> With very little exception, the message of "we,"
> that there are other positions than YEC and non-theist, is not reaching
> many people.
Until recently, non-fundamentalist churches had largely ignored
the whole question of evolution. The attitude was "Sure, you can accept
biological evolution - now let's talk about something interesting. In
fact, the whole doctrine of creation was treated at best as a prologue
to the real concern of the church. The result was that people never
heard anything about how evolution could be understood within an
adequate doctrine of creation. They either assumed that "of course" the
church opposes evolution or were easy prey for anti-evolution appeals.
That has been changing over the past couple of decades. Besides
the pope's recent statement which got a lot of attention, working
theologians such as Phil Hefner in the ELCA & Ron Cole-Turner in the UCC
have been insisting that the church needs to take evolution seriously.
Science-theology courses in seminaries (including many which have gotten
Templeton Foundation support) have been training clergy to deal with
these issues in more satisfactory ways. But it's a slow process.
> We are losing. Big time.
The data you cite are daunting but IMO shouldn't be too
surprising. "Bad money drives out good." Or more to the point,
remember the surveys that show that large percentages of memberships of
supposedly evangelical churches hope to get to heaven because they try
to obey the 10 Commandments.
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@imperium.net
http://www.imperium.net/~gmurphy