Editor’s note: This article is adapted from Stockholm Syndrome Christianity: Why Christian Leaders Are Failing — and What We Can Do About It, by John West, just released by Discovery Institute Press.

In the early years of the intelligent design movement, one of the most significant critics of ID among evangelical Christian academics was Howard Van Till (1938-2024).

A physics professor at Calvin College (the campus chapel is pictured above), Van Till was the pre-eminent example of an evangelical Christian scientist in the 1990s who defended Darwinian evolution. Van Till still ends up being cited by some as an example of how an orthodox Christian can embrace Darwin.

The problem is that after retiring from Calvin, Van Till evolved well beyond Christianity. Indeed, he eventually evolved beyond theism.

By 2006, Van Till was declaring himself a freethinker. By 2016, he was identifying with what he called “a comprehensively naturalistic worldview,” which he described as a belief “that the physical universe is the only reality… and that it is not dependent on a non-corporeal, person-like Agent (the Abrahamic God, for example) to give it being or to guide its evolution.” 

A Model Christian 

One of the Christian scientists who liked to cite Van Till as a model for integrating Christianity with evolution was Karl Giberson. Also a physicist, Giberson has been a longtime associate of geneticist Francis Collins, with whom he coauthored a book. For many years, Giberson was a professor at Eastern Nazarene University, an explicitly evangelical Christian institution. He helped Francis Collins start the BioLogos Foundation to promote theistic evolution. 

Giberson hasn’t yet slid as far down the slope as Van Till. But, sadly, he appears to be on the same trajectory.

In his book Saving Darwin (endorsed by Collins), Giberson denied the historic Christian  teaching that humans were originally created good. In Giberson’s view, that can’t be true because it conflicts with Darwinian evolution. According to him, evolution is driven by selfishness, so humans must have been selfish and evil from the start. Giberson nevertheless maintained that he was a committed Christian. 

But reading between the lines, his reasons for staying a Christian were rather shaky. He acknowledged poignantly: “my belief in God is tinged with doubts and, in my more reflective moments, I sometimes wonder if I am perhaps simply continuing along the trajectory of a childhood faith that should be abandoned.” 

A Practical Choice

So why did he stay a Christian? “As a purely practical matter, I have compelling reasons to believe in God. My parents are deeply committed Christians and would be devastated were I to reject my faith. My wife and children believe in God, and we attend church together regularly. Most of my friends are believers. I have a job I love at a Christian college that would be forced to dismiss me if I were to reject the faith that underpins the mission of the college. Abandoning belief in God would be disruptive, sending my life completely off the rails.” Note that Dr. Giberson’s “compelling reasons” to believe in God were sociological. They weren’t about whether Christianity is actually true. 

Within a few years of writing Saving Darwin, Giberson resigned his post at the Christian university where he taught. In a book following his departure, Saving the Original Sinner (2015), Giberson made fairly clear that he now regards the Bible as a mish-mash of divergent stories from one particular tribe rather than a divinely inspired text featuring God’s authoritative message. He thinks if Christianity wants to survive it needs to evolve: “Christianity emerged in a different time and must be prepared to evolve like everything else.”

Commendable, Yet Heartbreaking

The book where Giberson made these claims was published by an arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association. I have sat on the same stage with Giberson and interacted with him in public. His candor is commendable, yet heartbreaking. 

Van Till and Giberson are examples of what I describe in my new book as “Stockholm Syndrome Christians” — Christians who identify more with the views of secular elites than with the views their fellow believers or their historic faith. Stockholm Syndrome Christianity isn’t a very solid place on which to stand. It’s heavily dependent on the surrounding secular culture. If the culture continues to corrode, so too will the Stockholm Syndrome Christian. That’s why Stockholm Syndrome Christianity is the proverbial slippery slope.