It happened again this week. I received an e-mail from a student at a major university who is in the midst of a profound personal crisis.

People often ask me why it matters so much what they think of evolution. Many parents don’t even want their kids to learn about it—evolution is like pornography, not to be trifled with under any circumstances and certainly not something to be “integrated” with the Christian faith.

Part of our goal at BioLogos is to demonstrate that we in the Christian community can and must think deeply, but also broadly, if we want to do justice to the complexity of biological life, but also to the complexity of our lives of faith.

Congratulations to the 37 winners of the Evolution & Christian Faith (ECF) grants competition! ECF is a new BioLogos program designed to support projects and network-building among scholars, church leaders, and parachurch organizations.

In this series, Ted Davis identifies the history, core tenets and assumptions about the theistic evolution view.

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 series by Scot McKnight relates a lecture given at the 2012 BioLogos workshop for Evangelical theologians, scientists, authors and pastors. He explains that evolution is taught in public schools, and therefore must be addressed by Evangelical pastors in the churches as well. This will educate a whole generation of upcoming scientists on the issues of science and faith. Overall, he encourages scientists and pastors to collaborate on the issue as they rethink the long held interpretations of Genesis 1-3.

Because evolution is a challenging subject, many Christians are tempted to simply ignore or reject it. Yet considering evolutionary creation has important benefits for Christians both in our relationship with the Creator, and with our relationships with other people—believers and non-Christians alike. First, Christians should study evolution because (like all the natural sciences) it is the study of God’s creation. Creation itself is a complementary revelation to what is communicated in the Scriptures, and through it God shows how and when he brought about life, to his honor and glory. Studying the creation is also an invitation into a deeper understanding of the attributes and character of Father, Son and Spirit. Second, considering evolutionary creation aids the Church in its gospel mission, supporting young Christians in their faith, helping answer critics, and equipping us to engage effectively in the wider culture. An anti-evolution attitude can harm Christian young people by presenting them with a false choice between pursuing science OR holding to faith. Similarly, a hostile attitude towards evolution can hinder evangelism when seekers hear that they must reject science to follow Christ. On the other hand, studying evolution as a God-ordained process helps Christians refute arguments that science encourages an atheistic worldview. Furthermore, as the church engages front-page issues raised by the rapid growth in science, medicine, and technology, a Christ-centered voice in such areas as bioethics will be stronger if based on a thorough understanding of the natural sciences, including evolution. (Updated on September 9, 2012)

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.

With From the Dust, it was our goal to help Christians see the complexity of the issues raised by modern science, as well as help them to courageously engage with the theological conversations happening within the sphere of Christian culture today.

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.

This series, written by Bethany Sollereder, seeks to address this question: “How could God create through a process that involves so much pain and death?” She first presents the two drastically opposite worldviews held by theologians and scientists. She also reflects theologically on how a world created through evolutionary means can be good, and concludes with some thoughts concerning the Fall, physical decay and spiritual death.

We at BioLogos believe that God used the process of evolution to create all the life on earth today. While we accept the science of evolution, we emphatically reject evolutionism. Evolutionism is the atheistic worldview that says life developed without God and without purpose. Instead, we agree with Christians who adhere to Intelligent Design and Creationism that the God of the Bible created the universe and all life. Christians disagree, however, on how God created. Young Earth Creationists believe that God created just 6,000 to 10,000 years ago and disagree with much of mainstream science. Supporters of Intelligent Design accept more of evolutionary science, but argue that some features of life are best explained by direct intervention by an intelligent agent rather than by God's regular way of working through natural processes. We at BioLogos agree with the modern scientific consensus on the age of the earth and evolutionary development of all species, seeing these as descriptions of how God created. The term BioLogos comes from the Greek words bios (life) and logos (word), referring to the opening of the Gospel of John. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made.” (Updated on March 1, 2012)

Part of BioLogos mission is to show how all things hold together in Christ—to show how a Christian worldview integrates the knowledge we have of God through the Scriptures with the knowledge we have of God through the other areas in which He reveals himself as Creator and Redeemer.

What are the best ways to spark productive conversations about science and faith? Certainly there are books, articles, blogs (like this one), and podcasts. But there are particular advantages to using film.

The first entry in the Southern Baptist Voices series presents a unique ongoing dialogue between Kenneth Keathely, a significant voice for the Southern Baptist churches, and several BioLogos scholars. Carried out in a respectful and humble manner, Keathely simply expresses six areas in which he does not agree with the BioLogos approach to Genesis 1-3. Darrel Falk, Kathryn Applegate and Deborah Haarsma then thoughtfully respond to each point in order to clarify the BioLogos’ view on each issue and, hopefully, remove any stumbling blocks.

We want to cultivate a world where Christian young people feel emboldened in their faith—rather than weakened—when they come to understand the strength of the scientific data.

Here are ten reasons Christians should care deeply about issues emerging from the science-and-theology interface.

I have described my professional experience as a rather extended analogy to the BioLogos project. By its very nature, BioLogos is interdisciplinary, intended to bring together at least two fields often considered to be entirely incompatible.

BioLogos and its impact on the evangelical scene was one of the top ten stories of 2010 as judged by both Christianity Today and The Gospel Coalition. This is good, I suppose. However, we have barely begun to deal with the issues in a substantive manner.