Evangelical Alliance and Attitudes to Evolution

There is a new report by the Evangelical Alliance that includes attitudes to evolution amongst evangelicals. The Church of England newsletter suggests it reveals that attitudes are changing to evolution with 6 out of 10 evangelicals now believing that evolution is compatible with Christianity.
http://www.eauk.org/snapshot/upload/21st-Century-Evangelicals-Data-Report.pdf
http://eauk.org/snapshot/upload/21st-Century-Evangelicals-PDF.pdf

Although it is a large sample of more than 17,000 church members and conference goes, the question on evolution is suitably vague and in two parts. Why do experts in this field insist on asking people two questions and allow only one response? Also it is not very well qualified because it doesn't specify clearly what is meant by evolution; even young earth creationist Henry Morris accepted the possibility of fairly rapid micro-evolution for instance. So I don't think it is a particularly meaningful result.

The question; "I believe that evolution and Christianity are incompatible: you cannot believe both"

Personally speaking, if asked this I would want to answer; 'what do you mean by evolution?' If micro-evolution I would disagree with the first part; if macro-evolution I would agree with the first part. And I would want to answer that you can be a Christian and believe in macro-evolution, even though I believe macro-evolution is untrue.

Responses are as follows.
Agree a lot; Agree a little; Unsure; Disagree a little; Disagree a lot.
Evangelical Christian (festival sample)
18% - 8% - 14% - 20% - 39%
Evangelical Christian (church sample)
30% - 9% - 18% - 16% - 27%

God and Evolution

Justin Thacker offers his view of Dawkins' programme ‘The Genius of Charles Darwin’ in the Guardian arguing that ‘God and evolution can coexist.’ Thacker makes some useful criticisms of Dawkins, not least his failure to engage with anyone other than 15 year old school children.

Justin Thacker - God and evolution can coexist

Thacker argues that Christians should accept evolution, commenting that ‘I'm an evangelical Christian, but I have no difficulties in believing that evolution is the best scientific account we have for the diversity of life on our planet.’ But creationists and intelligent design proponents also recognise that evolution can lead to greater diversity of life. Diverisification is not the problem. The problem is how we can account for a progressive increase in complexity from molecule to man that is the grand evolutionary claim.

But Thacker also recognises this and comments “What people struggle with is the idea that all that is required to explain the whole of life's diversity is these kind of small-scale changes being replicated enough times. There is evidence that such macro-evolutionary changes have occurred, that the tree of life is in fact one, but Dawkins chose not to highlight it.”

Thacker is correct to note that this is the question that really divides Christians, and intelligent design theorists and creationists believe that the problem has not been closed by evolution.

So all Christians recognise that God and evolution can coexist, the problem is over the extent of evolution and whether God is allowed any direct input into his creation. Perhaps Justin Thacker, as head of Theology at the EA, would like to organise a forum for Christians on both sides to discuss these issues.