My suspicion grows apace with the slickness of a presentation. This is one reason I squirm in a megachurch. PowerPoint slides, emotion-tugging video clips during the pre-game show, music crafted to feel edgy and relevant—my skin crawls like I’m about to hear a sales pitch, which I guess I am, which maybe isn’t so bad for God-seekers who aren’t inveterate curmudgeons.

This post was made possible through the support of a grant from The BioLogos Foundation’s Evolution and Christian Faith program. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of BioLogos. In an evening church service at Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1979, Jerry Falwell explained the…

We are at a gathering of scientists, religious leaders, and people who write about science and religion. We are discussing how people in these often counterposed domains can collaborate for the betterment of mankind.

A gathering of painters, composers, theologians, environmentalists, and poets from all over the country has spent the last two days, meeting here around the clock. We have shared our art with one another and considered, in this wild place, the predicament we have in common as citizens of the earth. We know beyond any doubt that we humans have damaged the planet. Polar ice is melting. The earth’s climate zones are suddenly shifting. Weather is veering toward violence. Sea levels are rising.

I’ve never met Dr. Kitcher, but it is easy to tell from his writing that he is possessed of more in the way of patience and curiosity, intellectually speaking, than most intellectuals. As proof of this assertion, I submit a little story he tells in the preface ofLiving with Darwin. Flipping through a copy of TV Guide one day in the 1970s while babysitting his young son, Kitcher came across an advertisement for a book that claimed it would “set its readers straight on the question of ‘origins.’”

I awoke one morning from a recurrent nightmare of nuclear apocalypse to see towering redwoods dripping with fog outside the window. I stepped from the cabin into a chorus of frogs and crickets, interlaced roots spreading wide into bracken fern, neon banana slugs sliding across fragrant duff. I breathed crisp air and sensed that I was in the midst of an ecosystem in perfect harmony.

Two summers ago, my husband Jeremy and I decided to cancel our family’s cross-country road trip just days before departure. Our bank account had taken a beating with some unexpected bills. We suddenly found ourselves looking for staycation activities for our children, who were devastated to miss out on hiking the national parks and splashing in the ocean with their California cousins.

In the beginning, when God was creating the heavens and the earth, the earth was a desolate waste. Chaos. Smoking rubble. Like after a war. Our beginning, we Bible readers should understand, was post-apocalyptic.

In commenting on my latest essay for “Good Letters,” a man “disabled from an odd condition” confided that, when his health crashed, he found himself abandoned by those he depended upon: “My family avoided me thinking that I repre­sented their destiny.” Years later “they still do,” he added. Not everyone who lives with advancing death…

What struck me about the Ham kerfuffle is how this arises from the same place that his strict stance on young earth creationism does. At its core, this is not about the science; it is about hermeneutics.