Views about the origins of the universe, life, and of human life play a crucial role in Christian perspectives on genetics and ethics. It matters to Christians whether the world and life are results of self-organizing processes, processes directed by God, or a combination of the two.

There are a variety of positions taken by various Christians on the question of origins. There are many whose position is shaped by a simple reading of the Bible. They understand the universe to be the product of God’s creativity. God spoke the world into being. “Then God said, ‘Let there be light;’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). (All citations will be from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) unless otherwise stated.)

Two readings of Genesis shape the doctrine of creation for most Christian communities. These readings are reflected in the major biblical translations used by Christians. There are those who insist that God created ex nihilo, that is, completely out of nothing. For the others God speaks into being out of original chaos a world of order and variety. The former prefer the King James Version and related translations while the latter prefer translations with affinity to the NRSV. The first two verses in Genesis are rendered thus:

The crucial divide, however, in how Christians read and interpret the Bible is in the approaches they take to the dominant evolutionary account of the world, biological life, and human life (Mwase 2004). There are those who reject evolution outright. They prefer a simple creationist account of origins. For some scientifically savvy Christians, big bang cosmology provides the primary backdrop for understanding the origin of the universe and biological life. They seek to interpret scripture in light of what the best science has established. A source of much debate, often acrimonious, is a movement of scholars arguing that scientific data suggest that the universe is the product of intelligent design. Intelligent design arguments are not new in the
history of thought. These arguments can be traced to thinkers such as William Paley (1743-1805). The intelligent design movement is now a well-organized and wellfunded movement that currently enjoys significant support and influence in many Christian communities and among conservative politicians. It is not altogether clear what impact intelligent design positions will have on decisions by Christians about the use of genetic technologies.

A significant number of Christians have come to terms with an evolutionary understanding of the universe and history. Among the major Internet portals that showcase the work of such thinkers are the John Templeton Foundation, the Center for Theology and Natural Science, and Metanexus. Current theories of evolution by a widespread consensus of scientists have much going for them. Evolution cannot be dismissed in a cavalier fashion as just a theory. When any account in science attains the status of a theory, that means the account has substantial explanatory power and fosters productive inquiry. Such is the case with present-day insights on evolution. Human beings and all living things have evolved. Recent models offer substantial genetic data in support of a Recent African Origin (RAO)—also called the Out of Africa model (Tishkoff and Kidd 2004). RAO holds that non-African populations descended from an anatomically modern H. sapiens ancestor that evolved in Africa roughly 200 thousand years ago and then spread and diversified throughout the world. Genetically human populations are 99.6-99.8% identical at the nucleotide level (Appiah 1995; Clark 2002; Marks 2003).

Diversity, however, does characterize H. sapiens. The HapMap Project is giving us a clearer picture, whereby populations are shown to have clustered by broad geographic regions that correspond with common “racial” classification (Africa, Europe, Asia, Oceania, Americas). The story of migration, isolation, and drift is emerging from use of Y-chromosomal material, mtDNA, and autosomal markers. A better understanding of the global distribution of genetic variation is vital for biomedical diagnosis and therapy. It is now a matter of common affirmation that all individuals are genetically unique. However, given that each person is a member of what appears to be distinct ancestral groups, it is important that we develop a perspective on everyone’s common nature.

What is the nature of persons? Do all human beings share the same nature? How are we to interpret what they have in common and what differentiates one individual from another or one group from another? What are the implications of human diversity for the diagnosis of diseases and for treatment regimens? Why is it that
particular populations seem to have higher incidences of sickle cell trait and disease, cystic fibrosis, breast cancer, etc? Scientists at the time of this writing are feverishly attempting to define with as much clarity as possible what we know and do not know about human beings. Three major publications should prove helpful for those seeking to develop a Christian perspective on the nature of persons in light of the best science. Nature Genetics in its November 2004 supplement took up the topic of “Genetics for the Human Race” (Royal, Malveaux, and Dunlap 2004). The January 2005 American Psychologist is a collection of ten articles that explore “Genes, Race, and Psychology in the Genome Era” (Anderson and Nickerson 2005). The Social Science Research Council has made available a web forum that explores the question, “Is Race Real?”

Development of perspectives on the nature of persons occurs in a context marked by a history of racism and patriarchy. Doctrines that promote racial hierarchy have been part of the thinking of leading Christians and scientists since the Enlightenment (a philosophical movement of the eighteenth century), if not earlier. Patriarchy, the perspective that views God and society in a way that grants males prominence and primacy, has been entrenched in most Christian traditions since their inception. Racism and patriarchy are of concern in thinking about the use of genetic technologies because dominant white male culture has often harnessed the goods of medicine in a way that resulted in health inequities (IOM 2002). Many writers in critical theory have shown that colonization, slavery, and racial eugenics and genocide at best could not have been pulled off without the participation of segments within Christianity. No believer can refute the massive evidence that conversion was often the one publicly avowed purpose of fifteenth- to nineteenth-century missions to the southern and western hemispheres. The actual goals indeed included conversion and “education” into European culture, but equally important to colonizers were enslavement or genocide, sexual adventure, theft of natural resources, and just plain old expansion of territory and world dominance. The existential problem for Christians today is not only the devastation that went along with the conversions, but the issues at the heart of such (pseudo-?) conversions themselves: learning to detest the body, especially if one were of dark skin and female; internalizing hegemonic sexism qua monotheism; learning to renounce one’s own supportive and ritualistic upbringing (that is, losing the strength and wisdom of the symbolic that constitute a “person”); learning to perceive the teachings of the other world religions, e.g., Islam and Buddhism, as primitive, mythological, and indeed demonic; and accepting the semantics of a European language as the sole mode of truth.

Feminist Christians are wont to use the word “misogyny” instead of “patriarchy,” so grave is their reservation about their faith’s ability to acknowledge the human status of women. Hatred of the female body and resentment of women’s existence are not Freudian ruses. They are evident from the story of Adam and Eve, on through the
New Testament writings of St. Paul. Jesus took a different view of women than had yet appeared in history; so then must the Gospel writers have done. Soren Kierkegaard was a major thinker notable for his acclamation of the feminine as integral to Christian life. Also, the feminism that is evident in the “Lost Gospels” inspires many feminists of today’s church. Feminists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have reinterpreted and even re-written the ancient foundation myths, such as the account of Adam’s rib (woman comes from bone; man, only from dust) and of biting into the apple (an act showing that Eve had the courage to take risks and to initiate history and that Adam was a stupid frontally aware sycophant). Kierkegaard deconstructed the story of Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, and Sarah in Fear and Trembling, setting forth the Judeo-Christian feminist genre that looks again at Mary Magdalene, at the authority of Peter, at the intentions of the Gospel of John and the parables, and at the teachings of the early mystics known as the Desert Fathers and Mothers. The very image of God as a partriarch in the sky is itself a universal human psychosis, as noted by Kierkegaard (1983), Nietzsche (in Kaufmann 1968), Bergson (1975), and Whitehead (1967), among others. Movies, paintings, and sculptures since the Middle Ages, iconography, literature, and the liturgies make appeals to an old bearded imperious white male, and to a pliable womanhood that functions only performatively, in one or more of three roles: prostitute, wife and breeder, or witch. The last of the three categories is an emotionally charged term that, when used in its negative connotations, targets creative and courageous women: female intellectuals, artists, priests, leaders, and healers.