Tony Campolo's Great Mistake

I don't know that I've ever been more disappointed to read something online. I respect Tony Campolo so much. I have been lead to the Truth by his words so often. I had the pleasure of meeting him at the Pasadena Tab, when I was with the Salvation Army and he lead a conference there. This is a man who has consistently upheld the liberal end of evangelicalism, who calls for us to honor the social justice cries of the Gospel. He has truly helped me come closer to Christ. And now, he publishes this.

If you haven't heard, or haven't read, in the latest issue of Christianity Today, Campolo comes out strongly against the teaching of evolution, or "Darwinism", as he calls it. (Darwinism is a dismissive insult purposely used by Literal Creationists, to try to turn evolution into a religion.) Campolo doesn't come out and say that evolution is wrong, but rather argues that it should not be taught, for the philosophical, social, and religious implications and beliefs of Darwin are monstrous.

I was shocked to read this. Campolo is a level-headed guy, with great reasoning and logic, who speaks for a non-literalist interpretation of the Bible. Yet down the line he quoted the standard Literalist arguments used against evolution. I would have wished that someone else had emailed this article in under his name, and that he was the victim of identity theft, rather than believing that he actually wrote this.

Evolution should or should not be taught in schools because it is the truth, or it is not. What the results are of the theory, or how people use it, are rather irrelevant. The truth shall set you free, regardless of what kind of truth that is. And it just so happens that there is probably no other scientific theory out there that has more evidence for it than the Theory of Evolution. In this article Campolo proved that he might be a great theologian and pastor, but that he knows very little about science.

Campolo claimed that Darwin directly advocated eugenics and the wiping out of inferior races. In truth, Darwin is rather famous for being an abolitionist, and speaking against what would be later known as eugenics. Certainly, the Intelligent Design crowd and the Discovery Institute often quote him out of context to try to say the opposite, ignoring the very next line of the quote where he says (to paraphrase anachronistically), "If eugenics were actually practiced, it would be horrible." And I have no doubt that his beliefs on race aren't up to our standards today- but the same could be said for Lincoln, and more easily said.

Campolo points out another common Literal Creationist argument, that the long title of "Origin of a Species" refers to the preservation of the races. This is true, but the long title of Origin isn't used as much in referencing the work because the word "races" in the 19th century means more than just humans. Indeed, today, the same is still true in biology. My professors would speak of races of seastars, meaning different colors of the same species of Patiria miniata. Since Darwin doesn't really ever get to the evolution of our species in Origin, when he used the term "races", he was quite clearly referring to animals in general.

Campolo brings up the rather tired argument tying the Nazis to evolution, the same one that was brought up in the awful Expelled movie by Ben Stein. These arguments are completely inaccurate every time they are blindly repeated. In Campolo's condemnation of the ethical implications of evolution, he ignored, or more probably had not read, the numerous statements by Darwin that his biological theory should not be used as an ethical paradigm. Yes, the Nazis used evolutionary theory incorrectly to support their beliefs. (Indeed, their distortion of evolution was so great as to advocate the opposite of what evolutionary theory advocates.) They also used a distortion of Christianity to do the same. Campolo knows that Satan loves to distort the truth, and to use lies to advance his agenda. That doesn't mean we should throw out the Christian faith.

Campolo then refers to some others who were tied to the Nazis and evolutionary theory. He refers to Ernst Haekel as German, and therefore to be lumped with the Nazis. This smacks too much of the same stereotyping of peoples that Campolo accuses Darwin of. Haekel made mistakes, but he also contributed a great deal to biology. His drawings of plankton were immaculate and advanced our understanding of them a great deal. Though he fudged his drawings of ontology recapitulating phylogeny, his basic premise was sound and is still followed today. Indeed, it is a foundational principle of EvoDevo Synthesis that has supplanted the NeoDarwinian Synthesis of Evolutionary Theory.

Remember, if evolution is true, and the evidence indicates it is, than it is also a work of God. And for my money, a more powerful God creates in this manner than in the Q snap-your-fingers style of the IDists or Literal Creationists. There are many authors and theologians now who are discussing not only how Christianity and evolution are compatible (see Kenneth Miller), but how the theology and the science of the two are interwoven and dependent on each other (see John Haught, Darrel Falk, and Denis Edwards). Yes, we affirm with Campolo that humans are in God's image, and unique in that way. But if evolution is true, then by attacking evolution, one is attacking the very work of God.

Going to Church Can Cause People to Kill

A new study out of New York and BC suggests that the single greatest correlative factor between suicide bombings is regular attendance at religious gatherings. It is not devotion, or piety, or prayer, but participation in corporate worship. This was true for both Jews and Muslims. Among groups that lack traditions of suicide bombings, like Hindus and the three largest branches of Christianity, the same underlying principle was found- those who regularly attended places of worship were more likely to display parochial altruism- willingness to die for your group combined with a strong negative perception of "the other".

What am I to make of this study? Obviously, it is not accurate to say that when you attend a mosque or church you have to be concerned that someone in attendance is likely to blow themselves up or support others blowing themselves up, nor was this study suggesting that. Rather, it was stating that the best single indicator of this willingness or support was attendance at corporate worship.

There are so many questions, that remain unanswered, that we would need further study for. I want to know to what extent do good things result from this tendency, like feeding the poor. It is harder to have major social justice action when you are on your own. I'd like to know how this tendency to view the world as us vs. them, or to kill people by killing yourself, compares to membership in other corporate entities, like clubs, political groups, or the military. And I wonder to what extent this study is simply revealing one aspect of how we are more likely to get things accomplished, positive or negative, when we are part of a group. Perhaps it is that one can more easily get fired up for a cause, for good or bad, when you're part of a group- which kind of makes sense.

Perhaps the study reveals that a small subset of those who are more inclined to groups are more willing to get fanatical if they are part of a group, and those who are not inclined towards groups but are inclined towards violence, we call loners who go on shooting sprees in colleges. This could be particularly true when you consider the inherent biases towards individualism that scientists from Canada and the US would hold, as opposed to the group-think present in most of the world. Thus it may be the presuppositions of the scientists themselves that are expressed here, as individualistic Western societies tend to see less value in working with groups, and tend to fear any coherent group as a cult.

Perhaps more disturbing than the tendency to suicide oneself is the tendency to look down on other groups. It is one thing to be willing to die for your group, and perfectly understandable. It is a good thing to die for a cause greater than oneself, to do something far, far better than one has ever done before, to go to a place far, far better than one has ever known. In Christianity, it is to follow in the way of its founder, and to do it with love of one's enemies and murderers, without harming another- this is the way of true martyrdom.

But when this laudable attitude is combined with hatred or mere dislike of another group, it is a dangerous attitude indeed. It may therefore imply that any religion or group that does not have embedded in its very core a love for enemies - perhaps, if the Parable of the Good Samaritan is any indication, an even greater love for one's enemies than one's friends- is inherently dangerous. For such a belief system, that values one's group over that of the other, when combined with the power and motivation the group can create, is a dangerous entity in this world. Of such a way lies the Crusades, countless jihad, and every nationalism the world has berthed.

And perhaps we need to pay attention to the aspect of prayer. For the study juxtaposed those who prayed regularly (as a definition of fervor in religion), with those who regularly attended religious services. Thus those who pray regularly did not correlate with support for suicide bombers; attendance at the mosque regularly did. And perhaps for some, the rituals of corporate worship in any faith come to supplant the intimate, direct relationship in prayer, something possible individually or corporately. The study didn't measure the amount of non-ritualistic intimate prayer of those who do or do not attend public services. But it is this direct relationship with God that allows us to learn to depend on him, and to be able to forgive the insults and attacks of others, most notably by definition our enemies. It is this dependence that allows us to know God's love for us, and therefore to truly love the other with the love that God had for them before the world began.