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Southern Baptist leader angry with Anglicans for Darwin apology

[additional-authors]
September 22, 2008

The Rev. Al Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary who caused a big brouhaha last year when he suggested homosexuality was hereditary, can’t believe the Church of England wants to apologize to Charles Darwin, and he takes particular aim at the Rev. Malcolm Brown, the church’s director of mission and public affairs, in this column for the Christian Post:

Apologize to Charles Darwin? The Church of England may well need to apologize, but not to Charles Darwin. If anything, the church needs to apologize for its rightful embarrassment in considering an apology to Darwin. But, it seems, this church is not embarrassed.

Dr. Brown apparently is a big believer in Darwin’s theory of natural selection. “Subsequent generations have built on Darwin’s work but have not significantly undermined his fundamental theory of natural selection,” he insists. “There is nothing here that contradicts Christian teaching.”

Well, Charles Darwin sure thought that the theory of natural selection contradicted Christian teaching. But, then again, he may have had a better understanding of Christian teaching than Dr. Brown.

I’m not one to cast stones, but that judgment seems a bit, well, judgmental. It also presumes that the Baptist understanding of Christian teaching, of which Mohler is a leading voice, is more righteous than the Anglican interpretation, which Southern Baptist leadership no doubt believes.

More of Mohler’s column is after the jump:

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