Andrew Brown: Charles Darwin was not an enemy of the Christian faith

Would Christianity have been in better shape today if Darwin had never been born? It suits both many atheists and millions of believers to suppose that the answer is obviously "yes" – but if the answer is obvious at all, then theirs is the wrong one. Obviously Christianity today much less credible among intellectuals than it was in 1600, and this is largely a result of the growth of our knowledge about the world since then. But when you look at the thinkers whose contributions did most to make literalist faith in the Bible incredible, Darwin was really not one of the most important: in fact, as the welcome extended to his ideas by many Victorian Christians showed, his theory offers a way around the difficulties raised by others. In any atheist pantheon, the credit for pulling down the house of faith needs to be shared quite widely, but at...

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