DARWIN, AN ABOLITIONIST

Number 9 - February 2010

Dr. Michael Zimmerman, Professor of Biology at Butler University, is responsible for creating The Clergy Letter Project. The Project started in 2004 and today about 12,000 clergy have signed The Letter.

Professor Zimmerman, encouraged by both clergy and scientists, prepared a statement challenging a series of anti-evolution policies passed by the school board in Grantsburg, Wisconsin where he lived at the time. The Letter was sent on December 16, 2004 with 200 clergy signatures. The Project is now nationwide.

At stake is the misperception that science and religion are incompatible; that there is an unnecessary division and conflict especially in the teaching of evolution. Zimmerman puts it this way:
‘I wanted to let the public know that numerous clergy from most denominations have tremendous respect for evolutionary theory and have embraced it as a core component of human knowledge, fully harmonious with religious faith’.

The Clergy Letter Project sponsors an annual Evolution Weekend creating opportunities for congregations to come together “to discuss the compatibility of religion and science.” There is now a data base with scientists interested in working with clergy to answer questions regarding evolution. Pastors are encouraged to become part of this network. We hope clergy leadership in the Illinois Wisconsin Region of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) will participate.

The reason for sharing the above information in this blog is that Charles Darwin was an abolitionist. He was born February 19, 1809 in Shrewsburg, England. This is the 201st anniversary of his birth. He and Abraham Lincoln were born within two hours of each other though on different continents. It is appropriate to mention them together during Black History Month.

Darwin was educated at Edinburgh University (1825-27) and earned a degree in theology at Cambridge. Some thought he might go into the Christian ministry but his curiosity about nature drew him into the natural sciences. Darwin was an abolitionist. Some of his critics called him “fanatical.”

Darwin was born into an active abolitionist family who worked hard to end slavery in England and in the British colonies. He married Emma Wedgewood in 1839 who was also raised in a strong anti-slavery household.

Darwinian scholars speculate that it is Darwin’s political activism in the anti-slavery movement that helped open his mind to the theory of evolution. He was a strong believer in the notion that all life is related and that there is a common humanity of the various ethic groups. The term he used was that we share a common “brotherhood.” This theme of a common humanity is grounded his evolutionary enterprise and caused great antagonism as he denied the cherished tenets of white privileged society. In some Anglican circles it was considered heresy. But the enslavement of black Africans enraged Darwin.

The bulk of Darwin’s research takes place during his five years (1831-36) voyage circumnavigating the world on the British naval ship the HMS Beagle. Darwin collected all kinds of specimens that he brought back to England. He categorized these treasures and discovered ties substantiating his work on evolution. While engaged in these efforts he developed his theory of the natural selection process. He believed that the best of species adapted to their environment. Producing new offspring they are able to adapt to weather and hardship and through sexual attraction actually change (evolve). The less strong ones die off.

But Darwin also observed the social structures and relationships of the cities and ports he visited. He notes in his journals the prevalence of slavery and the terrible mistreatment of Blacks and Indians. Adrian Desmond and James Moore, in their book DARWIN’S SACRED CAUSE, describe Darwin’s observation while traveling on the HMS Beagle:
Slavery was a brutal fact of the voyage; people were bought and sold, used and abused like beasts. His sensitivity to the whip might have stemmed from his reading of anti-slavery tracts, but here he would see its effect: he stayed in one house where a young mulatto was beaten ‘daily and hourly’, he said, ‘enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal’. And that was the point. Bestialization was implicit in the system; it was as though the whip hands were attempting to break humans the way prehistoric people had broken horses during their ‘domestication’. Then again, American slave-masters were said to have no more fear of ‘rebellion amongst their full-blooded slaves than they do of rebellion amongst their cows and horses. That was because the tranquility of Negroes in their approach to civilization resembled the content of domestic animals.’ In the ‘breaking’ of animals originated the yokes, leg-irons, chains, lashes and branding irons so familiar to the slave-masters: these instruments usually adorned the overseer’s walls as a permanent threat. Slaves had been reduced to childlike, cattle-like dependency, with the result that ‘Sambo’ was rendered a broken brute in the planter literature (p.89)

When he returned home, Darwin continued his battle against slavery. Much of his efforts were aimed at the United States. He fought the slavery biology and science of U.S. academics. He challenged his old friend Samuel George Morton’s who published CRANIA AMERICANA to prove that the size of heads and brains were of different sizes based on race and that Black phrenology was inferior. He took on Louis Agassiz, Robert Know, James McGrigor Allan and Karl Vogt who were defending the position that there were “multiple origins of mankind” (i.e., in a series of acts of creation at different times, God created different human species and there is no biological connection between them – an unbiblical form of Creationism). He wrote frequently to U.S. abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison. He vocalized alarm with the 1857 U.S. Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision which claimed that Negroes were not citizens but property and had no rights which the white man was to respect. And he was equally concerned about the United States’ Civil War.

Darwin finally published THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES on February 23, 1871. In a sense it reflected his dream of shared evolutionary history. One of Darwin’s anti-slavery supporters spelled out the implications of this publication by stating "Many of our narrow prejudices and false theories in regard to Race – ideas which have been at the base of ancient abuses and long-established institutions of oppression – are removed".

That dream continues in the anti-Racism and pro-Reconciliation agenda of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). WHAT DO YOU THINK?

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Desmond, Adrian and James Moore, DARWIN’S SACRED CAUSE. (United Kingdom, Penguin Group, 2009).

Google: The Clergy Letter Project – Michael Zimmerman
Or Contact Professor Zimmerman at mz@butler.edu
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Team:
Karon Alexander, Dwight Bailey, Brittany Barber, Darron Bowden, Gloria Carey-Branch, Minta Coburn, Ann Marie Coleman, Don Coleman, Carol Josefowski, Wookbin Moh, Leila Ward