The Faith Forum - a first thought

Evangelical Christians get regularly fired up by all the perceived ways the media and Hollywood make fun of them or misrepresent them. Frequently the slights are imagined or are trumped up by Christian leaders to raise more money. Sometimes, however, they are real. More often than not I think the slights or affronts are ones of ignorance rather than maliciousness. CNN's Solidad O'Brien is a wonderful case in point. Tonight in her first series of questions to Sen. John Edwards on creation she said something akin to"all evangelical churches teach that the world was made in six days." Hello? They do? Sorry, I've never been to one. Christian churches that teach "young earth creationism" - the idea that the world is 6,000 years old and the earth was created in six 24-hour days - are a small minority of Christian churches. Yes, most Christians believe in "creationism" but that does not mean they believe in six literal days of creation. It tends to mean, as Sen. Sam Brownback wrote recently, that God is the creator and his hand is evident in all different aspects of creation - even through forms of evolution. As Brownback noted, "if one does not unhesitatingly assert belief in evolution, then one must necessarily believe that God created the world and everything in it in six 24-hour days. But limiting this question to a stark choice between evolution and creationism does a disservice to the complexity of the interaction between science, faith and reason." Well said