Can you be a Christian and believe in Evolution?

Of course you can.

You get to be a Christian by believing in Christ not by believing in a literal 6 day creation.

Christians have interpreted the first 2 chapters of Genesis metaphorically for centuries.

In the third century, a Christian biblical scholar named Origen, commonly seen along with St. Augustine as one of the two most brilliant theologians of the early church, wrote:

What intelligent person can imagine that there was a first day, then a second and third day, evening and morning, without the sun, the moon, and the stars? [Sun, moon, and stars are created on the fourth day.] And that the first day -- if it makes sense to call it such -- existed even without a sky? [The sky is created on the second day.] Who is foolish enough to believe that, like a human gardener, God planted a garden in Eden in the East and placed in it a tree of life, visible and physical, so that by biting into its fruit one would obtain life? And that by eating from another tree, one would come to know good and evil? And when it is said that God walked in the garden in the evening and that Adam hid himself behind a tree, I cannot imagine that anyone will doubt that these details point symbolically to spiritual meanings by using a historical narrative which did not literally happen.
Origen, De Principiis, 4.1.16 translated in Borg, M.J. (2001) Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally. Harper Collins, NY, NY p70. Parenthetical material added.

Most Christians today interpret Genesis metaphorically.

The idea of a literal 6 day creation is only subscribed to by a relatively small percentage of protestant Christians belonging to mainly fundamentalist, mostly rural, southern churches. Mainline protestant Christians generally understand the Genesis stories as metaphorical with deep spiritual meaning but never intended to be taken as scientific documents. The official position of the Catholic Church is that the creation stories of Genesis are metaphorical.

The Scientific Evidence for Evolution is Overwhelming.

Virtually all serious scientists accept some form of the theory of evolution. There are still issues to be settled, but the basic premises of evolution are virtually universally accepted. The theory of evolution was proved in the 1850's with the voyage of the HMS Beagle to the Galapagos Islands. We know for a fact that we share a common ancestor with the great apes (chimpanzees and gorillas) and that human ancestors have been on this planet for 13-15 million years. We know that humans have been on this planet for 100,000 years in their present form. The evidence for the theory of evolution has been compelling since the mid 1800's. By the time of the Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee, the scientific evidence was clear.

History Repeats Itself; Change in Christianity is Slow.

The Bible taken literally teaches that the world is flat and does not travel around the sun (Psalm 104). When Copernicus and Galileo came up with the heliocentric theory (the theory that the world is round and travels around the sun), the Church rejected their science and persecuted and ridiculed those who accepted it. It took a long time for Christians to change their beliefs. A hundred years after Copernicus and Galileo there were still those who taught that the earth was flat Now there is virtually nobody left who seriously believes that the earth is flat. We (Christians) now interpret those Bible passages and verses as metaphorical or symbolic with deep spiritual meaning and not as scientifically valid descriptions of geophysics.

    Links to Other Resources:
        Click Here for Information on what is required to be a Christian
        Click Here for Information on what Christians believe
        Click Here for Information on Biblical Literalism

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Steve Falkenberg

Steve.Falkenberg@eku.edu