A Voyage of Discovery

HMS Beagle

"There is grandeur in this view of life ...
from so simple a beginning,
endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been,
and are being, evolved."

Charles Darwin

In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950),
my predecessor Pius XII has already affirmed
 that there is no conflict between evolution
and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation,
provided that we do not lose sight of certain fixed points.

Pope John Paul II 1996

Yesterday marked the anniversary of the departure in 1831 of the HMS Beagle on an epic voyage with Charles Darwin aboard. Darwin spent two months in Devonport, England, waiting for the weather to improve so that the Beagle could begin its journey to South America. Darwin later wrote that those two months were "The most miserable which I ever spent." I've visited this harbour but wasn't aware that it was the site for the beginning of such a world-changing voyage.



Darwin's daughter, Annie, died shortly after her 10th birthday;
he was too overcome with grief to attend her funeral.

You may be aware that Darwin's Christian faith evaporated after the death of a daughter, although his wife Emma remained devout throughout her lifetime. Darwin may have held back on publishing his controversial theory of evolution for twenty years because he didn't want to offend Emma, whom he loved greatly.

While some fundamentalist Christians are adamant about a six-day Creation, the majority of Christians now choose to accept evolution even as they affirm God as Creator. I'm one of them and it is certainly part of the United Church ethos.  It interesting that the first Roman Catholic statement about this reconciliation was made in 1950. Here is a portion of the Song of Faith "creed" of the United Church of Canada.

God is creative and self-giving,
   generously moving
   in all the near and distant corners of the universe.
Nothing exists that does not find its source in God.
Our first response to God’s providence is gratitude.
We sing thanksgiving.

Finding ourselves in a world of beauty and mystery,
   of living things, diverse and interdependent,
   of complex patterns of growth and evolution,
   of subatomic particles and cosmic swirls,
we sing of God the Creator,
the Maker and Source of all that is.

A Song of Faith United Church of Canada