Twenty-Five Years of Science and Religion in Latin America
Ignacio Silva
Universidad Austral
Latin America is an extremely large and diverse region of the world, in which different trends on academic work in science and religion exist. I have previously written on this topic back in 2015 (check my Zygon Journal article here), and much has changed since then. I was then at the mid-point of a seven-year journey leading, together with Andrew Pinsent, projects for Latin America from the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion at the University of Oxford (funded by the John Templeton Foundation). At that point, though revealing a promising landscape, my initial diagnosis was that, for most of it, Latin American scholars working in science and religion were isolated both among themselves and from much of the Western academic world. Today, now based in Argentina, I am glad to report that this situation has developed into a much more auspicious setting, although the region still faces some challenges.
As for the challenges, perhaps the most pressing is that being a region with twenty sovereign states with an area roughly double the size of Europe and a population of around three-quarters of the European population (a third of which lives only in Brazil), there is a sense of remoteness and inaccessibility. Long distances are, and will always be, a challenge.
Still, even if there is no formal academic regional society to group Latin American scholars working on science and religion such as the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology (ESSSAT) or the Society for Science and Religion in Asia (SSRA), given the continued effort of a group of enthusiastic scholars, academics from different countries are now well aware of the work and interests of their colleagues elsewhere. In addition, Latin American scholars have already profusely engaged with colleagues from other regions in the world, publishing in collaborative volumes and participating in international research projects, something that was somewhat absent beforehand. Although there is still much work to be done, both in terms of internal cohesiveness and interregional collaborations, I am confident to say that the initial landscape has changed for the better, and that today Latin American academics are no longer peripheral, but rather important actors in the larger international conversation on science and religion.
In my Zygon article, I referred to the work started in 2000 by Eugenio Urrutia, through the Centro de Estudios en Ciencia y Religión at the Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla (UPAEP), Mexico, in collaboration with Lucio Florio, who leads the Fundación Diálogo entre Ciencia y Religión in Argentina, and Eduardo Cruz at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP), Brazil. Their efforts have proven worthy and successful: this initial community continues to grow. I have recently participated in the XI Latin American Conference on Science and Religion, a biannual event that has taken place in different countries around the region, organised by these scholars throughout the years. Their commitment to bringing people together in an academic environment is commendable and only comparable to that of the founders of the Associação Brasileira de Cristãos na Ciência, of which I will speak below. The XI Latin American Conference, the topic of which was the end and the telos of the cosmos, took place at the Catholic University of Salta, located in the north-western region of Argentina, and brought together over 100 regional participants with international guest speakers from Italy, Spain, and France. This event has become a go-to conference in Latin America to get to know people and their work. It might be worth mentioning, also, that the ninth instantiation of this event, which took place at UPAEP, Mexico, with the theme of education on science and religion, was organised in collaboration with ISSR back in 2017, with the participation of numerous active ISSR Fellows.
In terms of more local activity, Brazil is perhaps the country that has grown the most in their engagement with science and religion. Two large societies were created in the past few years and continue to grow in numbers of affiliated members and activities. The Associação Brasileira de Cristãos na Ciência (ABC2) was created in 2016 as an evangelical association that advocates for an active engagement of Christian faith with contemporary science. It offers online courses on different topics, has compiled a large collection of volumes on science and religion in collaboration with different Brazilian publishers (translating existing books as well as producing new material directly in Portuguese), and organises local communities of scholars and students at different universities across the country. In addition, the Sociedade Brasileira de Cientistas Católicos (SBCC), was created in 2019, mirroring the Society of Catholic Scientists in the US and its Spanish chapter, the Sociedad de Científicos Católicos. As a professional association with pastoral and academic goals, SBCC seeks to promote the dialogue between faith and science by generating a community of Catholic scientist and thinkers willing to contemplate their profession under the light of the Gospel.
Spanish-speaking Latin America is full of diverse initiatives working on science and religion. In addition to those mentioned above in Mexico and Argentina, it is important to acknowledge Colombia’s Centre for Theology and Religious Studies as well as the Red Colombiana de Filosofía de la Religión lead the northern Andean region with several publications on science and religion, while the numerous academics working at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile lead the work in the southern Andes, particularly on science and the philosophy of religion. There are also several working groups in Argentina, such as those based at Universidad Austral, with projects on the doctrine of providence and contemporary science, the notion of the person in relation to contemporary psychology, and the perceived relation in society between beliefs and science; the group at the Catholic University of Salta, which has just launched a new book series on faith and reason written entirely by Latin American authors; and the project OTHER (Otros Mundos, Tierra, Humanidad y Espacio Remoto) at the Universidad Católica de Córdoba, where former director of the Vatican Observatory, Prof José Funes, SJ, leads a research team into questions of intelligent life on other planets. There are also working groups in Uruguay, Peru, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, among many others across the region.
To support and encourage this growing impulse in the region, ISSR led a recently closed library project for Latin America, with the financial aid of the John Templeton Foundation. The project offered 60 ISSR Latin American Libraries – 30 collections of around 30 volumes in Spanish and 30 in Portuguese at the intersection of science, philosophy, and theology – to Latin American Higher Education Institutions in which research and teaching into science and religion was conducted, with the intention of providing Latin American scholars in philosophy and theology with access to the latest scholarly resources in science and religion in their own languages. The project also provided funding opportunities in the form of ten small work-in-progress grants for early career scholars at the awarded institutions to make use of these volumes for their ongoing research. The main goal of the project was to enhance research and teaching in science and religion in the region, enabling access to the latest international research, and also to bridge Latin American scholars with North Atlantic authors writing in other languages, preparing the terrain for future scholarly exchange.
All in all, science and religion in Latin America is blooming. I have not considered the evident geographical, political, educational, and economical challenges that academics of the region face. I described many of them in my 2015 article and they are still true today. I wanted, rather, to emphasise the continued growth that the region has seen since 2000, when three scholars decided to collaborate into a new enterprise to promote the academic dialogue between science and religion. Since then, almost a quarter of a century has passed, and it has been a story of commitment, growth, and experience, which led to new contacts and collaborations, both regional and international.
