Nearly 450 Christian churches in the United States are celebrating the 197th birthday of Charles Darwin Sunday.

The churches say Darwin's theory of biological evolution is compatible with faith and that Christians have no need to choose between religion and science, the Chicago Tribune reported.

It's to demonstrate, by Christian leaders and members of the clergy, that you don't have to make that choice. You can have both, said Michael Zimmerman, dean of the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, who organized the Evolution Sunday event.

A variety of denominational and non-denominational churches, including Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Unitarian, Congregationalist, United Church of Christ, Baptist and a host of community churches, are participating in the event, which grew out of Zimmerman's The Clergy Letter Project, another effort to dispel the perception among many Christians that faith and evolution are mutually exclusive, the newspaper said.