Celebrate Charles Darwin's Legacy -- at Church

A church that celebrates Darwin? How highly evolved

It was former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli who asked "Is man an ape or an angel? I, my lord, am on the side of the angels." Yes, that's where that expression originates. Lesser known still is that this was Disraeli's artful way of saying he didn't believe in the newfangled theory of evolution.

A century and change later, the United States is the only first-world nation in which Charles Darwin' s theories remain controversial. And while most churches are not havens of ignorance and backwardness, the notion of celebrating Darwin's achievements during Sunday sermon still seems a little counter-intuitive.

But, then St. Francis Lutheran Church never passed itself off as an intuitive place (other than being located on Church Street). After all, how many churches have a pastor named Robert Goldstein? (His mother was Irish, his father was Jewish -- and he's Australian).

On Sunday morning, Associate Pastor Paul Brenner will sermonize on the life and work of Darwin, who would have been 200 yesterday (and looks it in the above photo). This is all about "seeing ourselves as a progressive arm of Christianity over and against those fundamentalists who claim they are the only true christians with their anti-scientific stances," he said. "We do not see science as the enemy of faith. Science is evidence that God is still working in the world. Science can help us to better understand the scriptures and to build a faith that has integrity and doesn't require us to sacrifice our reason.

"Fundamentalists say that if you can't believe everything in the bible literally, then the bible has no value," Brenner continued. " But the bible was never intended to be a science book."