Christian groups took notice when President Obama chose evangelical scientist Francis Collins as the new head of the National Institutes on Health, despite some questions about his support for embryonic stem-cell research.
Michael Gerson writes for the Washington Post that his appointment signals that evangelicalism is growing up.
Collins's appointment says something good about the maturity of modern evangelicalism, which is starting to abandon some of its least productive debates with modernity. Criticisms of evolution, rooted in 19th-century controversies, have done little more than set up religious young people for entirely unnecessary crises of faith as they encounter scientific knowledge. In the running conflict of modern biology and evangelicalism, Collins is a peacemaker.
Gerson also writes that it signals maturity for President Obama. "In the process, Obama has affirmed something important: that anti-supernaturalism is not a litmus test at the highest levels of science," ...
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