The Evolution of Religion – Part I

The Evolution of Religion – Part I

Biological evolution is the slow change of a species’ DNA (the instructions controlling the shape and functionality of an organism).  These evolutionary changes are not random.  Changes in shape or form that increase the likelihood of the survival of a species are adopted into the species’ DNA while changes that decrease the chances of survival are not allowed to continue in the species gene pool.  In this way, a species is continually changing over time to improve its chances of continued existence in a dynamic, competitive, and hostile environment.

Though these changes in DNA are not random, neither are done “on purpose”.  An organism never decides to evolve.  It changes because it is impossible for it not to change.  The giraffe never tried to make a long neck, but it evolved one anyway because a long neck was a competitive advantage.  And though evolutionary changes are necessary for the very survival of all species, the species themselves are never aware of the fact that they are changing.  The process is so subtle and slow that even today many people deny that it even happens.

I taught church history to seniors for a while.  In preparing to teach the class, I became aware of just how much the church has changed through the millenniums, and that many differing “species” of Christianity have come into being; Coptic (Ethiopian) Christian, Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestant (Calvinist and Arminian), evangelical, fundamentalist, charismatic, Pentecostal, post-modern, and emergent churches. 

I wasn’t aware of all of these different Christian churches when I first became a Christian.  I was young and I just assumed that what I was shown was normal and stable.  I trusted that what I learned was simply truth.  I had no idea that someday I would learn that what I was being taught was only the current version of truth.  The churches I attended were only the current versions of “church”.  It never occurred to me that all churches are slowly changing. 

Now I know that doctrines changed.  Worship changed.  Sermons changed.  Even our view of something as fundamental as right and wrong changed.  Which parts of the Bible we select to study changed.  Our interpretation of the Bible changed.  Our very understanding of what the Bible is changed.

Intellectually and emotionally it disturbed me see all these changes that had occurred though the years, because it forced me to face the fact that these changes must be continuing.  Doctrines are changing now.  Worship and sermons are changing.  Views of right and wrong are changing now.  Our very understanding of the Bible is changing now.  My own reaction to these facts makes it easy for me to understand why some people are screaming, “Stop!”  but if I have any intellectual integrity, I must admit that there is nothing about the current state of the church that makes it worthy of being enshrined as the absolute "right way" to believe or behave.  It makes no more sense for me to want to freeze Christianity in its current form  today in 2014 than it would be for someone in the Roman Catholic Church 500 years ago.  The truth is that long after I’m gone, Christianity will continue its evolution and what people believe about Christianity in 500 years will be so much different than what I think it is today.

I am seeing that religion evolves in many ways similar to biological species.  Instead of actual DNA, churches have traditions, doctrines, and morality.  They have forms of worship, art, liturgy, ecclesiastical structures, and sacraments, and of course they have interpretations of their Scriptures.  And just as DNA is never transcribed perfectly from one generation to another biologically, so the passing down of religion from one generation to another is never completed without some small (and sometimes large) "mutations".   Some changes take hold and continue to be passed down while other changes result in a parish or church dissolving so that those changes are “lost” in history.  As I have learned about the role of Constantine, The Great Schism, The Reformation, etc.  I see that some churches survive and thrive while others are eliminated and forever lost.  John Calvin, Martin Luther, and John Wesley made enduring changes to the Protestant church (resulting in the formation of many new denominations).  Most evangelicals even know the names of John Smith of the Mormon Church or Mary Baker Eddy of Christian Science even if they vehemently disagree with the radical changes that these people instituted.  And there are undoubtedly countless well-meaning pastors whose names will never be known because their changes were small or their churches "failed" after some change or another was made.

Is God orchestrating all of this?  Should I try to believe that God willed all the successful (and often contradictory) churches to thrive and simultaneously willed all the failures to go extinct?  In other words, is a church's survival the mark of God’s approval?  Is He more pleased with my evangelical church today than a Puritan church of the colonies?  Is God more pleased with evangelical churches than mainline Protestant churches?  Is He more pleased with Protestant churches than Catholic?  Catholic than Greek Orthodox?  Mormonism?  Amish?  Islam?  Hinduism? 

Is God intervening and choosing winners and losers?  I don’t think so.  I am not ready to deny that God’s purposes are working throughout history, but I can’t ignore the facts.    And if it is not God who is determining which churches thrive and which churches whither, another question looms large for me.  What is determining which changes in religion survive, and which changes fail?  Or to put it another way, why is the church the way it is today?  Why do we do the things we do?  Why do we believe the things we believe?  Is it because they are the right things that God wants me to believe?  Or is it simply because by acting and believing in these particular things these churches/religions were more likely to attract and retain members and therefore survive to pass on their beliefs to the next generation?