360° in 180–England Before Darwin: A History of Biblical Compromises (Part 29)

Early that cool March morning, I hobbled through Paris as a hapless hobo in hiking boots, pausing every half block to rest the ridiculously heavy grocery bag I carried in the hand I’d wrapped an old fleece around for padding. The locals just looked at me and kept going. I guess they’re used to alpacas.

After a quarter century or so, I dragged my luggage across the threshold of my destination, the international bus station. I only had one country left to visit on this mission to backpack 360° around the world in 180 days documenting Christian students’ university experiences. And it was the country which, in a sense, lay behind my reason for starting this whole adventure in the first place.

The Epicenter of Evolutionary Thought

If you’ve been reading this blog series for long, you’ll know I began this mission to investigate how Christian students keep their faith while being taught unbiblical ideas as fact—especially ideas about human evolution over millions of years. As countless other articles have explained, this idea is not only incompatible with a consistent biblical worldview but it’s also detrimental to society,1 to the Church, and to sharing the gospel. After all, if human evolution were true, then Genesis 1–11 (not to mention the major biblical doctrines ultimately founded in Genesis 1–11 . . . which are all of them2) must be mythical. And why would an intellectually honest non-Christian want to believe a Book founded in myth? Why would anyone growing up in the church keep believing it?

For these reasons, I’d been traveling to learn what’s helping Christian students who haven’t left their faith, even while learning evolutionary (or otherwise unbiblical) ideas at university. And now, my MGB and I were bussing to the country where the Western popularization of evolution began: England.

England’s influential history of placing man’s word above God’s runs much, much deeper

It’s no secret that the writings of English naturalist Charles Darwin catalyzed Western civilizations’ widespread departure from Christianity. Darwin’s hypotheses gave people a seemingly scientific reason to reject God’s Word and follow their own rules instead—a fatal mistake mankind has been making since Eden. Unfortunately, many churchgoers also felt obliged to trust man’s ideas over God’s Word by compromising Scripture with humanistic beliefs like evolution. Darwin’s explosive ideas ignited the widespread departure from God’s Word like never before, with consequences which rippled out from England and around the world. And yet, England’s influential history of placing man’s word above God’s runs much, much deeper than that. To see how, we’ll have to step back in history.

England’s Past3

The first instances of people mixing God’s Word with man’s ideas in England trace back to the earliest centuries after Christ. In those days, Roman traders helped bring the account of Jesus to Britain—along with many false stories of pagan deities. Christianity did begin growing in Britain as a minority worldview, but when the Romans left in 410 AD, invading Saxons paganized much of Eastern Britain again. Augustine of Canterbury, a missionary monk, helped convert thousands of Anglo-Saxons to Catholicism. However, an 8th-century theologian and historian lamented that many Anglo-Saxons had syncretized church teachings with paganism.4

In between Viking invasions, England continued to remain Catholic until well into Henry VIII’s reign, at least a decade after Luther ignited the Protestant Reformation. Originally, Henry VIII had publicly opposed Luther’s mission to call the Church back to God’s Word (rather than extrabiblical church traditions) as humanity’s truth authority. The king changed his mind, not because he realized his need to make God’s Word the foundation for his thinking, but because he wanted a divorce. The Pope wouldn’t grant one, so Henry VIII established his own denomination, the Church of England.

Squelching any doubts that the king’s motives might have been biblical, he practiced the distinctly unbiblical exercise of executing ideological dissidents. But at least by the end of his son’s reign (Edward VI), English Bibles were available in churches—until Edward’s half-sister, Mary, reinstated Catholicism and began burning Protestants at the stake. From there on, England’s official denomination oscillated with the political tide, making “Christianity” less about standing on God’s Word than about government allegiances, appearances, and traditions.

Meanwhile, rejecting God’s Word in favour of human reasoning became even more fashionable with the rising “Enlightenment” movement. Biblical interpretations of science became faux pas, and many who did claim to believe in God were not Christians, but Deists.5 English culture kept a religious veneer, but drifted so far from the authority of God’s Word in everyday life that by the 18th century, as Christian biographer Eric Metaxas has noted,

Britain was particularly brutal, decadent, violent and vulgar. Slavery was only the worst of a host of societal evils that included epidemic alcoholism, child prostitution, child labor, frequent public executions for petty crimes, public dissections and burnings of executed criminals, and unspeakable public cruelty to animals.6

It was amidst this decidedly unbiblical culture that a young politician named William Wilberforce made a scandalous decision: he became a passionate, Bible-believing Christ follower. It was his stance on biblical authority that drove him to champion abolition and social reform, changing not only Western culture but the entire world. He wrote, “It must be conceded by those who admit the authority of Scripture . . . that from the decision of the word of God there can be no appeal.”7

Wilberforce understood that moral decline in society flows from making man’s word the authority instead of God’s, for (to quote a modern paraphrase of Wilberforce’s book, Real Christianity) he observed:

What is good is only a matter of opinion in secular society. Using society’s own standard of goodness, careful observation of the bigger picture may reveal that a particular good has been outweighted by general evil. When a society defines its own morality and then applies it to itself, that society can justify its own serious breaches of character. It is able to lower the standard to the detriment of all.8

On the other hand, Wilberforce also noted, “What a difference, if our system of morality were based on the Bible instead of the standards devised by cultural Christians.”9 And yet, even in his century, Wilberforce lamented how few professing Christians really founded their lives on the Bible, observing,

We turn from (Scripture) coldly, or at best profess it negligibly, as a thing of no estimation. . . . is it not undeniable that with the Bible in our houses, we are ignorant of its contents; and hence, in a great measure, it arises, that the bulk of the Christian world know so little, and mistake so greatly, in what regards the religion they profess?10

Think of the culture Darwin entered: so many people considered “religion” a lifeless shell of politicized traditions, “God” a Deist fudge factor subservient to naturalistic interpretations of science, and the Bible an ornamental dust-collector.

Enter, Charles Darwin

Twenty-four years before Wilberforce died, another world-changer, Charles Darwin, was born. Think of the culture Darwin entered,11 where so many people considered “religion” a lifeless shell of politicized traditions; “God” a Deist fudge factor subservient to naturalistic interpretations of science; and the Bible an ornamental dust-collector. Even many 19th-century British theologians had unfortunately already been reinterpreting God’s Word for decades to try accommodating human interpretations of science (especially geological long ages, upon which Darwinism depends).12 Is it ultimately any shock that Darwin’s hypotheses swept through his native culture—and many of its churches—like wildfire?

Arguably, Darwinism spread through England so efficiently because England had no deep-set foundation on biblical authority in the first place. And any idea that overtakes an empire like 19th-century England is destined to create ripples worldwide. Those ripples soon reached a culture which did begin with a foundation on biblical authority—America, settled by Puritans who ironically left England to build lives on Scripture. America’s original biblical foundation is presumably why her slide into secularism, while still rapid, is less far along than England’s. For instance, while 39% of American 18–29-year-olds identified as Protestants in 2019,13 as of 2018, only 2% of 16–29-year-olds in the UK considered themselves Protestant, while 70% considered themselves non-religious.14

Evolution and Education in the UK

Presumably, England’s high rates of youth non-religiosity reflect the nation’s school systems. In 2007, the UK Department of Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) stated that creationism and intelligent design have “no scientific underpinnings” and must not be taught as science in the National Curriculum.15 (In other words, as a Humanist guide to British religious education16 has pointed out, teaching anything but evolution is illegal in all state schools.)

The DCSF also encouraged teachers to use students’ questions about creation as opportunities to discuss why evolution, but not creation or intelligent design, is “a scientific theory.”17 Even so, the year before the DCSF statement’s release, an opinion poll revealed that 40% of Britons believed creation and intelligent design should be included in science curricula.18 While this poll suggested that “only” 48% of Britons believe in evolutionary origins, more recent research found that a mere 2% do not believe in long geologic ages and human evolution.19

What a Christian Student in the UK Said

So, what do Christian students in the UK say about following Christ in such a scripturally compromised culture? I had just one full day in Britain to search for students, and met only one—ironically, a graduate student from Canada. When I asked about her advice for other Christian students, she pointed to students’ need for spiritual foundations, simply saying, “Pray. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you become more sensitive to His voice.”

She described a church she attended in undergrad with a student ministry that met weekly for free food, great teaching, worship, and friendly community, adding, “I’d tell another student, ‘Find a church like that and meet with the pastor. Don’t be shy to go say hi after the service.’”

Community. Sound teaching. Interpersonal foundations. Intergenerational mentorship.

These are the themes that, if you’ve been following this blog series, you will have read more times than you could fit on an alpaca. From the first students I spoke with in Canada, across to Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Japan, Thailand, restricted access nations,20 Turkey, Greece, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and finally England, the cry for mentorship, community, and solid Bible teaching echoed from students’ own lips all around the planet.

The Moral of the Story

In England, the final overseas stop on my journey, a long history of compromising God’s Word with human ideas ultimately created a culture without a true foundation on biblical authority alone. As a result, Darwin’s ideas easily pervaded his home culture and many of its churches, creating waves which shook countless Christians’ trust in the reliability of God’s Word worldwide. Now, students all around the world are still hearing Darwin’s ideas promoted above God’s Word in secular education, causing many church-raised students to leave their faith. Yet by interviewing Christian students who haven’t left their faith, I’d found that the same three solutions (spiritual, intellectual, and interpersonal foundations) are helping Christian students worldwide overcome the diverse challenges of secular university.

All in all, was roving around the world alone for 180 days as a nomadic alpaca worth learning all this?

Absolutely.

(Stay tuned for a summary of global students’ insights in Part 30!)