Michael Dowd, of Thank God for Evolution! fame, has had a vision, brethren. Of how to revive liberal churches, by holding emotionally charged “evolution” revivals. But let him tell it:
It all began when a friend alerted us to an interview with Harvard’s esteemed biologist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author: Edward O. Wilson. Wilson’s book, The Creation, had just been released. Here is an excerpt from an interview that appeared in The Washington Post:
It’s hard to picture, if you know him only by his scientific reputation, but E.O. Wilson confesses it freely: He loves watching preachers on television.Wilson is an internationally renowned biologist who has based his extraordinarily productive five-decade career at that great bastion of secular humanism, Harvard University. At 77, his work and his worldview are so thoroughly entwined with Darwinian theory that they’re impossible to imagine without it. His reverence is for the wondrous creatures and intricate interconnections of the natural world, not for any supreme being.
So what’s he doing tuning in those evangelical sermons from the megachurches?
“I listen to them the way an Italian listens to opera,” Wilson confesses with a lopsided grin. “I may be thinking of the texts as fiction, but I can’t resist the old-time rhythm, the music and the superlative performances.”
When Connie [Dowd’s atheist wife, Connie Barlow] read this interview, it all came together for her. Six months earlier, she and I, out of curiosity, had attended a Wednesday evening service at one of America’s largest megachurches, Lakewood Church in Houston. Even at ths mid-week service, some 8,000 people had gathered to sing and sway and pray together. Many were “saved” that night – including Connie. (p. 306-7)
Of course she didn’t follow through, but she did decide to “take on this hobby.” She watched a lot of mega-church videos. It turned out that a number of liberal church leaders had been watching them too. And given that liberal churches are nearing extinction,
Since then, Connie has bee promoting the idea of evolutionary revivals whenever and wherever she gets the opportunity … (p. 309)
Dowd adds “Praise God for the possibility of evolutionary revivals.”
Over to you.