January 2021 Newsletter

 

Dear ISSR Member,

 

I do hope you are staying well. While hope is on the horizon, the present situation for many of us continues to grow increasingly worrisome. Here in Toronto, my partner and I spent a very quiet holiday (my first Christmas not seeing family) but made the best of it like so many others. Numbers seem to be rising sharply, a trend I hope we can move away from quickly. On a more positive note, however, and one that is hard to believe, today I bring to you the first ISSR newsletter of 2021! Take a look:

 

ISSR Matters:

  1. Fraser Watts, our Executive Secretary, on behalf of ISSR, would like you to read the following New Year’s message:

 

“Dear Friends,

 

This newsletter comes out at the start of the New Year. It is customary at this time to wish people a ‘happy’ New Year, but that takes on the particular poignancy after the very difficult year we have all been through. Increasing globalisation means that when this has been very much a global pandemic. Infection spreads everywhere in a way that would not have been possible until recently. The personal and working lives of many of us have been very disrupted. It is one thing to cope with unusual restrictions for a month or two. However, after nine months, a certain weariness that sets in.

 

Many things in ISSR have continued to function normally. Administratively, as an international society, we rely on Internet connections anyway. The technology available has improved significantly since we were founded in 2002. In October, we started a major new research project on Understanding Spiritual Intelligence, and we have been able to make good progress with that as well, using the internet. The research team have not yet had a face-to-face meeting, but it will be a pleasure to do so when we can.

 

However, conferences have been affected.

  • We had planned to join with the ESSSAT conference last April. However, that had to be postponed. It was initially planned to hold it in April 2021, but it is now planned for June 2021.
  • The annual Boyle Lecture, normally given in St Mary-be-Bow church in central London, will be given online this year, by Professor Tom McLeish, followed by panel discussion, on Wednesday 3rd February 2021. Because it is online this year, we are able to invite members of ISSR from all over the world.
  • We started the first of a new wave of Special Interest Groups (on psychology) and hope to get more underway. Suggestions welcome.
  • The ISSR Executive Committee started to make plans for an online conference on ‘Rebooting’ the Science and Religion. However, we became unsure that an online conference towards the end of this long-running pandemic would be the best way to move that forward, but we will find other ways to carry forward that initiative.
  • Now the end of the pandemic is in sight we will resume planning a regular schedule of conferences.

 

As we move into this New Year, with the prospect of an easing of pandemic restrictions, the President, Executive Committee, and all of us involved in running ISSR wish all our members a very good New Year indeed, and a much easier and joyful one than the one that is ending.

 

Fraser Watts

Executive Secretary”

 

 

 

 

  1. ISSR would like to invite any Fellows who have recently published a new book to write a blog about it. This is an excellent way to keep the community informed of current literature and an opportunity for you to share your work more widely. If you have questions about the format, you may email me at any time.

 

  1. After a very successful first year, ISSR’s new Book Prize is now accepting invitations from members for nominations for best books in the field of science and religion. Funded by the Templeton World Charity Organization, this award is dedicated to highlighting critical scholarship in the field of science and religion. The first year’s winners were awarded digitally at AAR this year, with the following years to be announced at AAR as well. We have three categories: Academic, Professional, and Popular. Eligible titles will be those published in 2020. Please send all nominations to me.

 

  1. As last year has now come to an end, I will now be going through membership payments and emailing those members who have yet to pay for last year’s fee. I made an announcement in last month’s newsletter about this and many of you emailed me and/or paid. Thank you very much to all of you who did. If you are still unsure of your payment status, you may email me at any time.

 

  1. The 2020 Fellowship nomination process has now concluded. Thank you to all who nominated potential new Fellows. Our next step is to obtain referee letters from our current Fellows. Please keep an eye out in the coming weeks for a potential invitation to participate in the referee process.

 

New Publications:

  1. A new edited volume from Ignacio Alberto Silva, together with Dr Simon Kopf (who received his DPhil at Oxford in 2019), titled Divine and Human Providence. Philosophical, Psychological and Theological Approaches (Routledge) was released late last year. This volume was also published in parallel in Spanish under the title La providencia humana y divina. Aproximaciones desde la filosofía, la psicología y la teología (Ediciones Logos 2020). This volume offers an original perspective on divine providence by examining philosophical, psychological, and theological perspectives on human providence as exhibited in virtuous human behaviours. The volume is structured dynamically, going from chapters on human providence to those on divine providence, and back. Drawing on insights from virtue ethics, psychology and cognitive science, the philosophy of providence in the face of contingent events, and the theology of grace, each chapter contributes to an original overall perspective: that human providential action is a resource suited specifically to personal action and hence related to the purported providential action of a personal God. By putting forward a fresh take on divine providence, this book enters new territory on an age-old issue. It will therefore be of great interest to scholars of theology and philosophy.

 

  1. A new book, edited by Russell Re Manning, Fellow of ISSR, titled Mutual Enrichment between Psychology and Theology, and dedicated to Fraser Watts, “who has inspired and helped so many to break through the culturally dominant narrative of a conflict between science (particularly psychology) and religion to see potential not only for dialogue but also for mutual enrichment,” was released late 2020. The contents are:

Part 1: Mutually Enriching Dialogue

Doing Theology in Dialogue with Psychology, by Fraser Watts

Dialogue within Dialogue: Interdisciplinary Dialogue between Theology and Psychology, by Léon Turner

Part 2. Psychology Enriching Theology

William Temple and the Religious Reception of Psychoanalysis, by Alistair Lockhart

Have a Bit of Nous: Revelation and the Psychology of Religion, by Christopher Knight

Embodying Theology, by James W Jones

Mindfulness, Secular Spirituality, and the Psychology of Religious Knowing, by Mark Williams

Part 3. Theology Enriching Psychology

Character Strengths and Virtue, by Roger Bretherton

The Psychology and Theology of Open-mindedness, by Ryan Williams

Wisdom and Moral Formation, by Harris Wiseman

Forgiveness and Relational Spirituality, by Everett L. Worthington, Jr. and Steven J. Sandage

Part 4. Mutual Enrichment in Religious Life and Pastoral Care

Religion and Mental Health Practice: A Framework for Integration, by José Liht

Meditation as Science and Religion, by Miguel Farias & Masoumeh Rahmani

Worry and Prayer, by Christopher Cook

Being with Unknowing: Spiritual Direction and Bion’s idea of O, by Mark Argent

Redeeming Narratives in Christian Community, by Matthew Russell

Self-Spirituality in the Twenty-First Century, by Galen Watts

Afterword – Fraser Watts

 

  1. Calvin Mercer, along with Tracy Trothen, has co-authored a new book that is receiving notable endorsements. Religion and the Technological Future: An Introduction to Biohacking, Artificial Intelligence, and Transhumanism, by Palgrave Macmillan, with a foreword by Ron Cole-Turner. This book is endorsed by Bill McKibben, Aubrey de Grey, Ted Peters, Robert Geraci, Steve Fuller, Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, Noreen Herzfeld, Jeanine Thweatt, and others. For more information and to order the book, go to: https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030623586

 

  1. R. Klemm has a new article out titled “Expanding the vision of neurotheology: make neuroscience religion’s ally”. For more information, click here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19349637.2020.1858735?src=

 

Media:

  1. Thomas Jay Oord was recently on the BioLogos podcast, Language of God, where he was in conversation with Jim Stump. You can listen to the podcast here: https://biologos.org/podcast-episodes/thomas-jay-oord-uncontrolling-love?fbclid=IwAR3syD_ili9eZY7OJjxGFvFEthyGbobqFJ3mQ-f4er2mX4DLy04lD2uXPFc

 

 

 

Grants and Fellowships:

  1. Grants for Theological Puzzles

How can theologians employ science in the service of theology?

The Science-Engaged Theology Project (University of St Andrews) is creating an online resource to advance the studies on the interrelationship between scientific and theological subdisciplines.

Science-Engaged Theology encourages research that gives concrete answers to “Theological Puzzles”.

A Puzzle is a theological question that heads toward concrete answers, deals with possible objections, is transparent about using a methodology appropriate to its success conditions, and in principle unsolvable without the help of, at least, some empirical data.

We invite submissions that bring scientific and theological subdisciplines into constructive conversation Some illustrative examples are: moral theology and genetics, pneumatology and developmental psychology, theological anthropology and genetics, ecclesiology and cognitive science, etc.

We encourage submissions from all religious traditions. 

Authors receive £950 upon publication. Entries are peer-reviewed.

These puzzles will be useful discussion points for undergraduate and postgraduate teachers, as well as important research contributions in their own right.

Deadline: 28 February 2021

For more information about structure and word limit, please see: https://set.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/catalogue/

Or, please get in touch with Mikael.Leidenhag@st-andrews.ac.uk

 

2. The University of Saint Andrews has an open call for applications to a summer Fellowship on Science Engaged Theology, under their project New Visions in Theological Anthropology. Opportunities are available for research networking and funding. Applications are due 14 February. For more information about this opportunity, please click here: https://set.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/fellowship/

 

 

 

 

As always, ISSR’s newsletter is supplied primarily by our members. If there is anything you come across that would be of benefit to our international community, please share it with me at admin@issr.org.uk.  Also, please remember that our blog is put out around the 15th of each month and is written by our Fellows. If you have a blog idea (about a new book, research, reflections, etc.) you may contact me for that as well.

 

Good luck, stay safe, and do let me know if you need anything or have any questions.

 

All best,

 

Anthony K Nairn

www.anthonynairn.com

ISSR Administrator

www.issr.org.uk