Francis Collins
A few weeks ago, President Barack Obama nominated Francis Collins — a brilliant scientist and one-time head of the National Center for Human Genome Research — to head up the National Institutes of Health. While almost everyone agrees that Collins is a very bright guy who’s got all the prerequisites to lead the NIH, a few critics strenuously oppose the nomination. Why? Because he’s a self-proclaimed evangelical Christian.
Not just a Catholic or Lutheran or something. An evangelical Christian. The horror.
The New York Times printed July 27 an op-ed piece by Sam Harris, one of this century’s leading and most eloquent atheists. “Francis Collins is an accomplished scientist and a man who is sincere in his beliefs,” Harris writes. “And that is precisely what makes me so uncomfortable about his nomination.”
Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times ran a point-counterpoint column on Collins’ nomination featuring Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine. In it, Shermer claims Collins’ evangelical faith is incompatible with the position for which he’s been nominated. Why? Because evangelicals just can’t stop evangelizing:
The whole point of being an evangelical Christian is to love the Lord openly and try to bring to Christ as many people as possible; otherwise you wouldn’t be an evangelical. I know because I was once an evangelical Christian, having been born again in 1971 and for many years devoting my life to evangelizing for Christ, first to my fellow high school students, then as an undergraduate at Pepperdine University (a Church of Christ institution), and later going door-to-door. I was doing God’s work, and what could be more important than that?
In the evangelical worldview, there really is no separation of church and state. Yes, Jesus told us, in Matthew 22:21, to “render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s,” but that applies to specific things such as taxes and tithings, not the general goal of bringing all Americans to the Lord. So I worry that Collins’ evangelical enthusiasm may blur the lines separating the profane and the sacred, church and state, Caesar and God.
Let’s set aside for a minute the fact that Shermer’s fears seem to be, at their core, blatantly discriminatory.
Let’s also grant that Shermer has a point. We evangelicals call ourselves such for a reason: Lots of us get excited about what God’s doing in our lives and we like to share it with folks. This is evangelism. And if Collins was in the habit of proselytizing to other scientists, or discriminating against them based on whether they went to church or not, that would be a pretty big problem.
But there’s not a shred of evidence, of course, that Collins has ever let his faith interfere with his work as a scientist or administrator. And Shermer — despite his credentials as a one-time evangelical Christian — has some strange ideas about what is and is not required of evangelicals.
I consider myself an evangelical. I was baptized as a Baptist and now attend a non-denominational evangelical church connected with Willow Creek. I’ve read “Left Behind,” listen to Mercy Me and can speak evangelicaleze with the best of ‘em.
But I’m a horrible spiritual salesman. For years, as a secular journalist, evangelism was diametrically opposed to my job description, so I conspicuously avoided even the appearance of it. And now that I’m free to talk about my faith as much as I like, I’m still a terrible evangelist: I figure if people want to know what makes me tick, they’ll ask me.
I also greatly value the separation of church and state. I think that separation is not only desirable, but critical to America’s spiritual vitality.
Now, perhaps I’m not the sort of evangelical with whom Shermer is familiar. I know my share of evangelicals who believe hard-sell proselytization is crucial for a vibrant faith. I know many who feel the government should infuse a little more God into its inner workings, and even a few (a very few, it should be noted) who’d like, perhaps, to nudge this nation closer to an open theocracy.
But I am an evangelical. And that’s the thing about evangelicalism: It encompasses an incredibly broad spectrum of attitudes and ideals. We’re creationists and evolutionists, Republicans and Democrats, dog people and cat people, street preachers and scientists and even bloggers. We do not undergo a positional litmus test at baptism, nor will we, I expect, be required to fill out a “true/false” questionnaire before we’re admitted into heaven. We evangelicals are required to believe one thing — that Christ died for our sins, and through him we’re saved.
Evangelicals make up somewhere between 25-30 percent of the American population, and the numbers are growing. Is it really that surprising — that threatening — that a well-respected scientist should count himself as one?
