Steve Martin on Building A Community of Evolutionary Creationists

Steve Martin has an incredibly important post over on his site An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution about the need to form a community/support structure for those of us that accept evolution but also hold firmly to the Word of God and the salvation through Jesus Christ. He correctly points out that, should our views be widely known, we run the risk of being tarred and feathered in our churches or lose our standing among scientists. Still, what he writes is becoming more and more necessary as time goes on. Here is what he writes:

I think we should publish an “Evangelical Statement on Evolution” that succinctly states that an Evangelical expression of the Christian faith, and the scientific theory of evolution are compatible. This could be modeled after the Clergy Letter Project, but crafted in a way to ensure it has an explicitly Evangelical character. The statement sponsoring signatories should include evangelical leaders from 1) a broad range of denominations 2) several different academic disciplines (at least scientists, biblical scholars and theologians - yes, we definitely need those timid theologians) and 3) a cross section of Evangelical organizations (eg. missions, umbrella groups like the EFC and the NAE). The statement should also have some mechanism for allowing the rest of us to sign on as well.

I do think there would be backlash because people do have such visceral responses to this issue but we have to combat the nonsense of folks like the ICR and Discovery Institute in some way. Nonetheless, this is an idea that is well past its time and I applaud Steve for initiating it.