Our simulcast on Sunday evening, “Science and Faith: Are They Really in Conflict?,” was a smash success. We’re still compiling exact figures, but preliminarily here’s what we’ve got.
This single event with Stephen Meyer, John Lennox, and Eric Metaxas was simultaneously broadcast by 128 co-hosting churches and other groups across North America — 40 states and 5 provinces of Canada — reaching an audience of around 13,000-24,000 people.
We’ve heard of churches with attendance counts ranging up to 700+. Wonderful! Pictured above is a more typical turnout of 170 at one church in our Seattle metro area neighborhood (First Presbyterian in Tacoma). Congratulations to all who participated and helped in planning and execution.
If nothing else, this was a logistical triumph. Talk about irreducible complexity!
From responses it’s clear that the content, energy, and chemistry of the conversation were all very well received, with Oxford University’s Dr. Lennox scoring as profound and charming, Metaxas of BreakPoint as hilarious and incisive, and Discovery Institute’s Dr. Meyer as brilliant as always.
Steve Meyer, author of Darwin’s Doubt, made the great point — which one respondent thought we should make more often — that teaching students about the evolution controversy is simply a matter of promoting scientific literacy. Every young person needs to understand that Darwinian theory is subject to doubt, and indeed the object of considerable debate in mainstream science. Withholding that fact from students, dumbing down instruction in biology, is irresponsible and misleading.
On that note, 128 groups holding the event included 22 schools and universities. Host churches for the simulcast represented the full range of Christian denominations, included Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Mennonite, non-denominational, Covenant, Assemblies of God, and Evangelical Free.
Will we be doing this again? Well, it was a lot of work, but certainly worth it.