Have you seen a multi-viewpoint forum in a church?

Faith & Science Conversation
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At Regent College (Vancouver) twenty-three years ago, I participated in a three-viewpoint forum. YEC, ID, and EC (me). That was in the chapel.

Have any of you seen anything similar attempted in a church?

Here in Dallas, YECs and old-earth creationists in one congregation tried a “discussion among friends”. I don’t know how it went. No evolutionary creationist perspective was presented.

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  • Naturalis Historia - Creation Together: Building Bridges Across the Origins Divide
    • A recent one is “Creation Together,” a gathering that brought together three young-earth creationists and three old-earth/evolutionary creationists, with a moderator and a pastor observing. Its stated purpose was not to make anyone switch sides, but to see whether Christians with sharply different origins views could still maintain fellowship. That is not exactly a local-church congregational forum, but it is very close in spirit to what you are asking about.
  • Loma Linda University Hosts Creation Discussion News by Jeff Boyd By AT News Team, October 29, 2014
    • There is also the 2014 Loma Linda University creation discussion, where six Adventist professors from different disciplines discussed creation-evolution questions before a large audience. That was university-based rather than a congregational church forum, but even there the moderator framed it in terms of whether “our church” could sustain a genuine meeting of hearts and minds.
  • Equipping Christian Leadership in an Age of Science - Scientists in Congregations Bringing Church and Scientists Together
    • Another close analogue comes from the Scientists in Congregations material. One congregation reported that the creation/evolution topic was tackled in debate format, explicitly aiming to show that the two terms were not mutually exclusive; another church-led project, hosted by St. Andrew’s Church, Plymouth, was designed as a public church event on science and faith with multiple speakers and discussion. Those are broader science-faith events, not precisely a YEC/OEC/EC three-way church panel, but they do show that churches have sometimes tried structured multi-perspective discussions.
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Greetings from one Regent alumnus to another! I appreciated Regent’s ongoing promotion of Science in their curriculum. I took two classes at Regent “Theology and Science” and “Current Issues in Biology” in both, the EC view was taught–Guest lecturers Denis Alexander and Dennis Venema were brought in to provide some of the harder-core science. There were a few YEC students taking such classes, and some free discussion of “alternate views” among students in the discussion periods, but the YEC view was not promoted as either good exegesis of scripture or good framing of the science there.

Unfortunately I don’t know how much of this filters down from pastors-in-training to congregations as I have not heard such a panel discussion or broaching of evolution in my church.

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It’s like the whole premise of the Zondervan Counterpoint book series which is aimed at church attenders. I don’t see churches as being designed for these kind of events, because the church is already committed to promoting specific views. This is the kind of thing that happens on Christian college campuses where you have more diversity in background coming together.

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To be honest I have never had this experience, but that’s because YEC in western Europe is basically unheard of.

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