LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: Volunteers signed up by the thousands to lend a helping hand to people in need, and here in Portland, Oregon, where unemployment reached 12 percent this year, there are a lot of people in need. And with tax revenues down, the city needs help providing even basic services, like maintaining public schools, particularly in low-income neighborhoods. Roosevelt High, for instance, might get a visit from a maintenance man once this year if it’s lucky. Devon Baker is an administrator at Roosevelt.

DEVON BAKER (School Administrator): It does something for you, in your heart, you know, if you’re one of the staff members and suddenly the building is clean, it’s ready to go. It’s a real partnership with a lot of folks that just really makes you feel like, wow, people really do care.

Kevin Palau

SEVERSON: What makes this effort so extraordinary is not that it’s church members doing the volunteering—there are about 500 churches involved this year, including Catholic and mainline Protestant. But the majority of the 26,000 volunteers are evangelicals intentionally not here to proselytize, but to show their faith by doing good deeds such as scrubbing windows and even working in harmony with one of the most liberal cities in the US and its openly gay mayor,  Sam Adams.

SAM ADAMS (Mayor of Portland): If I could have them do it every month in my city I would, so thank you.

SEVERSON: The organizer of Season of Service, which is now in its second year, is Kevin Palau.

KEVIN PALAU (Executive Vice President, Luis Palau Association): Portland is a very proudly liberal city. This is not the Bible belt, and so to have that kind of cooperation between churches and city leaders on a long-term basis, I think, is unprecedented.

SEVERSON: Palau is the son of Luis Palau, who has staged huge evangelism festivals around the world. His son chose a slightly different path, one he thinks will put Christ’s teachings into action and, perhaps, change the image in a secular city that some have of Christians. The purpose, he says, is not to preach or proselytize.

KEVIN PALAU: We’re not doing this so that we can preach the Gospel. We’re doing this to demonstrate the love of Christ, and absolutely we’re not hiding the fact that we want people to come into relationship with Christ, but realistically through this it’s going to happen more relationally and organically, and that’s okay.

SEVERSON: Wayne Abbott graduated from Roosevelt.

WAYNE ABBOTT (Volunteer): Season of Service works because Jesus told us that he was here to serve, not be served, and there’s absolutely no reason why we can’t just take a few minutes out of a busy day and our busy lives every once in a while and do exactly what he did.

SEVERSON: The extensive work done sprucing up Roosevelt High, outside and in, would have cost the city about $200,000. Deborah Peterson is the principal.

DEBORAH PETERSON (Roosevelt High School Principal): When good people of good will come together and honor one another and believe in hope, miracles happen, and that’s what’s happening today.

SEVERSON: The churches also raised $100,000 to help the increasing numbers of homeless. Then they sponsored what they call compassion clinics throughout the city, offering free medical and dental care. These clinics were overbooked within the first half-hour with mostly uninsured patients. These clinics cared for as many as 200 patients each day—grateful patients. Churches even sponsored the mobile medical truck.

KRISTINE SUMMER (Volunteer): For the church love has to be a verb, and this is what it looks like.

JEFF PALEN (Volunteer): This is love in action. This is what Christ did for all of those 5,000. He fed them, he preached to them, he shared with them, and he loved them.

SEVERSON: Love includes free veterinarian care for their pets and haircuts for their owners. Kevin Palau says loving thy neighbor is what Season of Service is all about.

KEVIN PALAU: So our hope is that, long-term, this does lead to a lifestyle of service and sharing the Gospel by how we live.

SEVERSON: Mayor Adams said the thousands of volunteers had made Portland and its suburbs a better place.

SAM ADAMS: Honestly, we had modest hopes. Well, our modest hopes were greatly exceeded.

SEVERSON: Season of Service was topped off with a carnival that may have been as important as any of the other events—an opportunity for families to simply have fun in hard times and experience what neighborly love can do when it’s put into practice.

For Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, I’m Lucky Severson reporting.

PHIL JONES, correspondent: In the 1950s, Bill Gaither used to turn on his radio and listen to all the gospel music stars. He was a farm boy with a field of dreams.

BILL GAITHER: I kept dreaming of the day that maybe, just maybe, I could write a song that would catch the attention of somebody or sing a song that would catch the attention of somebody. Am I blessed guy? I mean, I’m blessed. What can I say?

JONES: In 1963, his dream came true. He wrote a hit. Elvis Presley recorded it and won a Grammy, but the lyrics belonged to Bill Gaither.

Bill Gaither singing at piano: “He touched me, oh, he touched me” — Jimmy Durante sang this and he’d go “He touched me” — “and all the joy that floods my soul…”

JONES: Since then, Bill and his wife, Gloria, former English and French teachers, have written more than 700 gospel songs. Many of them are in today’s church hymnals.

ROBERT SILVERS (Former Religion Editor, Saturday Evening Post): What would the Christian world, the gospel music world, have been like if we hadn’t had Bill and Gloria Gaither? And I just felt like it would leave a lot of empty pages in those song books.

JONES: The Gaithers have won six Grammys and more than two dozen Dove Awards for outstanding Christian music, plus they’ve sold more than 20 million videos, and they still are packing the house all over the world…

Gaither DVD:  “…our Homecoming celebration in New York’s Carnegie Hall was a unique…”

JONES: …performing homecoming events with their friends, stars of gospel music past and present. When they were named gospel song writers of the century in 2000, it was said the Gaithers are to Christian music what the Beatles were to pop music. They were among the first to introduce contemporary religious music.

BILL GAITHER: In fact, we had a pretty well-known college that banned their kids in ’68 from coming to see the Bill Gaither Trio because they said it’s worldly music.

Concert Singing: “…swing down chariot, stop and let me ride, swing down chariot, stop and let me ride. Rock me, Lord…”

JONES: Where would you say that you fit into the evangelical world?

BILL GAITHER: I’m not sure we really do. I think we’ve been mavericks from the beginning.

Concert Singing: “…stop and let me ride, swing down chariot, stop and let me ride…”

BILL GAITHER: Are we contemporary? Are we traditional? Are we country? Are we progressive? Labels are so dangerous. I’m a follower of Christ. I believe in the message. I believe in redemption, and if I didn’t, Gloria and I would stop today and go to the mountains and retire and rock on a rocking chair.

JONES: Bill and Gloria Gaither have earned enough fame and money to live any place they choose. They have chosen to stay right here in Alexandria, Indiana, population about 6,000. It was picked by the federal government during World War II to use in the propaganda theme throughout Europe depicting small town USA.

GLORIA GAITHER: An awful lot of our lyrics and a lot of our philosophy comes out of being rooted in a small town with real people and real life.

JONES: There was a time back in the mid-’80s that Bill Gaither felt his trio had peaked, but he wasn’t ready to hang it up. He wanted one more shot to make a gospel hit. So he reached out.

BILL GAITHER: You know, and I called a bunch of the old timers and I said, ah, we’re gonna come in and have fun. We’re gonna have the radio days.

JONES: And they came to join Bill and his Gaither Vocal Band—big stars from all over the country. Little did they know that this reunion with the Gaithers would turn into a concert series around the world called Homecoming. The themes—patriotism and religion.

Gaither DVD: I invite you to travel with us as we return to the origins of our faith…

JONES: What the people see on stage reflects the spiritual tone set off stage. Before each night’s show there is a private prayer with the singers.

GLORIA GAITHER: Lord, we love you, and we are always in awe when people come. We pray that we can be the channel that you can use to speak to somebody who is hurting or discouraged or just plain tired.

JONES: Among Bill Gaither’s fans are some who tell him they are not religious.

BILL GAITHER: I think it’s the music. I think it’s a positive message. I think it’s community.  I think it’s them seeing people care about other people.

VERNA FISHER: I’m here because I love the spirit of worship. I love to watch how they—they’re not there to perform. They’re there to honor God.

JONES: For the old timers, hanging out with Bill and Gloria has kept them from fading into oblivion. For some of the younger folks, Bill Gaither has catapulted their careers. Ask the Booth Brothers.

RONNIE BOOTH: I mean, it just rapidly got bigger for us, bigger in that we were reaching audiences that we would have never reached before, all because of his platform.

MICHAEL BOOTH: Let’s encourage each other, let’s love each other, support each other, and that is a summed-up way of the Bible expressing how the family of God is supposed to work, and so it’s a little picture of the way the family is supposed to work is how this Gaither thing expresses itself night after night, on stage and off.

LYNDA RANDLE: What I love that Bill says it’s not–we do a little entertaining because it’s fun and people love to laugh, but then there’s the ministry aspect of it.

Gaither DVD: …from the Wesleyan Campground in Fairmount, Indiana, Bill Gaither and friends welcome you to Down by the Tabernacle…

JONES: Gloria and Bill still live in the house they bought back when they got married.

GLORIA GAITHER: We had a marriage interview one time for a magazine, and they said do you ever fight? To which we said, oh, you could sell tickets.

JONES: Their business world has changed dramatically in the past few years. They have built the Gaither Music Company located along the highway leading through the middle of their home town. They travel like rock stars—huge touring buses, sometimes a private jet.

Gloria Gaither with visitors: We’re so glad to have you, and if any of your want to do a studio tour…

JONES: And they’ve added a gift store-restaurant-reception facility for tourists and fans.

ROBERT SILVERS: I’d say if there’s ever been a legend in gospel music, it has to be the Gaithers.

JONES: Are you a minister or a musician?

BILL GAITHER: Yes. Yes. Next question?  My old mentor-buddy used to say that Jesus must have been a pretty good entertainer to hold the attention of 5,000 people on a hillside at the Sea of Galilee without a microphone.

JONES: In these times when the music world is in constant change, it is a near miracle that Bill, now 73, and Gloria Gaither are still doing what they started doing decades ago. To paraphrase those early Bill Gaither lyrics, the Gaithers have been “touched.”

Bill Gaither singing: “He touched me. Oh, he touched me, and all the joy that floods my soul…”

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Phil Jones in Alexandria, Indiana.

Bill Gaither singing: “He touched me and made me whole.”

KIM LAWTON, anchor: One of President Obama’s early moves when he took office six months ago was to establish an unprecedented new council of religious and secular leaders to advise him on faith-related social policy. Evangelical megachurch pastor Joel Hunter from Florida is part of that council. Hunter is becoming an increasingly influential leader for those he calls “a new kind of conservative.” I visited him at his church near Orlando.

KIM LAWTON: It’s Sunday morning and people are heading to church. One might expect them to be bringing along a Bible; maybe their tithes and offerings. But at Northland Church, just outside Orlando, they’re also bringing obsolete computers and printers, old stereos and other hard-to-recycle items. The evangelical megachurch has made a commitment to the environment — what members here call “creation care.” It’s part of a wide-ranging social agenda championed by Northland senior pastor Joel Hunter. He says that agenda signals a maturing of the evangelical movement.

“We want to equip people for living great lives where they are.”

Reverend JOEL HUNTER (Senior Pastor, Northland Church, Florida): We like to call it “growing up.” I think especially in the political realm we went through a phase more recently when we were known for what we were against rather than what we were for. We were pretty narrow in what we were paying attention to rather than very broad. Now that wasn’t true in Jesus’ time, because Jesus was very broad in what he did.

LAWTON: Like most evangelicals, Hunter opposes abortion and gay marriage. But his agenda also includes the environment and issues of poverty, torture, peace and interfaith dialogue. Hunter does describe himself as a pro-life registered Republican. Yet his views captured the attention of President Barack Obama. Hunter was part of a group of religious leaders who prayed privately with Obama during the campaign, and he’s now a member of Obama’s advisory council on faith-based and neighborhood partnerships.

Hunter believes evangelicals have a spiritual obligation to have a positive influence wherever God places them, even if that may be among Democrats.

Rev. HUNTER: I hope that along the way I could be of encouragement in the president’s spiritual life because that’s what a pastor does, that’s what we care about. But beyond that, I’m very excited about working with a very broad spectrum of people to see how our faith communities can really solve the problems, or help solve the problems, of this country.

LAWTON: Despite his national responsibilities, Hunter makes it clear that his base of operations is Northland. The nondenominational church was started by 11 people in 1972.  Hunter, who was a United Methodist pastor, came here in 1985. Today, about 12,000 people attend the church every week.  Northland calls itself “a Church Distributed.”

Rev. HUNTER: We emphasize what goes on outside the building rather than what goes on inside the building, and we want to equip people for living great lives where they are.

“Only God can move in the spirit to change somebody’s heart or to establish a relationship.”

LAWTON: The Internet helps with that distribution. Thousands of people around the world participate in the worship services through an innovative online Web cast.

Rev. HUNTER: So when we built this building, we built it as a communications device, and the selling point to the congregation was look, you’re not building a building that can just seat 3,000 people at a time. We can seat three million people at a time if we have enough broadband and we have enough people who can gather around a computer screen.

(speaking to audience):  And for those of you who are worshipping with us online . . .

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1:  Let’s hear from a couple of folks who worship with us online.

Rev. HUNTER:  Somebody texted in from the last service . . .

LAWTON: Some people watch individually, others gather in small groups in people’s homes, fast-food restaurants, even a prison. Northland knows of alternative worship sites as far away as Argentina, Egypt and Ukraine. As the church grew, so did Hunter’s vision of having an impact on the wider culture. In July of 2006, he was chosen to be the new president of the Christian Coalition of America, the political advocacy group founded by Pat Robertson. But Hunter withdrew even before he took office when it became clear that coalition members were uncomfortable with his broad issue agenda.

LAWTON: Mark Pinsky is a veteran religion writer in Orlando who has covered Hunter for 14 years.

MARK PINSKY (Religion Writer): Even though he didn’t take that job, eventually he was forced out, he really won, because the issues on which he lost his job were the right issues as far as the coming evangelical movement is concerned.

LAWTON: In many ways, Hunter has become a national voice for evangelicals seeking a new style of leadership.

Mark Pinsky

Rev. HUNTER: There is a whole new generation of young evangelicals that are coming up that really don’t care about any of the labels. I mean, they could care less — Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative — they don’t care. What they care about is can we change the world for the better?

LAWTON: But Hunter still gets push-back from evangelical traditionalists.

Mr. PINSKY: He believes in making coalitions on an issue-by-issue basis, and that puts them together with, sometimes, with people who support abortion rights, for example. But there are people in the evangelical movement both in his congregation and nationally who won’t do that, who won’t sit down at the table with people they don’t agree with on other issues.

LAWTON: Hunter has also made some evangelicals uncomfortable by building coalitions with people from other faiths. He’s part of a project to improve dialogue between Islam and the West, and he advocates building strong personal relationships with people from other religions.

Rev. HUNTER: The better relationship you build, the more free you are to share with people what you really believe, and then you let God take care of the rest. It’s not my job to convert people, you know? Only God can move in the spirit to change somebody’s heart or to establish a relationship.

LAWTON: Hunter raised a lot of eyebrows when he tried to show interfaith respect at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. He was chosen to give the closing prayer after Obama’s acceptance speech. When he got to the end, he stopped and gave the crowd some instructions.

Rev. HUNTER (at DNC): On the count of three, I want all of you to end this prayer, your prayer, the way you usually end prayer.

To make somebody or to cow somebody into silence as you pray in Jesus’ name, or to somehow make them seem like they’re praying in Jesus’ name is really a sacrilege, because only Christians can pray in Jesus’ name.

(at DNC): One-two-three:  In Jesus’ name, Amen. Let’s go change the world for good.

LAWTON: He got some strong reactions afterward.

Rev. HUNTER: On the one side, I had a wonderful encouragement especially from non-Christians, you know, and from many Christians who understood what I was doing. I got raked over the coals with a lot of Christians because I didn’t hijack the prayer and pray it only for Christians.

LAWTON: There are those who worry that Hunter’s relationship with Obama, and his position on the advisory council, could hinder the pastor’s ability to speak truth to power.

Rev. HUNTER: The president has made it very clear — and this is another thing I like about him — is he is not looking for “yes” people here. He’s looking for people on this council that will have a prophetic voice, and all of us made the agreement that we would not be on the council unless we could be blunt-honest.

LAWTON: Hunter acknowledges it can be a heady thing to be inside the Oval Office, and he knows power can be seductive. He tries to keep it in perspective.

Rev. HUNTER: The idea here that goes through my mind is that this is not the person that I’m going to be answering to. That’s a way higher thing, and on judgment day when I stand before God, I’m going to have to answer to what I’ve said.

LAWTON: Hunter says his family and his church life keep him grounded. He says he doesn’t seek the limelight. In fact, he really doesn’t like it at all.

Rev. HUNTER: I have no desire for people to really know who I am. I’m an — you wouldn’t believe this — but I’m an introvert. You know, I could spend all day in a library and just be perfectly content as long as my wife was one stack over.

Mr. PINSKY: No one is perfect, and he’s not perfect. He’s a man of some ambition, I think he will admit to that. But he lives his faith, he has a good family life, at least that which we can see. He doesn’t live extravagantly. He’s relatively modest in the way he lives his life, and with him I really believe what you see is what you get.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2 (speaking to Rev. Hunter): I’ve probably trusted God more than I ever have.

Rev. HUNTER: That’s so great.  That is so great.

LAWTON: For Hunter, it all comes down to a simple calculus.

Rev. HUNTER: I think what I do is not so different than anybody else except maybe in different circles, but I just live my life as best I can, and I just pray that I’ll do God some good.

LAWTON: I’m Kim Lawton in Orlando.

Joel Hunter

Q: Tell me about Northland Church. Obviously, it’s grown so quickly. It’s so large. What need do you think the church is meeting? What is the niche that is really filled here?

A: This sounds awful, but I think we’re just a generic church. I think we care about people, we love people, we try to help them in their spiritual life, try to help them in their practical relationships. The thing that’s probably a little bit different is that we’re a distributed church in that we emphasize what goes on outside the building rather than what goes on inside the building, and we want to equip people for living great lives where they are. So we’re constantly trying to get the resources to them in their everyday lives rather than making them come to a building. But we are just one of 300,000 churches in the US and we don’t count ourselves any better or worse. We’re bigger and we’ve really never been able to figure out why. I got the statistics just for this month, and there is 1200 more attending this month this year than there were this month last year. Nobody can figure out why. We are not a “church growth” church. We just try to preach the best we can from Scripture, try to help people where they are in their lives and love them and encourage them—people are desperate for encouragement—and try to help the world get better. And whether that is about community service or it’s about shaping social policy, whatever that’s about, we are trying to make this world more like heaven. Jesus taught us to pray that “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” So that’s what we’re trying to do.

Q: You have also used technology, especially online. Why did you choose to use that route to help minister to more people?

A: Most people don’t really want to go into a church building. They have a very personal relationship with God, and they would rather be in a familiar territory when they worship. This goes a lot for the younger generation. My generation is kind of used to church, doing the “church” thing, but a lot of people aren’t. So when we built this building we built it as a communications device, and the selling point to the congregation was you are not building a building that can just seat 3000 people at a time. We can seat three million people at a time if we have enough broadband, and we have enough people who can gather around a computer screen, worship with others, and so we have people worshipping in Starbucks. We’ve had a person, when it came time to take membership vows, and he had to catch a plane, he was in the airport, he stood up in the airport and took his membership vows because he was online with us and he was going through the worship service with us. So we just wanted to not be geographically limited, and we have partners all over the world, and we don’t want to be culturally limited either, so we will worship with them periodically. We worship with our partners in Egypt or Ukraine or other places, and they do the same. There’s just a lot more of the church now that is using technology to build relationships, because people of my generation—it was important to be in a building together. For people who are 30 years old, that screen is intimacy to them. I mean, that’s a window to them, and there’s nothing artificial to them about that, and so we just wanted to connect with as many people as we could.

Q: Does that change the nature of what happens on Sunday morning, what happens inside the worship service?

A: It does. We are very aware of the congregation that is not in this building. We have several different congregations in buildings around central Florida. We have probably 1200 or 1500 sites around the nation and the world at any given time worshipping with us in the worship service. So when we take Communion we say at the beginning, “Get your Communion elements because we will be taking Communion together.” When we ask for people to contribute, for example, their favorite Scripture on hope, we will have some people in the main headquarters sanctuary, so to speak, but we will have somebody from Germany: “This just in from Christina in Germany, this in from Suzie in South Dakota., this is from…,” and so all of them can participate whether or not they are onsite.

Q: Shifting beyond here and looking at the evangelical world a little more broadly, I’ve heard some people suggest that perhaps evangelicalism is in a bit of identity crisis right now, trying to figure out who they are, where they are going. Do you agree with that characterization?

A: Well, we like to call it growing up. I think there is an ever-maturing identity for evangelicals. I think especially in the political realm we went through a phase more recently when we were known for what we were against rather than what we were for. We were pretty narrow in what we were paying attention to rather than very broad. Now that wasn’t true in Jesus’ time, because Jesus was very broad in what he did, very positive, very loving. And so I think the church in different cultures goes through different phases according to what is happening in that culture. But I do think that evangelicalism is changing, and you will always have people who are just kind of staunch and, you know, mad: “I want to talk about these, and anybody who doesn’t agree with me probably isn’t really, you know, on the mark.” But I think much more of evangelicalism now, especially when you talk about the next generation, really isn’t so bound up with some of the more institutional concerns. They really are saying, “Church? Fine. All the traditional things? Great. But just tell me how I can help. Tell me what I can do to be more like Jesus in world, to love people like he loved them, to serve people like he served them. It’s much more important to me than knowing theological intricacies to be practically of use and of good.” And so I think you’re seeing a maturing of the movement right now.

Q: I want to talk about politics in a minute, but what are the spiritual implications or challenges that go along with that kind of a shift?

A: The spiritual challenge here is that you have to know Scripture well enough to go back to the source and to be able to focus on God instead of an institutional church. Not in lieu of, you know, the institutional church is still valuable. It’s a place of belonging, it’s a place of help, it’s a place of teaching, but having said all that, if your emphasis is following God in your everyday life for the people who are right in front of you, then you’re going to have to have the kind of relationship with God, a personal relationship with God, that doesn’t require a church program in order for you to act. And so along with this maturing of evangelical Christianity, there has to be a more practical kind of education religiously. In other words, it can’t be just “I’ve got to memorize the Apostle’s Creed.” It is, “I’ve got to know in this situation what would Jesus do and I’ve got to take responsibility for doing it.” And so that’s kind of where things are going right now.

Q: Some people are suggesting there is a leadership void compared to previous generations. Do you see that?

A: It’s always tricky when you talk about Protestantism, because we don’t have a pope, you know? And with some of the passing of the old lions—you know, the Billy Graham, Bill Bright, and some these old folks that everybody kind of looked to because they were world-famous leaders—you do have another generation. And, again, with these past few decades people looked at some of the more public faces, the more mobilizing voices, the [Rev. D. James] Kennedys and the Falwells and all of the rest of the folks that really got a lot of media time. What you’re seeing is a very solid group of evangelical leaders developing and kind of a new constituency growing up with a broader agenda. You will never see just one person leading the way, because evangelicals don’t do that. We are much more collaborative in our leadership, much more appreciative of the differences, and we operate well in ambivalence. But what you will see is a new generation of leaders, some of them my age, some of the younger, because they’re gifted, they have great visions, they mobilize great organizations. So that’s what you’re going to see in the years to come.

Q: What are your hopes for Obama’s faith advisory council that you’re a part of?

A: The hopes are very new, because this has just started, just started, so I’m not sure of all of their hopes for this advisory council. I know we have been given four priorities, but there is a larger development here. First of all, I have great respect for the president, and I respect his personal belief in God and his desire to want to do the right thing as far as God is concerned, and I so respect his observation and respect for the largely religious character of this nation and his acknowledgment that you can’t separate that religious character from political life, and so why not try to incorporate it in its breadth, in a broad spectrum, and use the mobilization possibilities to really get people of faith to serve and improve the nation? So I love that. That’s what I would hope for this particular advisory council—that we could work on a broad policy agenda that would mobilize people to actualize their faith. Now as a pastor, see, I always want to be of spiritual encouragement to someone, so I hope that along the way I could be of encouragement to the president’s spiritual life, because that’s what a pastor does. That’s what we care about. But beyond that I’m very excited about working with a very broad spectrum of people to see how our faith communities can really solve the problems, or help solve the problems of this country. The problems of this country and of the world are way too big for a government to solve, and way too big for faith communities to solve. We have to partner together, and if we can do it in ways that don’t blur the lines between the institutions of religion and government, and that’s very important, the institutions, I say, you know, not the individuals, because those lines are already blurred, but we’ve got to watch the boundaries of church and state. Those are very important. But there is so much that can be done. I mean, 99 percent of the stuff that we do can be done without even going near the boundaries of church and state, because they can be personal, they can be community-based, they can be faith-based individually, and for us to feel like we’re a part of solving the countries problems when we are in such deep weeds right now as a country, I mean economically, there’s so many people hurting economically, there’s so many people who are confused about the kind of lifestyle questions and the kind of cultural wars going on. If we can be called into service, then we cannot only help the country, we can help the church mature. This isn’t just about helping the country. The church needs to mature itself. Sometimes I think people think the church can save the country, when really some types of political responsibility can help save the church from just dabbling in religious intricacies.

Q: Is there a danger, though, that being in an official capacity, even though I understand it’s not government employment, could in some way blunt or make one reluctant to perhaps be prophetic or to, as people say, speak truth to power? I’ve had a conversation with someone who says no pastor or priest should be a part of something like that because then he or she can’t really speak the truth to these people.

A: Well, I agree that no coward should ever be part of something like this, but the president has made it very clear—and this is another thing I like about him—he is not looking for “yes” people here. He’s looking for people on this council that will have a prophetic voice, and all of us made the agreement that we would not be on the council unless we could be blunt-honest about the dangers we saw, about what was not going right, and what we had real problems with, and probably what we couldn’t participate in. And so there’s not only a permission to be prophetic, there’s a desire to hear that voice, because when that voice gets raised it’s not just your voice; it’s the constituency you come from, and any political leader, if he’s honest, and if he wants what he’s going to do to last, is going to have to hear what constituencies have to say, not just what people in his office will say in order to get into his good graces. So that is a danger, absolutely. But we’ve addressed that, and we will continue to address that.

Q: I interviewed some years ago a clergy member who was close to the Clintons. During a difficult time he was brought in as a spiritual advisor, and he was candid about sitting in the Oval Office and having the leader of the free world talk to him, and it’s pretty heady stuff, and I’m wondering if you’re at all concerned about being pulled into that in a way that might change you in some way or have an effect on you.

A: Yeah, you’re always concerned about that. I mean, if you are human and you realize the position of power that this person has, then you are aware that this is an honor, this is a privilege, I mean, to be in the Oval Office, to walk in there and to look at that desk where the presidents have just signed these tremendous bills and have changed—and all the people that have been in that Oval Office. There’s a sense of history, and I was a history and government major, and so there’s a real sense of privilege. However, you say all that, you can say all that, and you’ve got to realize what happens with me personally, I just don’t take myself that seriously. I mean, I don’t feel like I’m somebody that’s got that much power, or there’s nothing else I want to get to, you know, I’m going to be a pastor for the rest of my life. There’s nothing I have to lose. Here’s a guy that’s going to be there eight years at the longest, you know? And so the idea here that goes through my mind is this is not the person that I’m going to be answering to. That’s a way higher thing, and on Judgment Day when I stand before God I’m going to have to answer to what I’ve said. If I didn’t do things according to how I read them in Scripture, if I didn’t voice the truth in love as I saw it in Scripture, then I’m in judgment, I’m in trouble on Judgment Day for my works, not for my sins those have been paid for by Christ, but for my works, so that’s the accountability that I have, and for those of us that—you know, most of the people in that room have been in positions of authority for a long time. That’s why we’re in that room, and so we’re not quite as intimidated as—I mean, we’re used to talking with people in authority, we’re used to having phone conversations where you get off the phone and you go, how did I get to be in this place that I just had that conversation? So it’s not quite as intimidating as it might be, as it might seem, but yet you’ve got to watch yourself, and I have to keep saying, “Lord, this is for you. I’m here to do your work. I’m here to be a voice for the gospel as well as I can,” and if that gets me off the council in a record time, then I’m off the council in a record time.

Q: How do you stay spiritually grounded to have that kind of strength or fortitude?

A: Well, first of all it’s important for me every day to spend a good deal of time in Scripture and in prayer. That’s kind of like the, you know, I do the—physically I work out every day, you know, so I can stay healthy. Spiritually that keeps me healthy; it keeps me oriented in the right direction. Secondly, I’m surrounded by people who tell me the truth. My wife tells me the truth, but my wife is my biggest fan. She doesn’t tell me the truth to take me down a peg or two. She just thinks I hung the moon. I have no idea why she thinks that. She’s fooled herself all of these years, and I’m not telling her anything different. But the point is that I don’t have to seek approval of other people. I’ve got a wonderful family, my wife and my kids and our grandkids, so it’s not that I’m looking for something else, and when you are satisfied with the love that you have, when you realize that you walk in the grace of God, when you realize that your family is just as crazy about you and you’re crazy about your family, then it’s fairly simple not to take yourself so seriously and have to be a world-changer and get all distracted with all of these grandiose ideals and ideas. You can just get up every day and do what’s right with what’s right in front of you, help out whoever you can, and go to bed every night and sleep like a baby, and so that’s just—I think I’ve got a life like anybody else. I think what I do is not so different than anybody else, except maybe in different circles, but I just live my life as best I can, and I just pray that I’ll do God some good.

Q: You’ve been active in some interfaith circles. I know you’ve worked on Islamic-US issues and other interfaith things. How do you relate across religious lines, offering respect to people you differ with theologically without in some way compromising your own faith or what you believe to be truth? How do you walk that line? A lot of people have a hard time figuring out how to do that.

A: First of all, it’s fairly simple to maintain respect and even admiration when you get to know people. I love these guys, I really do. I mean these other faith leaders, as I listen to them I’m much more fascinated in listening to their stories and their perspectives. I need their perspectives to get a fuller picture of who God is as a Christian, I mean, because it’s not like God is absent or God has somehow avoided Muslims or Jews or all the rest of these folks. They have a faith that I think appreciates a side of God that I could find in Christianity, but I see it more readily when I’m with them. So in a way they are a spiritual mentor to me. Having said that, though, Christianity is a faith of relationships, of a personal relationship with God made possible through Jesus Christ and his sacrifice, so therefore, as I have these relationships with other faith leaders, as they get closer, we are very free in talking about what we believe and about—I am more free many times in talking in about what Christ has done for me and about what price he paid on the cross for all people with another religious leader who wants to hear what I want to say. He doesn’t want me to tip-toe around it; he wants me to be honest. I’m sometimes more free with a person like that than I am with a person in an elevator where he may have been a Christian a long time ago, and my eye starts twitching when I start talking about it. So the point here is that the better relationship you build, the more free you are to share with people what you really believe, and then you let God take care of the rest. It’s not my job to convert people, you know? Only God can move in the spirit to change somebody’s heart and establish a relationship. I can’t do that, so I don’t have to worry about it. I just love them and serve them as best I can, and we swap stories, and I leave the rest to God.

Q: How serious do you think the issues of these interfaith relations are in our world today?

A: I think they are absolutely critical for the future. I cannot picture a long-lasting peace without religious leaders having actual relationship together and caring about one another, because if all you have are these tender and vulnerable treaties, you know, these diplomatic papers, and you still have a bunch of people at these grass roots or a bunch of religious leaders that not only distrust people who are different but that are angry at people who are different, then that peace isn’t going to last very long at all, and we’ll never be able to cooperate in solving some of the larger problems of the world. However, if faith leaders and ultimately people of different faiths can serve together, can get to know each other on a personal basis, can appreciate each other as a person and as a person of faith, I’m telling you, that will move the ball down the field when it comes to world peace. So I just don’t see long-lasting peace in any section of the world happening without faith-based community relationships, interfaith relationships.

Q: What have you learned from your relationships, especially with Muslims, which has been a particularly tense one in our country?

A: Yeah, it has, and I have such a deep appreciation for my relationships with Muslim leaders. First of all, they are very honest about what they think and about—Christians by and large are scared to death of Muslims. But Muslims have at least been trained as to respect Jesus. They believe Jesus was a prophet. They believe in the virgin birth. They believe in many of the issues, and so for many Muslims it’s good to talk with a Christian. What are we scared about here? In this culture, we have been so slanted by the association of Islam with terrorism that we’re very reluctant to have that conversation. So every conversation I get in, it’s really one of respect. Muslims have a tremendous reverence for God, tremendous reverence for God, and I love that, and they have—they really want to know what you think, and how we can work together, and what are we afraid of here? So I have built several very close relationships in the Muslim world, a very close relationship with an imam here in town. He’s one of my very good friends. We do a lot together. I love him, and I love his family. The same ob-gyn delivers his babies that deliver my grandbabies. We’ve just got this relationship. So basically what I’ve learned is we’re trying to love God as best we can, and we’re trying to work together to love other people.

Q: We have footage of a recycling event your church has done, and I know this has been an issue for you quite some time—creation care. I am wondering if you are seeing with the evangelical world a greater embrace of this issue. For a long time there just seemed to be a real reluctance to get involved. Are you seeing that change, and have you felt that impact?

A: There is a change. Again, this may have to be a generational change, but we’re talking more and more with leaders. We just hosted an event last week of evangelical leaders here addressing just exactly that challenge. There’s two problems here. First of all, people are generally ignorant about the science. All they hear are the sound bites on the radio and the sound bites on the television, and they have been linking this issue with a political agenda rather than an actual consensus of science, and so many evangelical Christians are reluctant to see this as a consensus, so there’s a lot of teaching that needs to be done. The second problem is people really don’t address a problem until it’s an emergency, and so they’ll look out the window and say, “Man, it really looks cold out there. Must not be global warming, you know?” And they’ll read this stuff that says coldest January on record and say pshaw, and so instead of understanding this is not about global warming, it’s about global weirding, about the nonlinear effects of climate change, and there are very many new nuances of climate change and understanding the interaction of a very complex system, but yet the ultimate and undeniable effect that this is going to have on the poor—they just kind of brush it off, so we have our work laid out for us. But I do believe that, again, this administration is going to be helpful because they take the problem seriously, and maybe as more and more leaders acknowledge the problem the general population will, too, but in the evangelical world we’re still having a push back.

Q: Our show did a survey which found that larger numbers of younger evangelicals do see things like the environment and poverty as pro-life issues.

A: Exactly. Again, this goes along with expanding the issue, not in lieu of, not denying the others. Pro-life is very important and will always remain in the foreseeable future a central issue for me and other evangelical leaders. But to expand the pro-life movement to the life outside the womb, to understand that 5,000 children under five die every day from poverty-related causes, directly related to poverty, that’s a pro-life issue; to understand that AIDS is a pro-life issue; to understand that climate change, to understand that even in some instances our issues with immigration, all these other issues, certainly peace, world peace—pro-life issues. These should be just as important to us, those lives should be just as important to us as the baby in the womb, and so we just have to expand that picture.

Q: I want to ask you about your prayer at the Democratic Convention. The issue is always whether or not to pray in Jesus’ name, and you chose to work around that. What kind of reaction did you get?

A: Oh, on the one side I had a wonderful encouragement, especially from non-Christians and from many Christians who understood what I was doing. I got raked over the coals with a lot of Christians because I didn’t hijack the prayer and only pray it for Christians. But as I explained, several things: first of all, we did get, the Christians got to say “in Jesus’ name,” so we didn’t deny anybody that, and if you were there the stadium was booming with that. By the same token, to make somebody or to cow somebody to silence as you pray in Jesus’ name, or to somehow make them seem like they’re praying in Jesus’ name, is really a sacrilege because only Christians can pray in Jesus’ name. It’s in the power of Jesus, so it’s the wrong way to use that ending. If you’re serious about it you can’t use it asking people who don’t believe it to say it. Ultimately, the greatest thing about this was that not only was it a prayer appropriate for a public venue where people had different faith traditions, but my wife sat beside a lady on a plane on the way back, and she said, “Your husband was the one who said that prayer?” and she said “Yeah.” She said, “I was so shocked that an evangelical would respect those of us, I’m an atheist, but I was so shocked that an evangelical would actually respect me enough not to make me go there and not hijack that prayer.” And Becky said, because she’s just really interested in people, “Tell me about what you believe, tell me why you’re an atheist.” Well, they talked for the whole plane ride, and by the time the plane landed the lady goes, “I live 30 minutes from your church. Give me your address, and I’m going to show up just to check it out.” Well, I mean, just the—this isn’t about who gets converted, this is about someone feeling respected enough that they would give a window in their life, as it was very apparent from the beginning of that conversation that she wanted nothing to do with the evangelicals, but because I had respected her then there’s some openness to say, well, maybe we can have a relationship. That was wonderful.

Q: As you’ve done interviews and gotten more attention, people around the country are getting to know you. I’m wondering what you feel people don’t know about you that you wish they did, as they’re making judgments and assumptions?

A: You know, I don’t—I have no desire for people to really know who I am. I’m an—you wouldn’t believe this, but I’m an introvert. I could spend all day in a library and just be perfectly content, as long as my wife was one stack over. These things really stretch me, you know. I feel like I’m put here for a reason, but I’m not a very self-revealing person. I just do what I can, and there’s really not much there to know, honestly. I’m just real simple. I get up every day and I eat and I study and I talk to people and I try to help where I can, so there’s not much to find out.

Mark Pinsky

Q: Let’s start with Northland. To what do you attribute its huge growth?

A: I attribute it truly to Joel Hunter and his charisma; also his ability to understand what his congregation was and what it could be, which is to say a suburban, middle-class brand of modern evangelicalism.

Q: How did he meet that need? How did he try to attract those people?

A: Joel Hunter had a message, a fairly consistent message before he came here, but over time I think he fine-tuned that message the more he got to know his people, who his people were and the things that were important to them, which is why I think he began to broaden the agenda of the things he talked about in the wider world.

Q: What are some of the things he stressed that really attracted those suburban folks?

A: I think he understood that there came a time in the ’90s where evangelicals were looking for a more moderate voice, a more centrist voice, and a voice that looked at the larger issues in the world than just issues of gender and sexuality.

Q: But that’s not to say he’s a liberal—

A: Not at all, not at all. You can tick him off on all the key issues. I mean, he’s against gay marriage, he’s against special rights for gay people, he’s against abortion. But at the same time, having said that, he says that there are other issues that engage both the people of his congregation and evangelicals more broadly.

Q: And what are some of those issues?

A: He’s been a chief advocate, an early adapter with regards to the whole green issue—greenhouse gas emissions. He got into that issue very early, studied it, and came to believe it is really one of the pressing issues of our age in a sense, a moral issue as well as an environmental issue.

Q: We have footage of a big recycling event at his church, where he had people bring in computers and other hard-to-recycle things to church. Talk a little bit more about how that environmental issue turned out to be a theological issue for him.

A: It did. He was a person who early on accepted the whole idea that environmentalism—that could be described as something called “creation care,” that you could be religious and evangelical and also be an environmentalist even if you were uncomfortable with the term “environmentalist.” He learned a lot. He travels all over the world. He goes to conferences. He reads very deeply and broadly, and Hunter found that this was an issue that could engage his congregants both on the ground, in the congregation, where they live, with all these recycling events, but also it represents a broader global issue, that if you act on a local level it can have an impact globally, because of the whole thinning of the environment, the thinning of the ozone level, that people could connect what they did in their daily lives with issues that face the entire world.

Q: Certainly evangelicals are known for the impulse to share their faith, to convert. Does he do that? Is he upfront about that?

A: He is an evangelical in the sense that he always shares his faith. He doesn’t push it into people’s faces. He’s a very subtle person, and I think you would probably include him in that group that does their evangelizing by example, which is to say by modeling their own behavior and their own message. They believe that will draw people who are unchurched, who are not in faith, to their faith and their flavor of evangelicalism.

Q: And it seems like he’s been fairly successful at it.

A: He has. The congregation has grown and grown and grown through his leadership. His sermons are great. He’s a very entertaining speaker, he has a great sense of humor, he puts people at ease, and I think that accounts for the growth. The growth of the congregation has not been entirely steady. As he has become more prominent and spoken out on a variety of issues, he has lost people, and he acknowledges that. But he says, “I am a leader, and I accept the consequences of my leadership, and it may be that I will lose some people.” But because he’s a pastor, even of a megachurch, he understands where his people are. So he knows he can get out in front of them, but not too far out in front of them. Not so far out in front of them that he is actually losing people in a dramatic matter. People will trust you even if they don’t agree with every single issue that you speak on.

Q: One of the hallmarks of his church has been its use of the Internet and Web-casting the service. He seemed to bypass the whole televangelist mode and go straight online.

A: Hunter’s been an early adapter both in issues and technology. In a way, he’s kind of a techie guy, because he grasped the impact of the Internet and how that would enable them to reach other congregations and expand without building bigger buildings especially. So he began locally, and there are a number of satellite services in the central Florida area. But then he’s gone as far as Cairo and Europe and Africa, and he understands that it is a fairly low-cost way of sharing his faith and growing the congregation into a worldwide congregation.

Q: He’s also achieved some prominence recently in the political world. Talk about to the extent to which he’s all of a sudden become a new voice in the political-religious world as well.

A: Hunter’s done much in the political world, as he’s done in the theological world, which is to say he supported Mike Huckabee in the Republican primary and was a real booster of Huckabee. Yet at the same time he’s a very engaging, moderate guy who says, “I have Democrats and Republicans in my congregation, and there’s no reason if we want to make common cause on these issues, on public policy, why we can’t reach out to every one.” And so he’s made himself available to the Democrats as well as to the Republicans, and he has sufficient credentials both in his congregation and nationally that he could do that without serious consequence to his base.

Q: But there has been some controversy. He prayed at the Democratic Convention, and now he’s on Obama’s faith council. Is this sitting well with everybody in the Republican evangelical world?

A: Not at all, but there’s a seismic struggle going on for leadership in the evangelical world, and he has planted his flag with more moderate, centrist, broader agenda evangelicals like Rick Warren, for example, and once he makes his decision he doesn’t back down, and he has the kind of self-confidence that good leaders have. They know where their constituency is, or where their constituency will be before too long. So if James Dobson or Richard Land or other of these sort of “Old Bulls” of the evangelical movement criticize him he doesn’t really care, because his primary constituency is still his megachurch, which is why these people who are moving into leadership tend to be megachurch pastors rather than heads of ministries or national broadcasting groups. They are rooted in where there people are. Their base is secure.

Q: You mentioned a little bit earlier some people were leaving the congregation. Why?

A: Well, these are people who are more traditional, more conservative evangelicals who believe in the more narrow agenda of sexuality and gender. They’re also uncomfortable with some of the allies that Joel Hunter has made. He believes in making coalitions on an issue-by-issue basis, and that puts them together with—sometimes—with people who support abortion rights, for example. On greenhouse gas emissions you make common cause with those people. Hunter is easy with that. He’s self-confident, and he says, “This is what we believe. We can make common cause with people we don’t always believe.” But there are people in the evangelical movement both in his congregation and nationally who won’t do that, who won’t sit down at the table with people they don’t agree with on other issues.

Q: To what extent does he in some ways embody this controversy that’s going on for leadership and maybe the direction of evangelicalism and how that’s going to interact with the culture?

A: Well, as the older leaders of the evangelical movement, the heads of ministries and broadcasting groups, age and die, there is a struggle for leadership over the evangelical movement, and there is a group, of which Joel Hunter is a major part, which believes that evangelicals are now primarily a middle-class suburban movement that they ought to engage in the broader discussion. They should lower the volume on their rhetoric, so they are more center right than far right, they are less strident, they are more moderate, they believe in a broader agenda, and they tend to be 10 or 15 years younger than the group they would like to supplant or succeed. They also tend to be megachurch pastors, and they believe in a whole spectrum of issues and not being so scary to most Americans, and Joel Hunter is not scary to most Americans. No one would accuse him of being a holy roller, for example. He’s really kind of a buttoned-down evangelical who believes in the base issues of evangelicalism but in his style and at the edges really broadens the appeal. I think he sensed that there was a time during the Bush years when most of America was getting kind of antsy about evangelicals, in their view, pushing the rest of America around. He understood that, and he said we need to ratchet down a little bit the tone of the discussion.

Q: How is he regarded in the central Florida community?

A: I think he’s well regarded. We had a generational shift in our community, where a number of the pastors at the main megachurches retired, primarily, and as that changed he stepped into leadership. He didn’t force his way, but Northland is a big church. It’s one of the biggest churches in this area, and as these older, more influential local pastors retired, at that point Hunter stepped forward and helped fill the vacuum, so he’s a pretty prominent evangelical in the central Florida area.

Q: Some Americans had never heard of him, and all of the sudden they saw him at the Democratic National Convention. Now they see him hanging out with Obama, being part of his faith council—

A: Or sitting next to Muhammad Ali on the inaugural platform

Q: Exactly. He’s all of a sudden got this national platform. What do you think people should know about him as they’re just getting introduced to him?

A: I think he’s a very sincere person. I’ve been covering the evangelical movement for close to 20 years now, and I see the cracks and the flaws, have seen them over the years. No one is perfect, and he’s not perfect. He’s a man of some ambition, I think he will admit to that, but he lives his faith, he has a good family life, at least that which we can see. He doesn’t live extravagantly, he’s relatively modest in the way he lives his life, and with him I really believe what you see is what you get. At the same time he is ambitious he’s also modest, and he puts people at ease. He makes people feel good when they listen to him. He makes people want to be better people, I think, in his sermons. That’s the kind of sermonizer he is, and he’s a short guy, relatively speaking, and he’s not intimidating in that sense.

Q: As he steps more and more onto the national scene, what are the challenges he might face?

A: I think if he steps too far too fast that’s always a problem. If he flies too close to the sun his wings will melt, I think. But he’s a very careful person, and he’s made these moves step by step. He could reach too far. He could try to take the coalition further than it wants to let him go. We have the example of Richard Cizik, who was in that cohort of younger leaders, more moderate leaders, and he misspoke or said something he really believed in an arena he really should not have done so, as far as evangelicals are concerned, and he gave his enemies an opportunity to chop off his head. I think that’s probably the greatest risk that Joel Hunter faces, that he will reach too far in a coalition or reach out perhaps to someone or some group that evangelicals think are wrong.

Q: Say a little more about his episode with the Christian Coalition.

A: Even when Hunter seems to misstep, it’s not really a misstep. When he took the job at the Christian Coalition I think he understood that he was taking a risk for the things that he supported, so that even though he did not take that job—eventually he was forced out—he really won, because the issues on which he lost his job were the right issues as far as the coming evangelical movement is concerned. He’s where evangelicalism was going, even if he wasn’t where the Christian Coalition was going. They couldn’t adapt to him, and ultimately I think they will or they’ll fold.

Q: We talked a little bit about how he’s regarded in the community, but let’s speak specifically about the interfaith world. He has been involved in some interfaith dialogue, and I know that he has been involved in some Muslim dialogue overseas, but also there’s a strong Jewish community here in Florida. How is he regarded among other faith groups?

A: The previous leaders of the evangelical and the Christian community more broadly here were not all that big on interfaith dialogue, and as they left the scene and as Hunter assumed his role as a local leader he was at the forefront of reaching out to other faiths, whereas in the past evangelicals only spoke to each other. They didn’t even speak to the mainliners, but with Hunter he not only speaks with the mainliners, he speaks with the Muslims and the Jews. He’s been very out front. He’s made common cause with our Catholic bishop on immigration reform and lowering the tone of rhetoric in the previous presidential campaign, whereas our Protestant leaders before that would never have reached out to the Catholic bishop, and so he’s reached out to other Christians, non-evangelicals, and to Muslims and to Jews and to Hindus in a way that’s really set a new tone for the religious community locally.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Next Thursday, February 12, is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, and there will be many celebrations of his achievements. It’s also the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin, and this year is the 150th anniversary of his transforming book “On the Origin of Species.” We have a special report today on Darwin’s theory of evolution. That insight is almost universally accepted by scientists. But it directly contradicts the Bible’s creation story, and so it remains under attack by many people of faith. Indeed, Americans are almost evenly divided between those who accept Darwin’s theory and those who do not. Why is evolution still such a controversial idea? Fred de Sam Lazaro reports.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: In the 1830s Darwin collected data on the vast variety of living things while he was a naturalist with the British navy on a five-year trip around the world. He later theorized that the earth was very old — that all life had evolved from simple organisms to the most complex. It followed that all humankind had evolved from a single ape-like ancestor. Kenneth Miller is a professor at Brown University.

Professor Kenneth Miller

Professor KENNETH MILLER (Division of Biology and Medicine, Brown University): Evolution is a great idea, but it’s also a dangerous idea. It’s an idea that threatens people’s understanding of the way things are, and for a century and a half people who are bothered by that idea have never stopped hoping that Darwin might turn out to be spectacularly, colossally, totally and completely wrong.

DE SAM LAZARO: Francis Collins is an evangelical Christian who led the Human Genome Project to decipher the genetic code.

Dr. FRANCIS COLLINS (Geneticist): There is no greater flashpoint right now in the tensions between science and faith than evolution. Ever since Darwin’s “Origin of the Species” was published that tension has been flaring, and it seems, in my view, to be getting almost worse even after all of these years.

DE SAM LAZARO: Over many years of debate, people who accepted without question the Bible’s account of God’s creation, those sometimes called creationists, said Darwin’s theory was heresy. Loren Haarsma teaches physics at Calvin College in Michigan and is the author of a new book called “Origins.”

Professor LOREN HAARSMA (Physics and Astronomy Department, Calvin College): Many people are raised to believe a certain interpretation of Genesis, which is mostly literal, not completely literal, but implies a young Earth, and most people when they hear the Genesis story of God creating everything, they picture God miraculously creating everything.

DE SAM LAZARO: For come Christians, evolution came to be a synonym for atheism.

Prof. HAARSMA: There are Christians who agree that evolution equals atheism, and since they believe in God, since they’re convinced that God is real from their experiences of reading the Bible and worship, prayer, if God is true they conclude evolution must be false. So that idea that you have to choose between evolution or God is, I think, the main source of the problem — the main reason why this issue keeps coming up over and over again.

Professor Matthew Hamilton

DE SAM LAZARO: Some scientists also say part of the problem is misunderstanding about the meaning of the word “theory.” Matthew Hamilton teaches at Georgetown University.

Professor MATTHEW HAMILTON (Georgetown University): That word theory is used very differently in common parlance.  e might say something like, “Well, in theory I’m supposed to leave work early today,” and that would be a way of saying, “Well, I hope or I approximately think that this might be true.” But in science a theory is not a guess.

DE SAM LAZARO: For scientists, a theory is a testable explanation of how things work, based on observations and measurements. They say Darwin’s overall theory is the best explanation for the facts, although there do remain some unexplained gaps in the evidence.

Prof. HAARSMA: There are certain Christians who point to those areas and say, “Ah, here’s scientific evidence against evolution.” Scientists are worried about including too much emphasis on the gaps and the unknowns as a way of getting students to simply throw the whole theory out and say, “Ah, well, now I have a reason not to believe it.”

It’s easy to see how evolution can produce variation, how it can produce adaptation to environments. But can it really make more complex life forms? That’s an ongoing area of research. That’s one of those places where we have a gap in our knowledge. We have hints, we have ideas, we have hypotheses. We don’t have a lot of proofs.

The other big unknown, of course, is how did the first life start, and that’s the biggest question of all. Scientists are very far from a robust scientific explanation for how the first living cell came about, and so opponents of evolution point to that and say maybe that’s a place where there was a miracle.

Professor Loren Haarsma

DE SAM LAZARO: Evolution critics use what they see as flaws in the evidence in their continuing but losing campaign to have creationism taught in the schools alongside evolution.
More than 20 years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that creationism could not be taught in science classes, that it was more religion than science, that teaching it in public schools would cross the line of separation between church and state. So creationists turned to other arguments.

(From video): There is, in fact, no entity in the known universe that stores and processes more information more efficiently than the DNA molecule.

DE SAM LAZARO: One of them was that some forms of life are so complex that they must have been designed by an intelligent designer. That was at the heart of testimony in Dover, Pennsylvania.

RICHARD THOMPSON (President and Chief Counsel, Thomas More Law Center, Ann Arbor, MI):  We are going to argue that intelligent design is science, it’s not religion.

DE SAM LAZARO: But a federal judge ruled that Intelligent Design is not science and so should not be taught in science classes. This year the battle shifted to Texas, where creationists want the state board of education to continue its longstanding requirement that students examine the “strengths and weaknesses” of all scientific theories including evolution.

STEPHEN C. MEYER (Director and Senior Fellow, Center for Science and Culture Discovery Institute, speaking before Board of Education): Teaching students about the strength and weaknesses of theories will engage their interest and turn a dry recitation of facts and propositions into an educational adventure.

Professor RONALD WETHERINGTON (Anthropology Department, Southern Methodist University, speaking before Board of Education): And I challenge anybody to show me or anyone else specific, identified details on the weaknesses of evolution. Nobody has.

DE SAM LAZARO: Despite the extremes of argument, many people of faith who are also scientists insist that evolution and religious belief need not conflict. For instance, they say God can work through evolution.

Dr. Francis Collins

Prof. HAARSMA: I think Christians are very — even Christians who oppose the theory of evolution — are comfortable saying God works through natural, scientifically understandable processes. If the majority of Christians could come to the place where they say, “I might or might not believe in evolution, but it’s OK for Christians to believe in evolution,” that would take some of the weight off. On the other side, it would be very helpful if science educators could find better ways to discuss how different religious views might view evolution.

Dr. COLLINS: If God, who is outside space and time, chose to create a universe and populate it with creatures in his image with whom he could have fellowship, who are we to say that the process that we as scientists have uncovered — the Big Bang, the formation of stars and planets and the mechanism of evolution to create life and ultimately human life — is not the way we would have done it? I find that enormously satisfying. Nothing that I know as a scientist is in contradiction to that. Nothing that I know as a believer is in contradiction to that.

DE SAM LAZARO: Meanwhile, the debate continues, creationists versus evolutionists. Next month, the Texas board of education will decide whether the state’s new science curriculum should continue to require discussion in science classes of the strengths and weaknesses of Darwin’s idea. The vote is expected to be close.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro.