Science, Religion and Coronavirus
Fraser Watts
There are both scientific and religious aspects of the coronavirus pandemic. In this blog, I will comment on both and the connection between them. I suggest that there is a fruitful convergence between scientific and religious perspectives on coronavirus and that this may point towards a new, more applied, paradigm for work on the interface of science and religion.
Faith in Science
We have come to depend on science to keep us safe from health emergencies such as this; and many of us are rather surprised and shocked that science has let us down. What modern medicine has achieved is remarkable, but its limitations are currently exposed.
Humanity has not always had the kind of confidence in medicine it has shown in recent decades. There was a significant change in attitudes to health in the mid-19th century. James Robinson (2014) dates the change quite precisely, seeing the 1860s as the time when illness changed from being a mystery to being a problem, and one to be solved. It was a time when rapid advances were being made in modern scientific medicine. George Eliot’s great novel Middlemarch (published in 1871-2), captures that transition brilliantly. Modern medicine has gathered pace. Like many others, I have much to be grateful for; some years ago, I had bowel cancer, and I would not be writing this blog now without the very skillful surgery that was carried out then.
It is 100 years since the last serious pandemic, the Spanish flu that occurred after the First World War. We had probably all assumed that this kind of thing could never happen again. With hindsight, that seems arrogant and complacent. We have not sufficiently taken on board the medical risks we are still running, risks that are increased by globalisation. There used to be more precautions. One friend pointed out to me that had the Titanic reached New York in 1912, a team of inspectors would have come on board to test all the passengers for cholera, plague, smallpox, typhoid, yellow fever, scarlet fever, measles and diphtheria, and that only those found clean of those diseases would have been allowed to disembark.
Now, at airports, we check carefully for terrorism, as best we can, but we don’t bother to check for infection and disease. We have just assumed that modern medicine could easily take care of any infection that arrived. How wrong we were. My point here is not to detract from the remarkable triumphs of modern medicine, but to point out the arrogance and complacency that have developed in our attitudes to health.
During the 20th century, humanity came to place its faith in science, and to see science as our “salvation” (Midgley, 1992). It seems to be part of our quasi-religious belief in science that we imagined that medical science was almost omnipotent, and are really shaken to find now that it is not.
Science is scrambling to catch up, and remarkable developments are happening at the speed of light: developing new ways of testing for the virus, developing new aids to breathing, trialing the effectiveness of existing medicines for coronavirus, developing vaccines etc. Some ISSR Fellows, such as Pauline Rudd, are involved in this impressive scientific work. The intelligence, resourcefulness and dedication that is going into scientific work on coronavirus is quite remarkable, and we should all be very grateful for it.
I hope that in ISSR we are wholly positive about science, and enthusiastic about it. But I hope that we also recognize that science has limitations. No good comes of exaggerating what can be achieved by science alone; there are other worthwhile perspectives, from religion and elsewhere. This balanced attitude to science is not easy to hold.
Healing
When people started to see illness as a problem to be solved, they did not turn only to science. As Philip Clayton among others has commented (Clayton, 2011), there had been a marked decline in interest in healing in the Christian church after the time of Augustine. Interest in healing only revived in the 19th century (Robinson, 2014), at exactly the same time as modern medicine was developing. Both were different facets of the same change in attitudes to illness. There were some, such as Mary Baker Eddy, who placed their trust in healing rather than science, and no doubt others who trusted in science but not healing. However, the majority of people were probably pragmatic, and open to anything that worked.
Religious people are likely to ask whether healing has any place in tackling Coronavirus. From most mainline Christian churches, such as the Church of England, there has been a deafening silence about healing in this crisis, though some Pentecostal and charismatic healers believe they can make a contribution. Research on spiritual healing has had a rather mixed track record. Since Herb Benson’s controlled trial of intercessory prayer (Benson et al., 2006), many have concluded either that healing prayer doesn’t really work, or that controlled trials of distant intercessory prayer are not the way to demonstrate it.
I am personally inclined to the latter view, and to think that the best scientific approach to assessing the benefits of healing is to use naturalistic studies, without a control group. It is possible to use the methodological resources of quasi-experimentation, including researching problems that are known to have a low rate of spontaneous remission. The investigative work of Candy Gunther Brown (2012), examining the effects of Pentecostal healing on problems of vision and hearing, is a good example of what can be done.
I assume that the silence of the mainline denominations about healing reflects the tacit assumption that healing has no role to play in this present crisis. Many Christian churches routinely offered prayer for healing, though one wonders whether they actually expect it to cure anyone. The silence about healing in this pandemic seems to indicate that they do not.
I suggest that part of the problem here is an intellectual one. The predominant view of spiritual healing is that, if it works at all, it is an inexplicable miracle that cannot be explained scientifically. That is the approach of the Vatican in assessing whether claims of healing support the case for sanctification, but it seems to rest on a misconceived approach to the relationship between science and religion.
When thinking about creation, most would see the big bang, and belief in creation by God, as answering different questions about creation, not giving competing answers to the same question. The prevaling assumption would be that theology indicates that creation happens under the providence of God and fulfilling his purposes, but science tells us how it actually came about.
I suggest that science and theology provide complementary perspectives on spiritual healing in a similar way (Watts, 2011). I see no problem in exploring the psychobiological pathways by which it might be possible to get from a healing event to remission of symptoms. We are still in very early days of considering how that might work, but it seems that psychoneuroimmunology is one area of science that is likely to be helpful in understanding how the benefits of healing are mediated (Boivin and Webb, 2011).
There are various spiritual practices that enhance the effectiveness of the immune system, sometimes by triggering the release of endorphins. It is entirely credible that spiritual practices, including acts of healing, can strengthen the immune system and increase resistance to coronavirus. None of that invalidates beliefs about the role of God in healing, any more than accepting the origin of the universe through a big bang invalidates God’s role in creation.
Survey data indicates that intercessory prayer occurs quite widely in society (Hood et al., 2018). Against the tide of secularization, prayer is holding up better than religious attendance. It is likely that a lot of intercessory prayer is occurring in this pandemic, despite the silence of the mainline churches about it. It is entirely credible that such prayer can be of real benefit.
Theodicy
There are also theological issues about theodicy that are raised by this pandemic. It seems to be natural for humans to ask “how could God allow this?”, and other such questions. There are various ways of phrasing the answer to that question, but I think most would say that it would be inconsistent with God’s nature and chosen relationship with creation to control whether or not there was a pandemic. Thomas Oord’s recent book, God Can’t (Oord, 2019) offers one robust way of phrasing that response. Most would say, in some way or other, that it is not God’s way to avoid or prevent things like a pandemic.
However, most would also say that God engages with creation in whatever travails it may be going through. I suggest that God never says, “you are on your own”, and equally never says, “leave it to me”; but rather invites us into collaboration. It is an aberration of faith to imagine that God ever promised that there would not be a pandemic, or some other disaster. The promise is rather that, whatever adversity people have to face, God will stand beside them, helping them to get through. We need a theology for a suffering world (Southgate, 2018).
It looks as though the pandemic will reach its peak in many countries around Passover in the Jewish tradition, and around Easter in the Christian tradition. Many will inevitably reflect on the pandemic through one or other of those lenses. It will be natural to see this pandemic as something like the slavery of the Jewish people in Egypt, or the crucifixion of Jesus, and to long and pray for deliverance from the pandemic, and for some kind of new life afterwards.
However, it looks as though recovery from this pandemic will be slow. Christians might say that “Holy Saturday” will go on a very long time; there will be a long wait between Good Friday and Easter. Even when we reach some kind of Easter, whatever that looks like, it will not be a return to normality. Christians have never claimed that resurrection was a return to normal life for Jesus; the tradition is that Jesus rose, but that his body remained wounded. Similarly, humanity is likely to be wounded by this pandemic, even when the immediate crisis is over.
Devastating events such as this pandemic are bound to be a challenge to any religious faith. It requires considerable “integrative complexity”, as psychologists call it (Savage, 2013), to hold together religious faith and an open-minded recognition of the devastation through which we are travelling (unless we retreat into a shrill orthodoxy, or abandon faith altogether). It is a space “between belief and unbelief” that has been explored by religious psychologists such as Paul Pruyser (1974) and Harry Williams (1976); it is a doubt-enriched faith.
Current circumstances are bound to shake faith to the foundations, both in God and in ourselves; and properly should do so. I am reminded of some words from T S Eliot’s play, The Family Reunion:
But the circle of our understanding
Is a very restricted area.
Except for a limited number of strictly practical purposes
We do not know what we are doing…
We have suffered far more than a personal loss
We have lost our way in the dark.
Part of the value of this crisis may be that it forces us to abandon the fantasy that we have got nature sorted out, and that we can control it. Clearly we can’t. We have some limited powers to combat disease and death, and we should use them to the full. But, if we thought that this kind of pandemic could never happen again, we were wrong. It is best to be humble enough to accept that reality.
Conclusion
Science will play a crucial role in defeating the virus, but we may need religious values and beliefs to cope with the devastation that it will leave behind. I suggest that both science and religion have a role to play in coping with this pandemic, and that there is an interesting relationship between them.
Much work on science and religion has been focused on the “dialogue” between them, i.e. science and religion talking to each other. However, there is another paradigm which is emerging, in which scientific and religious resources can be deployed in an integrated way to tackle significant human problems. Many are aware that there are both scientific and religious approaches to the environmental crisis, and that we need both. The same is probably true of humanity’s response to this pandemic. I would be pleased if the pandemic nudges work on the interface between science and religion in a more applied direction.
References
Benson, H. et al. (2006) Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients: a multicenter randomized trial of uncertainty and certainty of receiving intercessory prayer. American Heart Journal, 151(6), 934-62
Boivin, M. J. & Webb, B. (2011) Modelling the biomedical role of spirituality through breast cancer research. In F. Watts (ed.) Spiritual Healing: Scientific and Religious Perspectives. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Brown, C. G. (2012) Testing Prayer: Science and Healing. Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press.
Clayton, P. (2011) The theology of spiritual healing. In Watts, F. (ed.) (2011) Spiritual Healing: Scientific and Religious Perspectives. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Hood, R. W., Hill, P. C. & Spilka, B. (2018) The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach. Fifth Edition. New York, Guilford Press.
Midgley, M. (1992) Science as Salvation: A Modern Myth and its Meaning. London, Routledge.
Oord, T. J. (2019) God Can’t: How to Believe in God and Love after Tragedy, Abuse, and Other Evils. Grasmere ID, SacraSage Press
Pruyser. P. (1974) Between Belief and Unbelief. New York: Harper.
Robinson, J. (2014) Divine Healing: The Formative Years: 1830-1890: Theological Roots in the Transatlantic World. Eugene OR, Pickwick Publications.
Savage, S. (2013) Head and heart in preventing religious radicalisation. In F Watts (ed.) Head and Heart: Perspectives from Religion and Psychology. West Conshohocken, PA, Templeton Press.
Southgate C. C. B. (2018). Theology in a Suffering World: Glory and Longing. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
Watts, F. (ed.) (2011) Spiritual Healing: Scientific and Religious Perspectives. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Williams, H. A. (1976) Necessary Conflicts in Life and Love. London, Mitchell Beazley
