Subscribe to my Feed
« How will the next President treat detainees? | Home | Was SEC Chair Christopher Cox right to dismiss self-regulation? »
Is the Church of England’s “apology” to Darwin really an apology?
By Lauren | September 29, 2008
Recently, a friend forwarded an article from the London Telegraph reporting that the Church of England was going to issue an apology to Charles Darwin for its initial hostility to his theory of natural selection. Written by Rev. Dr. Malcolm Brown, the Church’s Director of Mission and Public Affairs, the apology reads as follows:
Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practice the old virtues of ‘faith seeking understanding’ and hope that makes some amends. But the struggle for your reputation is not over yet, and the problem is not just your religious opponents but those who falsely claim you in support of their own interests. Good religion needs to work constructively with good science – and I dare to suggest that the opposite may be true as well.
Nicely said, Dr. Brown … but does this qualify as an apology? Charles Darwin died over a century ago. If the primary goal of an apology is to heal the relationship between the wrongdoer and the offended person, this one came more than a little too late.
Nonetheless, an apology due is an apology that should be made, even if it’s untimely. The Church’s apology comes in the context of a longer article that seeks to heal the angry rift between theology and science. This apology demonstrates a commendable willingness on the Church’s part to admit to error, apologize, and seek a better understanding with its former foes. While it may be too late to mend fences with Darwin, perhaps this apology can be a positive step toward better feeling between religious traditionalists and hard-line scientists. If so, I can only say “amen.”
To read Dr. Brown’s entire article, go to http://www.cofe.anglican.org/darwin/malcolmbrown.html.
Topics: Apologies, Personal Ethics, Social Ethics, ethics |
October 9th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
[...] presents Is the Church of Englands apology to Darwin really an apology? posted at The Business Ethics Blog, saying, “It came more than a hundred years too late, but [...]