he ambitious idea of publishing all the letters of Charles Darwin was originally conceived in 1974 by Frederick Burkhardt, an American scholar; the project he founded is now based at University of Cambridge in the UK. Since then, the Darwin Correspondence Project has doggedly pursued its purpose of publishing all 14,500 surviving letters in 30 volumes by 2025. From late 2006, however, this work has been supplemented by a program funded by a $1.1 million grant from the Foundation to create a new web-based resource on “Darwin and Religion.”
Out of the overall canon, all of Darwin’s letters relating to religious themes will be selected for online publication, accompanied by contextual material, notably including contributions from a wide range of experts involved in current debates about science and religion. Dr. Alison Pearn and Dr. Paul White, who are directing the program at University of Cambridge, describe the progress of the project.
“We have electronic transcripts of all of the letters that we know about,” says Pearn, “and this July volume 16 of the correspondence series main edition will be coming out, which takes us over half way.” But there has been some delay in getting the website discussion forum online. “There are issues over how you would moderate it,” she explains. The problem is staff time: there are eight staff members in the UK, but not all are full-time.
Another part of the grant program is very much up and running. This is a highly successful dramatization of the correspondence between Darwin and his friend Asa Gray, Harvard professor of botany and a devout Presbyterian. “We had a premiere public performance in Cambridge, in the UK, in March 2007,” says Pearn, “and we discovered there was a strong desire among the academic community to have a shorter version we could take to conferences.”
When the drama was taken to America, Asa Gray’s alma mater was understandably among the academic venues that welcomed it. “The strongest interest in putting it on came from Harvard and MIT,” reports Pearn. “We’ve already been asked to take it back again to Cornell, and Boston University would like to have it, also a number of conferences.” Consideration is being given to a longer tour of the United States, visiting colleges and large congregations, as well as the possibility of a week-long production next year during the Darwin Centenary celebrations at Cambridge.
Both elements of the “Darwin and Religion” program are intended to dispel misunderstandings about Darwin’s relationship to matters religious. “Those with extreme views on both sides of the current debate characterize Darwin as a champion of science against religion,” says her colleague Paul White. “The main point to make, I think, is that he was rarely dogmatic about anything. He regarded personal belief as just that—personal—and generally regarded science and faith as applicable to different areas of human experience.”
Does the correspondence throw further light on Darwin’s beliefs, or non-belief? “It appears from a close study of the correspondence that his beliefs were not static, but neither did he simply move steadily from a position of faith to a position of no faith.” The issues that the program, and eventually the website, chiefly address are the debate over design in nature, Darwin’s personal beliefs, the breadth of religious belief in Darwin’s day, the implications for ethics of Darwin’s theory, and the manner in which religious debate was conducted in the period when Darwin lived.
It is expected these issues will also be addressed in the public prize essay competitions being held annually as part of the grant program for the next three years. The first winner will be announced in summer 2008. What is the big question that dominates the issue of Darwin and religion? Pearn and White are in no doubt: “I think ‘Who was Darwin?’ is the one we are best placed to answer—using his correspondence to reveal his humanity and to put him in the context of his time and his own nature.”