There are two problems here. See if you can find them.
Rachel Held Evans had a choice while growing up in Dayton, Tenn., site of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. Believe the Bible or believe evolution.
"I was taught that if you don't interpret Genesis 1 and 2 literally, then you don't take the Bible seriously," said Evans, 29. "I held on tightly to that for a long time."
Evans says creationism — the belief that God created the earth around 6,000 years ago in six days — was commonplace in her town. Unable to reconcile science with her faith, Evans embraced evolution.
"I learned you don't have to choose between loving and following Jesus and believing in evolution," she said. She chronicled her personal journey in a new memoir Evolving in Monkey Town.
Evans is part of a movement of mostly Protestant writers and scientists trying to reconcile faith and science, 85 years after the trial ended. Instead of choosing sides, some prefer the middle ground of intelligent design, which claims God designed how life evolved. Tennessee gubernatorial candidates Ron Ramsey, Zach Wamp and Mike McWherter all advocate teaching intelligent design in schools.
But conservative evangelicals still reject any compromise.
Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., says the two views — creationism and evolution — are incompatible for evangelicals.
"No one is going to read the Bible and be able to accommodate a natural reading of the biblical text with naturalistic evolution," said Mohler.
Unlike Catholics and Orthodox Christians who rely on church teaching and tradition along with the Bible, evangelicals rely on the Bible alone as the authority for their faith.
"The entrenched hostility to evolution in American evangelism is very deep," says Karl Giberson, a physics professor at Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, Mass.
Giberson, the son of a Primitive Baptist pastor from Canada, grew up believing evolution was wrong, but his views changed once he studied physics in college. Now a member of the Church of the Nazarene and a teacher at a Christian college he's convinced evolution is true.
He is one of the co-founders of the BioLogos Forum which teaches faith can co-exist with science. He founded the organization in 2008 with Francis Collins, director of the National Institute of Health. Collins, 60, a one-time atheist converted to Christianity when he was 27.
The group runs a website, biologos.org, and sponsors seminars on how faith and science can work together.
"It's a place for people who understand that evolution is true to stand together," said Giberson.
For Giberson, evolution describes the mechanism of life — how it works. But faith addresses the meaning of life, something science can't do.
Recently, three candidates running for governor in Tennessee endorsed the idea of teaching intelligent design in public schools.
"We can blend science and religion in that regard and the two do not have to contradict each other," said Mike McWherter, a Democrat.
Wamp, a Republican, suggested teaching intelligent design as a balance to teaching evolution.
"If they are going to teaching evolution in schools, it better be counteracted by teaching a faith-based, God-centered education," he said.
The Republican Ramsey described himself as a creationist. "I know I was created by God," he said. "That's what I want my children to learn."
For Christian schools like Bryan College, evolution can be a tricky subject. Their biology professors teach it in class but without violating the school's statements of faith.
Brian Eisenach, assistant professor of biology at Bryan, says he teaches evolution straight from the textbook in his classes. Then he has a separate discussion about other views.
He does not endorse any particular belief. Instead, Eisenach says he wants his students to know all the options for understanding the origins of human life. It's better, he says, than confrontation.
"The argument has escalated into a lot of name-calling and stereotyping on all sides," he said.
Evans says Eisenach's approach is the correct one because her teachers handled it poorly.
Pastors and professors at Bryan College once told her if she questioned creationism she was no longer a true Christian.
"My generation of evangelicals is ready to call a truce on the culture wars. It seems like our parents, our pastors, and the media won't let us do that. We are ready to be done with the whole evolution-creation debate. We are ready to move on."
1) If your way of finding common ground between evolution and faith is to say "intelligent design", then you really do not understand evolution. You are not compromising so much as holding onto that aspect of your faith. 2) Referring to evolution as a "belief" is wrong. Evolution is something you accept, just like any other view of science, such as gravity.
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