Throughout my various conversations with fellow believers, the most-mentioned anxiety over accepting an evolutionary creationist paradigm is the fear of losing the Bible as one’s spiritual anchor and source of authority.

As he endeavored to learn more, David was intrigued by Francis Collins book The Language of God because Francis did not present evolution as a rival theory to Christian faith, but as something that described God's method of creation.

This exchange brings together related essays on death in light of evolution and Scripture from Southern Baptist theologian Dr. John Laing. Laing argues that evolutionary theory requires death to play a central role in the creation of new life, but sees Scripture depicting death only "as an invader, disturber of peace, and a force of evil." A BioLogos response is given by Dr. Jeff Schloss.

Our desire to engage in gracious dialogue with fellow believers who reject biological evolution has been receiving increased attention in both the Christian and secular press. More importantly, we are being joined in this reconciling project by our brothers and sisters in Christ who have often been defined primarily as our “opponents”.

This week, we take that commitment to engage in charitable dialogue with those who disagree with us by posting the first of several essays from Southern Baptist scholars, along with our responses to their concerns and arguments—a series we are calling Southern Baptist Voices.

Even if Darwin had never lived and no one else had come up with the idea of common ancestry, modern genomics would have forced us to that conclusion even if there was no other evidence available.

In this series, Dennis Venema describes his personal journey that took him away from the Intelligent Design arguments toward the evolutionary creation worldview. Through careful and honest research, he discovered ID scientific reasoning to be analogy-based, in sharp contrast to evolutionary science, which was supported by concrete data. After accepting this view, God’s presence ever strengthened him as he explored the compatibility between the Bible and God’s creative mechanism.

In this six part series, Karl Giberson discusses evolution with BioLogos founder Francis Collins as it relates to the scientific community and the church. Their conversation addresses Collins’ scientific perspectives, his Christian faith, and the abundant evidence for evolution. Throughout, the two critique various unscientific approaches to evolution such as Young Earth Creationism and Intelligent Design. Overall, they both express the deep need for the Church in America to accept evolution as a valuable, true theory as well as to cultivate a richer understanding of the Bible among the people.