted its first ever Evolution Weekend discussion Friday.
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