|
Recently, Newsweek magazine ran an article asking the question, “Who Was More Important: Lincoln or Darwin?” The relevancy of the question focuses on the fact that both were born in 1809, on 12 February to be exact. Darwin was the father of the evolutionary hypothesis. Lincoln, 16th president, issued the Emancipation Proclamation and engineered the defeat of the south during the Civil War (1861-1865), the bloodiest conflict in American History. Influenced by the theories on overpopulation by Thomas Malthus, Darwin’s data and specimens gathered from his 1836 voyage on the Beagle helped him formulate his theory of natural selection. He understood how profound his theory actually was; for it meant that there was nothing special about humans. They were the product of the same force—natural selection—that produced all other forms of life. Also, his theory meant that there was a mechanistic purposelessness to the physical world. His idea had enormous social and political implications. They also had unspeakable implications for biblical Christianity. Darwin proposed an idea that questioned order, design and purpose. For the first time in human history, Darwin would make atheism respectable.
In contrast, Abraham Lincoln was a master politician. But his ability to write captivated his generation and those long after he was assassinated. The Emancipation Proclamation, although a political document designed to foster the defeat of the South by destroying the entire southern way of life, established that the Civil War was about more than preserving the Union. Few can read his Gettysburg Address (1863) and not be moved by the cadence of his words. For in it he defined the very purpose of the United States of America: Old words like liberty and equality took on a new meaning after the Address. A speech (272 words) that took only a few minutes to give forever changed the course of American history. Finally, consider his Second Inaugural Address of 1865. Weaving together phrases and words from the Bible, Lincoln said: “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with fairness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for the widow and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.” Lincoln mentioned God six times in one paragraph alone, affirming His sovereignty and providence: “The Almighty has His own purposes,” he argued. Lincoln made clear that one of His purposes was to chastise both the north and the south for the evil of slavery. He also wrote: “Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’”
In 1859, the year Origin of Species was published, Darwin synthesized many ideas that had been floating around since the Enlightenment. In that sense, natural selection would have been articulated by someone. But try to imagine American history, the Civil War, without Lincoln. One cannot! In my view as a Christian leader, Darwin was a destroyer; Lincoln was just the opposite. Lincoln’s ideas, his force in history and the language of his speeches forever shaped the destiny of this nation—and indeed defined its very essence. I have no difficulty deciding whose impact was more positive and more far-reaching.
See the article in the 7-14 July 2008 issue of Newsweek.
|
