In case you haven’t heard, Evolution Sunday is the latest part of the Clergy Letter Project, a collection of clergymen who are standing up to be counted and insisting that Darwinian evolution via natural selection is perfectly compatible with Christian faith. On Evolution Sunday, preachers from around America spoke to their congregations about Darwin and his theory in a positive light.

One day, we’ll look back on this and wonder why it was all necessary. Seeing something like this makes me wonder why I spend so much time and energy promoting the idea of evolution, but the answer I always come back to is that it’s wonderful. It’s an elegant, beautiful, powerful idea that makes such amazing sense. I find wonder in it without any sort of religious connection, but I’ve no bone to pick with those who find wonder in both. The bone has always been with extremism – both the Creationist kind, and the kind that uses natural selection to justify rascist, classist or otherwise -ist nonsense. Slowly the power of that extremism is ending in America, though there’s still plenty where it came from.

Adelaide is two weeks away. Get yourselves ready.