The Seventh-day Adventist Church must recognize and respond to current debates about creation and other theories of origins, according to a group of leaders who met June 11 and 12 at the church’s world headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, United States. The eight-member committee, made up of Adventist scientists, theologians and church leaders, is a preliminary planning group. Its role is to consider ways of encouraging greater communication between the church’s academics, leaders and members about theological and scientific questions relating to the Biblical teaching of creation.

“Explanations of origins, as expressed either by science or Christian faith, are areas of frequent debate and controversy,” says Lowell Cooper, a general vice president of the Adventist world church and chair of the planning group.  “This is not just an academic or theoretical debate,” he adds. “Even people without a scholarly interest in the matter find themselves wrestling with how a person can live in the realm of faith, while also in a world so dominated by the disciplines of science. Conflicts between science and faith are not new and are not likely to disappear.”

It is important “to work together to face the challenges to our faith that come from both secular and Christian thought leaders,” says Dr. James Gibson, secretary of the committee. Gibson heads up the Geoscience Research Institute, an Adventist organization located in southern California that examines issues of origins from the perspective of both science and faith. He says he is glad the Adventist Church is working to encourage communication about these issues.

“This is a topic of great significance to every church member,” Gibson says. “The concept of creation is crucial to our understanding of God’s character and is interwoven with many other major Biblical teachings.”

The Adventist Church teaches that God created the earth in six days, resting on the seventh day and setting it aside as a Sabbath, or memorial to creation.

Competing theories of origins sometimes raise questions for which there are no easy answers, says Cooper. “Even so, it is not the time for the Church to be silent and have nothing to say about the tensions that exist.”

The creation study planning committee was convened at the request of Jan Paulsen, president of the Adventist Church worldwide. The next meeting of the group will be later this month. Its recommendations will be considered at a meeting of the Church’s international leaders in September.