What Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians believe about evolution

The United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and the Episcopal Church all teach that God is the Creator of all things and that the scientific account of evolution does not contradict that faith. Each has said so in its own official statements, the oldest of them more than fifty years old.

Many people come to this question after being told, at church or at school, that they must choose between God and science. Some are students who love biology and fear that their faith will not survive it. Some are parents wondering what their children will hear in Sunday school. The mainline churches answer that faith in the Creator and the patient study of creation belong together, because the same God gave both the world and the minds that study it.

What do Methodists believe about evolution?

The United Methodist Church, the largest Methodist church in the United States, affirms science as a gift for understanding creation. Its Social Principles, as revised in 2024, say: “We affirm the value of science and reason in providing deeper understandings of the origins and functioning of the cosmos.” The same section warns that science, like every human endeavor, can be misused, and it asks researchers to keep the highest ethical standards.

The previous version of the Social Principles, printed in the 2016 Book of Discipline, spoke of evolution by name: “We find that science’s descriptions of cosmological, geological, and biological evolution are not in conflict with theology.” In 2008 the General Conference also adopted a resolution opposing “the introduction of any faith-based theories such as Creationism or Intelligent Design” into public school science classes.

What do Lutherans believe about evolution?

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the largest Lutheran church in the United States, addressed science and creation in its 2011 social statement Genetics, Faith and Responsibility, adopted by the Churchwide Assembly by a vote of 942 to 34. The statement says, “There is no inherent conflict between scientific findings and the understanding of God as creator, redeemer and sanctifier.” It also says that the church “recognizes and embraces the theoretical frameworks” on which genetics rests, frameworks informed by paleontology, molecular biology, and related sciences.

The statement grounds this in Luther’s Small Catechism: “I believe that God has created me together with all that exists.” It describes God as one who creates continually, and it speaks of creation in the language of a changing world: “God’s creative action brings forth a dynamic, varied, evolving, interdependent community of abundance and life.”

What do Presbyterians believe about evolution?

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the largest Presbyterian church in the United States, has addressed evolution through its General Assembly. In 1969 the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, the southern church that reunited with the northern church in 1983 to form the PC(USA), declared that neither Scripture nor its confession and catechisms “teach the Creation of man by the direct and immediate acts of God so as to exclude the possibility of evolution as a scientific theory.”

In 2002 the 214th General Assembly reaffirmed “that God is Creator, in accord with the witness of Scripture and the Reformed Confessions,” and “that there is no contradiction between an evolutionary theory of human origins and the doctrine of God as Creator.” It asked Presbyterian scientists and science teachers to help congregations understand what counts as reliable scientific knowledge.

What do Episcopalians believe about evolution?

The Episcopal Church, the member of the worldwide Anglican Communion in the United States, has addressed evolution at two General Conventions. In 1982 the Convention affirmed “its belief in the glorious ability of God to create in any manner” and rejected “the rigid dogmatism of the ‘Creationist’ movement” (Resolution 1982-D090).

In 2006 the Convention affirmed that God is Creator, “in accordance with the witness of Scripture and the ancient Creeds of the Church.” It added that evolution “provides a fruitful and unifying scientific explanation for the emergence of life on earth” and that “an acceptance of evolution is entirely compatible with an authentic and living Christian faith” (Resolution 2006-A129).

What do the United Church of Christ, the Disciples of Christ, and American Baptists believe?

The United Church of Christ welcomed evolution in a 2008 pastoral letter, A New Voice Arising, which says, “Evolution helps us see our faithful God in a new way.” The letter describes a Creator who works patiently through processes spanning billions of years.

The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has no creed and encourages its members to study Scripture with attention to the history and setting in which it was written. American Baptist Churches USA has no policy statement on evolution among its published statements and resolutions, and its congregations govern themselves. Neither church binds its members to a creed, so members and congregations reach their own convictions on the question.

Many evangelical and Pentecostal churches teach that God made the world in six days a few thousand years ago. They hold this view out of a desire to honor every word of Scripture, and Christians on both sides confess the same Creator. For more on the debate, see Can Christians believe in evolution?

What do Scripture and the tradition say about creation?

The Bible opens with two accounts of creation placed side by side. In the first, God makes the animals and then human beings, male and female together (Genesis 1:24–27); in the second, God forms the man from the dust before making the animals (Genesis 2:7, 2:19). Most biblical scholars hold that the two accounts come from different ancient sources, and the editors of Genesis kept both because each proclaims who made the world and why. For how the churches read these chapters, see Were Adam and Eve real people? and Should we read the Bible as literal fact?

Genesis even pictures God creating through the earth itself: “Let the earth produce living creatures after their kind” (Genesis 1:24). Scripture invites believers to learn from the world God made:

But ask the animals now, and they will teach you; the birds of the sky, and they will tell you. Or speak to the earth, and it will teach you. The fish of the sea will declare to you.

Job 12:7–8

The church’s teachers long ago warned against setting Scripture against careful knowledge of nature. The PC(USA)’s 2002 resolution quotes Augustine’s Literal Meaning of Genesis: “It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture.” Basil the Great, the fourth-century bishop of Caesarea, read God’s command “Let the earth bring forth” as a word that “teaches nature what she has to do in the course of ages” (Hexaemeron, Homily 5). Basil knew nothing of evolution, yet he pictured God creating through nature’s own long work.

Praise for the Maker

Learning how life unfolded over billions of years can deepen the wonder of faith. Every creature that ever lived, from the first cells to the people reading this page, came from the God who called the world good and still holds it in being.

LORD, how many are your works! In wisdom, you have made them all. The earth is full of your riches.

Psalm 104:24