The world is marking the two hundredth anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth. Anniversaries are often an opportunity to take stock of where one is and how one arrived there, and this anniversary is not an exception. There’s been a number of pieces published online all week discussing how Darwin’s work that laid the basis of the modern theory of Evolution has caused a rethinking of the role of God within the natural order.
The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, a research oceanographer by training, is particularly well suited to speaking to this taking stock. There’s a long article on the Religious News Service’s site that is based on an extensive conversation with her on this topic.
She speaks of how she struggled to make her faith fit with her scientific training and interesting how her scientific training has informed her theological reasoning:
“‘How to make sense of the wonders of creation and the scientific descriptions of how they came to be,’ Jefferts Schori recalled in an interview in her office here, ‘I hadn’t had any conscious assistance in how to deal with that as a child.’
[…]Her election was a seminal moment for the worldwide Anglican Communion, in which the vast majority of countries do not have women bishops. Yet Jefferts Schori said her scientific training, not her gender, is more unique and pertinent to her current job.
‘It’s been a long time since somebody trained in the way I have been has held an office in the church like this,’ she said. ‘My way of looking at the world is shaped by my training as a scientist—to look carefully, and collect data and make hypotheses.’”
Read the full article here.