Ascending the Double Helix

“If the arts and sciences are more your religion than church, but you’ve been yearning for Jesus in your life, this book is for you.”

Ben Colahan

“I’ve known Don Heinz for years, and it’s no surprise that he’s bringing his creative and brilliant mind to braid evolution, incarnation, and social justice into a vision of divine and human co-becoming. He presents a provocative vision of God and humanity ascending together in a double helix of collaborative eschatology. Rarely has theology been this audacious or hopeful.”

Greg Cootsona

“Religious and skeptical, Nathanael was summoned from beneath his fig tree to meet the Word become flesh, who promised him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man” (John 1:[43–]51). Could this enfleshed ‘Jacob’s ladder’ called Christ actually be a cosmic DNA double helix? Don Heinz investigates the possibility and its life-changing implications. Doubt or dispute his conclusions if you must but ignore them at your peril. Open this book and open the future—and maybe a few minds too. Can anything good come from a deep conversation between science and serious religion? Come and see!”

Brian Hiortdahl

“Ascending the Double Helix is a guide for how to evolve together, guided by different moral and religious traditions, but in the direction of one ‘collective eschatology.’ Heinz courageously reintroduces to our contemporary theological reflection an idea recently out of vogue, namely, the notion of ‘overlapping magisteria’ between the realms of science and religion. Heinz’s metaphor of the double helix is not only powerful but persuasive, and his emphasis on the public and critical nature of theology has a refreshing transparency that couldn’t be less aloof or more centered on the problems bearing down on us right now. This is a grand and uncommon book reinvigorating discussions about the relevance of theology to secularly lived lives.”

Andrew Flescher

“Don Heinz is a prolific author whose most recent book stretches the theological imagination well beyond the most familiar topics in discussions of the relationship between religion, science, and society. This work sets forth a visionary project seeking to unite a mystical sensibility with the ethical-political impulse of the social gospel movement. Together these provide the basis for what Heinz proposes as a renewed incarnation of Christian life in the twenty-first century.”

Bruce Grelle

“Heinz brings the power of prophetic call and incarnation into the contemporary political and cultural arena of the US as he articulates the claims of both a ‘liberal’ and liberating God. Grounded in a view of the church as servant to the world that is willing to align—where possible—with secular forces and liberal progressive Catholics and Protestants, this volume develops the outlines of and the mechanisms for establishing a Christian political resistance movement. Compelling, energetic, and intellectually engaging—and well worth a read and consideration for Christians struggling with their progressive identity in contemporary American society.”

Joel Zimbelman

“In a contemporary world filled with politicized talk of God but reflecting very little of God’s love, this book enjoins us to participate in the unfolding of God’s love and to recognize the divinity in each of us. Don Heinz takes us on an erudite trip from biblical times through to the modern world of cellphones and genome mapping and shows us how to participate in the evolution of a more compassionate, just, and forgiving world in concert with the Divine. Just as Paul never met Jesus but felt his presence all around him, Heinz deftly shows how two thousand years later we are still called to sense—indeed to act out—the Divine in the ways we feel about ourselves and behave towards each other. Its message could not be more pertinent in these troubled times.”

Daniel Veidlinger