Recently there has been a TV series on Evolution presented by Chris Packham.

Evolution has been generally accepted since the days of Darwin but it goes beyond animals and humans. Languages evolve. The English we now speak is different from that of Shakespeare’s era, and is constantly changing because of international use.

We can apply the concept of evolution to religion. The God of the Old Testament was a tribal God. By the time of Jesus he is seen as a heavenly father. The early Quakers saw God as the “inner light”.

However, evolution implies necessarily the idea of change. This is not always a comfortable process.

People often want to be sure about certain things, hence the development of creeds. Yet a creed is by nature anti-evolutionary and Quakers have always rejected creeds, seeing them originally as the source of past religious strife and also perhaps agreeing with 2 Corinthians 3.6 which says that “the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life”.

But the consequence of such rejection is that you discard certainty.

The positive side of uncertainty, however, is that it allows the exploration of other possibilities. Gerald Priestland, the former BBC correspondent called Quakerism “a religion of reasonable uncertainty”.

The noted writer on religious matters, Karen Armstrong, emphasised the value of uncertainty in one of her TV talks. She also points out another advantage of uncertainty which is silence. The psalmist knew that: “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46.10).