Controversy over Charles Darwin's Religious Views

The religious views of Charles Darwin have been in the news over the last few days. They even prompted a "Thought for the Day" this morning on BBC Radio 4 Today by Bishop Tom Butler. Like Bishop Butler, I do not consider the text of the letter that has come to light to mean he was an atheist as, for example, The Times described him.yesterday in a short item.

The letter was in response to Francis McDermott, a barrister and committed Christian. Darwin’s reply, penned on 24 November 1880 – exactly 21 years after the publication of On the Origin of Species – was to the point:

"Dear Sir,

I am sorry to have to inform you that I do not believe in the Bible as a divine revelation & therefore not in Jesus Christ as the son of God.

Yours faithfully

Ch. Darwin"

It is not wise to determine the religious views of any individual by a few words. Rev Cliff Reed, a retired British Unitarian minister, has traced the evolution of Darwin's religious thinking throughout the course of his life. The results of his work, in the Lindsey Press publication "Till the Peoples All Are One": Darwin's Unitarian Connections" (2011) may surprise many readers.

The book can be obtained from Essex Hall or all major online booksellers.

Welfare Reform Bill - Letter to the Editor in The Daily Telegraph

This Letter was published in today's Daily Telegraph from a number of faith leaders and others:

SIR – The extensive cuts being debated by MPs this week as part of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill include restricting child tax credits, removing the work-related activity component of the Employment and Support Allowance and further reducing the benefit cap.

Despite a welcome increase in the minimum wage, it is now widely understood that this Bill will make low-income working families worse off and penalise disabled people who are taking their first steps back to work.

An effective social safety net based on dignity and compassion is vital in any just society, yet this Bill will make the lives of already vulnerable households ever more precarious.

Paul Parker
 Recording Clerk, Quakers in Britain
Niall Cooper
 Director, Church Action on Poverty
Cathy Ashley
 Chief Executive, Family Rights Group
Dave Prentis
 General Secretary, Unison
Jonathan Arkush
 President, Board of Deputies of British Jews
Amanda Batten
 Chief Executive, Contact a Family
Megan Dunn
 President, National Union of Students
John Ellis
 Moderator, General Assembly of the United Reformed Church
Duncan Exley
 Director, The Equality Trust
Lt-Col Melvin Fincham
 Secretary for Communications, The Salvation Army
Sally Foster-Fulton
 Convener, Church and Society Council, Church of Scotland
Alison Garnham
 Chief Executive, Child Poverty Action Group
Rev Steven Keyworth
 Team Leader of Faith and Society, Baptist Church
Derek McAuley
 Chief Officer, General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches
Judith Moran
 Director, Quaker Social Action
Helen O'Brien
 Chief Executive, CSAN (Caritas Social Action Network)
Mohammad Shahid Raza
 Founder Trustee, British Muslim Forum, and Head Imam, Leicester Central Mosque
Chaya Spitz
 Chief Executive, The Interlink Foundation
The Rt Rev David Walker
 Bishop of Manchester
The Rev Steven Wild
 President, Methodist Conference

Erasmus Darwin and serendipity

Erasmus Darwin is well known in British Unitarian circles, not least as the paternal grandfather of Charles, and for his pithy put down that “Unitarianism was a feather-bed to catch a falling Christian”.

I recall reading the following hymn attributed to him and being somewhat surprised. Did he write hymns I asked? I had found it in a long out of print hymnal, “A Hymn-Book of God the Moral Ideal” complied by Rev Francis Haydn Williams, minister of Flowergate Old Chapel in Whitby, Yorkshire. It was published in 1909 and had been highlighted at a worship studies course by Rev Dr Vernon Marshall.

  “Roll on, ye stars; exult in youthful prime,
  Mark with bright curves the printless steps of Time;
  Near, and more near, your beamy cars approach,
  Or lessening orbs on lessening orbs approach.

  Flowers of the sky! Ye, too, to age must yield,
  Frail as your silken sisters of the field;
  Star after star from Heaven’s high arch shall rush,
  Suns sink on suns, and systems systems crush.

  But o’er the wreck, emerging from the storm,
  Immortal Nature lifts her changeful form,
  Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame,
 And soars, and shines; another, yet the same.”

I am still staggered by the power of this image and hoped sometime to find out more about its origins.

I recently come across “Erasmus Darwin: Sex, Science and Serendipity” remaindered in a local bookshop. Written by Patricia Fara it was published by Oxford University Press in 2012. I was not really looking for it but there on pages 244-245 it jumped out at me. In the poem “The Temple of Nature” were the final eight lines as Darwin imagined nature rising like a phoenix from the ashes of a collapsed chaotic cosmos. The author relishes how serendipity played a large role in her research which I much appreciated and here I was too experiencing it.

There is an interesting section on Erasmus in Cliff Reed's "Till All the People's Are One" on Charles Darwin's Unitarian heritage.

So take time to rest over the summer and do let your mind drift and begin to see connections. Read something different and let serendipity play its part. Do enjoy your holiday if you are fortunate to have one.

Welsh Unitarians Celebrate Reopening of historic Hen Gapel Llwynrhydowen

Huw Edwards with Rev Eric Jones, Derek McAuley and Martin Gilbraith

Last Friday was an important day in the history of Welsh Unitarianism and indeed of the Nonconformist Chapels in Wales. It was a pleasure to attend the reopening of Hen Gapel Llwynrhydowen after its restoration by Addoldai Cymru, the Welsh Religious Buildings Trust. The well-known BBC broadcaster Huw Edwards, Patron of Addoldai Cymru, handed the keys to Rev Wyn Thomas and later spoke to the packed Chapel.

The Grade II* listed building has now been repaired and consolidated and will be used as a centre for activities for the local community.

Hen Gapel has a significant place in the religious, political and social history of Wales. The Congregation’s radical tradition goes back to its opening in 1733 as the first Arminian Chapel in Wales.

 Heini Thomas read a powerful personal  account of the events of 1876 written by her grandmother, Mallie thomas.

In 1860 Gwilym Marles was called to the ministry at Llwynrhydowen. He was radicalised politically during the “Hungry Forties” which were years of evictions and emigration provoked by agricultural depression. He was a strong advocate of the secret ballot. On 29 October 1876 the squire John Davies Lloyd, from whom the Unitarians rented the land upon which the chapel stood, evicted them citing their ‘radical’ non Tory, Unitarian ideologies as a breach of their lease. This was a national sensation and the following Sunday Gwilym Marles preached to some 3000 people on the road outside the chained gates.  A nation-wide fundraising effort saw a new Chapel opened in 1879. Following the squire’s death his sister, Mrs Massey (having challenged the Will) gifted the Old Chapel back to the congregation.

This was seen as an important test of religious and political freedom - the right of individuals to exercise their vote freely in a democratic society and to worship as they saw fit. These remain ongoing Unitarian values.

It was good to return to the "Black Spot" (Y Smotyn Du"), the small area of twenty square miles which resisted Calvinistic Methodist revivals, and the Unitarian stronghold in Ceredigion.

Is migration the Election issue? A Harecourt conversation

Last evening I attended a "conversation" (rather than an election hustings) at Harecourt United Reformed Church with support from Ekklesia think-tank and other agencies, including Housing Justice. The event saw the launch of a report on migration from Rev Vaughan Jones. I have prepared a story using Storify,com which gives you a flavour of the event.

The Ekklesia report draws on Rev Jones' long experience of migration issues - "Migration and the 2015 election: reframing the terms of the debate".

Abstract

"Both migration and elections are about choices – including, for many who wish to see a more just, peaceful and sustainable world – confronting what is often a depressing lack of palatable options provided by current thinking and vested interests. This paper by Vaughan Jones is about the relationship between migration (usually talked about as ‘immigration’, a one-dimensional term that itself betrays a particular way of looking at the matter) and the 2015 General Election. Its aim is to examine the people and concerns behind migration debates, and to point towards fresh perspectives that challenge deep-seated assumptions: assumptions that lead to less than humane policies and prescriptions, and which mostly ignore the larger geo-political realities impacting people movements. For the fundamental question is one that very few ask: “is migration really the issue?” Or is it a convenient way of avoiding other crucial global and local issues with which politicians find it difficult to engage? One route into these complex and vital concerns is provided by the role and perspective of churches and Christians – as influencers in public moral debate, and as diaspora communities themselves. The way they (alongside other civic groups) press for positive change, challenge widespread misperceptions, display hospitality and hold to a much larger vision can make a significant difference."

After Islamic State: can religious freedom survive?

Yes, seemed to be the answer at this seminar at St. Ethelburga's Centre for Reconciliation and Peace which I attended last evening. The two speakers; Professor David Ford, Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge and Dr Zaza Elsheikh, offered different perspectives. Dr Elsheikh was  a last minute replacement for Dr Usama Hasan of the Quilliam Foundation.

Professor Ford spoke about the need for pluralism with many voices, each drawing upon the integrity of their own tradition. He highlighted the work of Cambridge Muslim College and the role of Jordan in promoting interfaith understanding and rejection of religious justifications for violence eg the Amman Message of 2004, a http://www.acommonword.com/ and the Global Covenant of Peace. Islamic State needed to be tackled internally by Muslims as in the Open Letter to their leader from 126 senior scholars challenging their teachings and practices.

Dr Elsheikh focused more on Koran statements such as the Medina Charter with the challenge to Muslims; are you protecting Christians? Violence is not the response to insult. Pluralism is allowed. Walking towards the other is to be encouraged to build relationships across boundaries.

I was called upon to ask the second question and managed to highlight that I was a Board member of the Europe and Middle East Region of the International Association for Religious Freedom and that religious freedom was under threat in the midst of complex geo-political tensions in the Middle East; with religious and political divides.

I do not feel that the seminar really got to grips with the questions posed in the title. Perhaps this was in part due to the absence of Dr Hasan as Quilliam? Dr Elsheikh was able to talk about the attraction to young Muslims and her work against the grooming of young women. Prof Ford talked hopefully about developments in Libya which seemed surprising in light of recent chaotic events and the rise of an Islamic State offshoot.

Like many I probably left with a sense that I would have liked to have learnt more about Islamic State and where it draws its ideology from within its self-proclaimed Islamic context. The conversations at the break were useful and some attempt was made to encourage inter-action between attendees.

Gender and Leadership

With the naming of Rev Libby Lane as the first woman bishop in the Church of England I thought I would share this article on gender and leadership which appears in the latest issue of "The Unitarian" (December 2014).

Listening and talking to those from other Churches and indeed other faith groups can be illuminating. What we in our Unitarian and Free Christian community now take for granted is still contested in other churches. The whole issue of gender and leadership remains controversial.

The Church of England has finally approved the ordination of women as bishops having celebrated the 20th anniversary of women in the priesthood. 2014 also marked the 40th anniversary of the ordination of women by the Methodist Church.  The United Reformed Church will commemorate the 100th anniversary in 2017 of women ministers within the Congregational churches. Pope Francis stated this year that “women must have a greater presence in the decision-making areas” of the Roman Catholic Church.

I heard Kate Coleman speak at a conference I helped organize for MODEM on “Emerging Themes in Leadership” on “Gender, Leadership and the Church”. She said that it grieved her to have to say on so many situations that she is the first women in a leadership role. She is a Baptist minister and first woman chair of the Council of the Evangelical Alliance and former President of the Baptist Union of Great Britain. She emphasised the power of personal history in shaping our perspectives; not least that she once belonged to a Church that did not believe in women in leadership positions.
In many ways Unitarians have much to be proud of. Gertrude von Petzold was in 1904 admitted into our ministry at Narborough Road Free Christian (Unitarian) Church, Leicester, the first woman to have full ministerial status in any British Denomination. Mrs Sydney Martineau was President of the General Assembly in 1929-30. Women have comprised increasing numbers of ministers and GA Presidents (seven of the last 15).

We would undoubtedly find offensive the conservative theological justifications for discrimination – either that women are inferior and incapable of leadership (Traditional view) or that they are equal but should not lead in the home or church (Complementarian view). We would surely advocate an Egalitarian approach that Kate outlined as the third view; that women are equal in being and in leadership.

However, we should not rest on our laurels. A look at the Roll of Presidents in the Annual Report will reveal few women Presidents in the first column and that equality took a long time to come. Women ministers for so long did not receive calls to the “plum” ministries. We have not had a woman General Secretary/Chief Officer. So whilst we have come further than others on the journey to equality and made lots of progress in recent years we still need to be careful about the assumptions we make about appropriate roles and positions.

We are influenced more than we think by wider society and we should pay attention to the conclusions of the Everyday Sexism project ( http://everydaysexism.com/) that sexism does exist, it is faced by women every day and is a valid problem to discuss. Yes, even in Church.

Kate highlighted that “Great leaders don’t just appear, they are crafted over time” (Reggie McNeal) and urged provision of systematic training for women. Elizabeth Welch, former Moderator of the URC, observed the paradox that “those in power think themselves powerless; yet those who feel powerless think those in power have too much”. Males and females need to take note as gender is not only an issue for women. A good start would be to make sure we reflect on this in all our decision-making and in the design of GA leadership programmes.