Breaking today!
The Church of England apologizes to Charles Darwin.
Via the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, Reverend Dr Malcolm Brown, the director of mission and public affairs of the Archbishops’ Council, and the Church’s managing body:
“People, and institutions, make mistakes and Christian people and Churches are no exception.“When a big new idea emerges that changes the way people look at the world, it’s easy to feel that every old idea, every certainty, is under attack and then to do battle against the new insights.
“The Church made that mistake with Galileo’s astronomy and has since realized its error.
“Some Church people did it again in the 1860s with Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection.
“So it is important to think again about Darwin’s impact on religious thinking, then and now.
“There is nothing incompatible between the scientific theories adopted by Darwin and Christian teaching.”
The statement will read:
“Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practise the old virtues of ‘faith seeking understanding’ and hope that makes some amends.” [Google News]
Further from the Church of England, “Good religion needs good science.”