Well, first the cat had to torment me by meowing at 6 AM until I fed her at 7. This would be reasonable enough, after all it's when I usually feed her. But, I didn't go to bed until late last night, and her meow was certainly a clear portent of doom.
I'm picking at a diary on Christians who have been cool with evolution - some predate Darwin. It is snowballing. I guess this means I am a snowflake. Apparently, snowflakes have some kind of chance in hell.
A partial list of texts I'm looking at for the evolution diary is on the flip. But, since I'm looking at ways Christians have affirmed evolution instead of getting ready for the Rapture which will most likely join the august list of failed prophecies, I'm obviously in league with the anti-Christ, or something, and will spend the rest of the day in hell.
No, really! I am going to hell today! Literally! At three, I will be joining my friend to watch puppeteers enact Dante's inferno. When the Rapture comes, my journey through hell will probably be over, though. And besides, Dante was really talking about Florentine politics, and the Rapture will be about so much more than that!
Unfortunately, although I don't think I'm in league with the Anti-Christ, I know I am no Jeff Lieber, so I'll stop trying to deliver snark. Failed prophecy can be kind of amusing. Failed snark is just sad.
This is some of what I've found so far as far as texts that don't think Christians have to flip out over evolution in general, or natural selection more specifically. I'm working on actually saying something about them soon.
I love some of these writers; others make me want to retreat to regretsy.
1799, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Speeches on Religion.
1844, Robert Chambers, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
1860, Asa Gray, "Natural Selection not Inconsistent with Natural Theology" - Atlantic Monthly article reprinted in Darwiniana.
1883, Henry Drummond, Natural Law in the Spiritual World
1891, Joseph LeConte, Evolution: Its Nature, Its Evidences, and Its Relation to Religious Thought
1896, John Zahn, Evolution and Dogma
1932, Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society
1954, Bernard Ramm, The Christian View of Science and Scripture
1965, John Cobb, A Christian Natural Theology Based on the Thought of Alfred North Whitehead
1981, Langdon Gilkey, Creationism on Trial
1984, Charles Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes
1986, Arthur Peacocke, God and the New Biology
1992, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing
1993, Sallie McFague, The Body of God
1998, John Polkinghorne, Belief in God in an Age of Science
2000, Anne Primavesi, Sacred Gaia: Holistic Theology and Earth Systems Science
2003, Catherine Keller, Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming
2003, Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, Adam, Eve, and the Genome
2007, Francis Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief
2008, Christopher Southgate, The Groaning of Creation: God, Evolution, and the Problem of Evil