The Encyclopedia of World Religions

Exodus S 141

But in the 20th century a backlash against evo lution arose among some American Protestants. This was fundamentalism ( see E VANGELICAL C HRIS TIANITY , and FUNDAMENTALISM , C HRISTIAN ). Besides rejecting evolution, fundamentalists opposed his torical methods of studying the B IBLE and a move ment in Christianity that emphasized social reform. In 1925 fundamentalists and scientists squared off in the famous “monkey trial” of John Scopes in Dayton, Tennessee. He was accused of violating the law by teaching evolution in a biology class. In the middle 1970s fundamentalists began demand ing that public schools in the United States teach “creation science” in addition to evolution. Almost all reputable scientists reject “creation science” as bogus. Unlike the fundamentalists, many have accepted evolution without rejecting traditional religion. Indeed, Darwin himself remained a com mitted Christian all his life. Some have asserted that science is about facts, while religion is con cerned with values. This was the position of the German theologian Albrecht Ritschl (1822–89). Others have maintained that biological evolution explains material aspects of human life, but not its mental or spiritual side. This was the position of A. R. Wallace, an associate of Darwin’s, and of Rudolf O TTO , a philosopher of religion. Still oth ers, such as the Catholic priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), have taught that the human spirit evolves. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, some anthropologists, especially in Great Britain, debated whether religion itself had evolved. Well before Darwin, the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–76) had suggested that all religion had grown out of POLYTHEISM , the WORSHIP of many gods. In the 19th and early 20th centuries some think ers claimed that religion began with other forms: the belief in GHOSTS (Herbert Spencer), a “disease of language” (Friedrich Max Müller), the belief in spirits (E. B. Tylor), a powerful, nonpersonal, electric-like force called mana (R. R. Marett). The most widely known figure may have been James George F RAZER . He divided human history into three stages: magic, religion, and science.

Charles Darwin (Library of Congress)

After World War I anthropologists rejected all of these ideas. More important, they rejected the attempt to identify a single series of steps through which religion had evolved into the forms we know today. Most English-speaking thinkers have remained suspicious of the topic of religion’s evolution. Exodus The central story of the Hebrew B IBLE and a formative event in the history of J UDAISM . The root meaning of the word “exodus” is “a going out.” During the Exodus, M OSES led the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. They wandered through the desert of Sinai for 40 years before entering the promised land of Canaan. During this time they entered into a COVENANT with the god who had freed them, YHWH (“the Lord”), at Mt. Sinai. There they received the T EN C OMMANDMENTS and, according to Jewish tradition, the entire law ( see T ORAH ).