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Dear Pastor:

The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth by Edward O. Wilson Norton 160 pp.; $21.95

We have not met, yet I feel I know you well enough to call you friend. First of all, we grew up in the same faith. As a boy, I too answered the altar call; I went under the water. Although I no longer belong to that faith, I am confident that if we met and spoke privately of our deepest beliefs, it would be in a spirit of mutual respect and good will. I know we share many precepts of moral behavior. Perhaps it also matters that we are both Americans and, insofar as it might still affect civility and good manners, we are both Southerners.

—Edward O. Wilson, The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth (Norton)

Dear Tenured Professor:

We have not met, yet I feel I know you well enough to call you a friend. First of all, we both have studied science. As an undergraduate, I, too, took an introductory biology course; I passed, as I recall, with flying colors—though admittedly the final exam was multiple choice. I am confident that if we met and spoke privately of our views of Southern Baptists, it would be in a spirit of mutual respect and goodwill. I know that we have much in common; for we are both Americans and, insofar as it might affect the way we approach our countrymen from the hinterland, we both found our way from America's interior to the brick sidewalks of Cambridge.

I write simply because somehow a letter of yours to a Southern Baptist pastor found its way to an editor's inbox and was published. Perhaps you did not intend for me to read it. For there is a fundamental difference between us. I speak not of the fact that you are a self-described secular humanist, while I am a Christian—indeed, as you put it, a "strict interpreter of Christian Holy Scripture," though I have never heard a fellow evangelical Protestant put it quite that way. Nor am I referring to your belief that "heaven and hell are what we create for ourselves, on this planet," which you contrast with the view, which you apparently assume to be Christian, that "each person's soul is immortal, making this planet a waystation to a second, eternal life"—a view which does bear a faint resemblance to the ancient Christian confession of the resurrection of the body (not the immortality of the soul) and the life everlasting, and a concomitant renewal of the heavens and the earth.

These differences do indeed separate us, but you are right to discern that they would not keep us from working together on matters of universal human concern. What certainly does not divide us is a deep concern for the Creation. (It is very kind of you, by the way, to dignify that term with a capital letter, presumably against your scientific instincts and deepest beliefs, but were I a proponent of intelligent design who persistently referred to Evolution in a letter to an Evolutionist, you might suspect I was protesting too much. Also, if I were to say, for example, that "academia is overwhelmingly secular, with a powerful undercurrent of scientism," you might be a bit put off. Yet you observe that the United States "is overwhelmingly Judeo-Christian, with a powerful undercurrent of evangelism"—something that I devoutly wish were true, but I believe it is more accurate to say there has always been an undercurrent of "evangelicalism," though how deep that current has run under the "Judeo-" portion of "Judeo-Christian" I would not presume to say.)

Indeed, we truly are united in our conviction that now is the time for prompt action to protect life on earth. Indeed, along with several Southern Baptists, I was one of the 86 signers of the Evangelical Climate Initiative, a biblically grounded and scientifically informed document to which you indirectly refer.

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September (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50