This is the text of the Christian Comment I submitted for the Lymington Times of 15th October, 2009.

The following week's L.T. printed a lengthy letter of complaint from an elder of the local Jehovah's Witnesses, so I thought it would be good to make the original available:

Christian Comment

As this year marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal work, 'On the Origin of Species', it is an excellent time to reflect on the natural world and our place within it. (It's also rather comforting to reflect that one can still make a such a contribution to the world at the age of 50!) Although some of the detail is unclear, it is now certain that all the complex life forms we see around us, including penguins, poppies, and people, evolved from microscopic common ancestors over the past four billion years or so. It's a truth about God's amazing creation which should make us stop and think. Not only are other human beings our brothers and sisters, but also all living creatures are our cousins. Our past is shared and our futures are interwoven – we all depend on one another, and this is the way God intended it to be. As St.Paul put it, “Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it.” Darwin helped us to see that those words apply not only to the Church of Christ, but to the whole created world.

Peter Salisbury, Vicar of Lymington