A New Contributor
I am happy to announce that The Panda’s Thumb has a new contributor, one that I think will bring quite a different perspective to the evolution/creationism debate. Up until now, all of our contributors have been scientists, academics or interested amateurs like myself. Now we have our first contributor from the theological side of things.
Henry Neufeld is a writer and Bible teacher with his BA in Biblical Languages from Walla Walla College, College Place, WA, and his MA in Religion, concentrating in Biblical and Cognate languages from Andrews University, Berrien Springs, MI. His MA project focused on developing a consistent model for understanding imagery shared between ancient near eastern cultures, particularly in creation myths. He is president of Pacesetters Bible School, a non-profit religious educational organization dedicated to taking Biblical scholarship to the people in the pews. He is co-author of When 3 to 8 Gather and I Want to Pray (both under revision for a second edition) and author of What’s in a Version? He recently founded Energion Publications, a small publishing company whose mission is to publish challenging material on religious topics, and also maintains the web site Energion.com which publishes articles on the same topics. Henry is married with two step-children, and lives in Pensacola, Florida where he is a member of a United Methodist congregation.
Henry has been a friend of mine for something going on 11 years now. He is in fact one of the very first people I encountered when I began participating in online bulletin boards and such, in the Compuserve Religion Forum. I am thrilled that he will be bringing his perspective here as a Christian and a Hebrew scholar. I have long believed that the evolution/creationism debate is far too often framed as Christianity v. atheism, when that simply is not the case. Evolution is accepted by most of the mainline Christian denominations, and some of our most powerful and eloquent spokesmen on behalf of evolution and sound science education are Christians. Ken Miller, Glenn Morton, Howard Van Till, Keith Miller and our own Wesley Elsberry come to mind. I am glad that Henry Neufeld has accepted my offer to patronize our little establishment and lend us his always challenging and well-reasoned views on this important subject. Welcome, Henry.