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US churches celebrate 'Evolution Sunday' - news from ekklesia

By staff writers
February 13, 2006

US churches celebrate 'Evolution Sunday'

-13/02/06

Nearly 450 Christian churches in the United States yesterday celebrated the 197th birthday of Charles Darwin.

The churches say Darwin`s theory of biological evolution is compatible with faith and that Christians have no need to choose between religion and science.

Some churches sang praises for "tall boiling test tubes" and "classrooms and labs."

Many churches held adult education and Sunday school classes on evolution, and ministers preached that followers of Christ do not have to choose between biblical stories of creation and evolution.

"It`s to demonstrate, by Christian leaders and members of the clergy, that you don`t have to make that choice. You can have both," said Michael Zimmerman, dean of the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, who organized the 'Evolution Sunday' event.

"Those very shrill, shrieking voices of the Christian fundamentalists we hear so often are not speaking for all Christians," he said.

A variety of denominational and non-denominational churches, including Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Unitarian, Congregationalist, United Church of Christ, Baptist and a host of community churches, participated in the event, which grew out of Zimmerman`s 'Clergy Letter Project', another effort to dispel the perception among many Christians that faith and evolution are mutually exclusive.

Zimmerman got more than 10,000 Christian ministers to sign a letter urging school boards across the country to "preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge."

US churches celebrate 'Evolution Sunday'

-13/02/06

Nearly 450 Christian churches in the United States yesterday celebrated the 197th birthday of Charles Darwin.

The churches say Darwin`s theory of biological evolution is compatible with faith and that Christians have no need to choose between religion and science.

Some churches sang praises for "tall boiling test tubes" and "classrooms and labs."

Many churches held adult education and Sunday school classes on evolution, and ministers preached that followers of Christ do not have to choose between biblical stories of creation and evolution.

"It`s to demonstrate, by Christian leaders and members of the clergy, that you don`t have to make that choice. You can have both," said Michael Zimmerman, dean of the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, who organized the 'Evolution Sunday' event.

"Those very shrill, shrieking voices of the Christian fundamentalists we hear so often are not speaking for all Christians," he said.

A variety of denominational and non-denominational churches, including Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Unitarian, Congregationalist, United Church of Christ, Baptist and a host of community churches, participated in the event, which grew out of Zimmerman`s 'Clergy Letter Project', another effort to dispel the perception among many Christians that faith and evolution are mutually exclusive.

Zimmerman got more than 10,000 Christian ministers to sign a letter urging school boards across the country to "preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge."

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