ISSR After More than 20 Years: Where We Came From, and Where We are Going
Niels Henrik Gregersen, ISSR President
ISSR from 2002 to Today: Three Developments
When I was elected as President of ISSR in 2023, I had the feeling of coming home to the fruitful atmosphere of the early days of the society. Much remained the same. There is a strong sense of the overall purpose of the Society as an active learned society, and there is a well-functioning institutional structure as well—even though we can no longer afford to rent property, as we earlier had it in St Edmund’s College in Cambridge.
Over the last twenty years, ISSR has been in a process of development through different Executive Committees and Presidents—from John Polkinghorne onwards to George Ellis, Brian Heap, John Hedley Brooke, Fraser Watts, and Michael J. Reiss. In all these years, ISSR has consistently worked for developing a truly global learned society, with attention to regional developments, and to the plurality of religious traditions and cultures. This has been an ongoing endeavor. It goes without saying, however, that new emphases have emerged over the last twenty years. Let me mention three developments.
First, at its inauguration in 2002, the membership of ISSR was mainly constituted by physicists and biologists on the one hand, philosophers and theologians on the other, with historians and philosophers of science as mediators. Accordingly, conceptual and historical issues were at the forefront of the discussions, when ISSR members—often with competencies in several disciplines—aimed to facilitate the dialogue between the cultural forces of the sciences and the religions.
Over the last ten years, or more, the constituency of the ISSR fellows has broadened to include more fellows within the medical, social and human sciences, all of whom work on the relations between scientific studies and lived religions, including the fields of pedagogics and public understanding. In consequence, the scope of research includes not only conceptual but also research on human subjects, e.g., from the perspectives of empirical psychology and sociology. In this process, broader aspects of lived religion and spirituality have come under attention within ISSR. Personally, I find this development both natural and fruitful.
Second, ISSR has become a learned society that is also operative in terms of making grant proposals and conducting ISSR-led research. Much of this development took place under the presidency of Michael J. Reiss in tandem with the Executive Committees. ISSR does not at least owe this development to the capacities of Fraser Watts as our Executive Secretary, himself with a long-term and distinctive academic career. Fraser is responsible for the day-to-day management of our society. On top of that, however, he has been a successful PI and co-PI for no less than four ISSR research projects over the last ten years. This success has been a very significant contribution to the life of ISSR, which has led to the financial solidification of ISSR too.
Third, when we started out in 2001, we were 97 inaugural fellows of ISSR. Today, we are more than 350 Fellows of ISSR. This has to do with the above-mentioned developments, which I find immensely important for the future of ISSR. Today, fellows of ISSR are working with theories and concepts, descriptions and interpretations, and with psychological experiments that give us new knowledge about ourselves, and our hard-to-understand fellow humans. Most people are sometimes spiritual or religious, at other times sometimes both religious and secular, and in some cases neither-nor. This is part of bandwidth of human life in modern societies; accordingly, the attitudes and worldview assumptions of ISSR Fellows will vary considerably. The task ahead of us as scholars, is how to cross-fertilize empirical and conceptual aspects of our research in self-reflective forms.
Let me add that I’m well aware that many ISSR Fellows have only occasionally been involved in concrete ISSR activities; I myself have been a joyfully sleeping ISSR member in some periods of my life. During these years, however, ISSR continued to be a part of my scholarly identity, even when I (like so many other scholars) worked in adjacent or intradisciplinary areas. To be an ISSR Fellow means to be part of a worldwide scholarly community in science and religion, and we can stay well informed about the many new interdisciplinary developments.
Establishing the Society in the years 2000 to 2002
As a young theologian, I was fortunate enough to partake in the formation of ISSR. Coming from my earlier work as a Vice-president in the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology (ESSSAT), I served as a Trustee in the first 6 years of ISSR, when Sir John Polkinghorne was our founding President. In the inaugural Board of Trustees (now called the Executive Committee), we had many things to solve: How to identify and reach out to potential fellows? How to clarify the standards for fellowship? How to set up the legal structure of the society as a tax-exempt charitable society? How to do something that makes a difference?
As a matter of fact, the idea of establishing ISSR was formed as an initiative within the Advisory Board of the John Templeton Foundation. We were indeed greatly helped by the John Templeton Foundation. JTF offered generous grants for the first years of ISSR, assisting us also in providing the necessary legal help to establish ourselves with a Charter within UK law. A special grant was given to our inaugural conference in Granada 2002 too. If I remember correctly, this conference had close to 200 participants.
The International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR) was thus ideally formed as a learned society during 2000 to 2002. Yet it was the Granada conference in August 2002 that defined the scope of community in and around the Society. We in ISSR therefore count 2002 as our birth year even though the birth took place after some years of pregnancy and birth woes.
At that time, it was clear that the academic field of science-and-religion had already found its first contours through the unique contributions of Ian Barbour, Arthur Peacocke, John Polkinghorne, Holmes Rolston III, and others. They were already followed by many independent scholars in the fields of physics, biology, philosophy, history and philosophy of science, and theologians, all of whom addressed the interface between sciences and religions. I refrain from mentioning individuals in these first, second, and third generations of science-religion scholars, as there were so many outstanding contributions, and much would be unfairly unmentioned.
Similarly, ISSR came into being at a time, when important science-religion centers around the world had already been formed, decades before ISSR. Think of IRAS (Chicago), CTNS (Berkeley), the Pontifical Academy (Rome), the Ian Ramsey Centre (Oxford), and the fertile milieus in Cambridge, Princeton, Heidelberg, and Aarhus, just to mention a few research hubs at that time.
The Granada Conference 2002
It seemed clear around 2000 that the time was ripe for forming ISSR. Let me mention an additional impetus, however, which played a role in the formation of ISSR. September 11, 2001, witnessed the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York. The underlying and hopeful question was: Could perhaps the broad field of science-religion interactions be a mediating platform for promoting conviviality and peace between cultures and religions, not least the three Abrahamic traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam? Similarly, the inclusion of the Asian religions in the various forms of Hinduism, Buddhism. Daoism, and Confucianism was central to the idea of ISSR. This is henceforth the case, and perhaps more important now than ever. In 2002, however, 9/11 was the urgent matter.
Allow me to quote some of the opening statements of John Polkinghorn at the beginning of the Granada conference:
“Those of us involved in planning this Meeting chose Granada for two important reasons, over and above the undeniable fact that it is a very nice place to visit. One was that Southern Spain is close to the meeting point between two continents, Africa and Europe. Our geographical location, therefore, symbolises the truly world-wide character that we believe will be so important and fruitful an aspect of the Society.
The second reason is that, in the later Middle Ages, this region was a place where adherents of three great religious traditions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam were able to intermingle and to interact with each other. In fact, the later Middle Ages generally was in many ways a golden period for interfaith interaction. One has only to recite the names of Moses Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas and Ibn Sina, and to recall all the fascinating threads that interconnect their thinking, to see that this was so.
It is sad that this state of affairs did not last, for it was brought to an end by political upheavals and expulsions and then the three Abrahamic faith traditions turned from each other and went their separate ways. The time has come to seek to reverse that process and to do so today in a fully world-wide way. It is our hope that the International Society will play a significant part in encouraging fruitful contacts and exchanges between all the faith traditions, conducted on a truly global scale as the insights of the Eastern religions are drawn in to augment those of the three Abrahamic faiths.”
Thus, when ISSR was formed, the political situation was indeed an underlying agenda, and ISSR has always aimed to have representations from scholars coming from different religious traditions and from different scientific backgrounds. At the same time, ISSR has refrained from issuing public statements on political issues, and on contentious worldview questions. An exception was the official ISSR statement on Intelligent Design, issued under the presidency of John Hedley Brooke.
Newer Developments
Over the last years, ISSR has developed quite a few new initiatives. ISSR members may take a look into the ISSR 2024 Annual Report, which is found in the invitation by the Annual General Meeting on September 11, 2024, sent out by Anthony Nairn, the ISSR Executive Assistant Secretary.
Just to mention a few newer initiatives: Over the last 5 years, we have had a successful ISSR Book Prize, and have a “Book Prize Winner’s Discussion” on our website. We are part of the convenorship of the Boyle Lectures too, are proud to use our ISSR YouTube channel to stream the lectures and responses (in 2024 featuring David Fergusson, Fiona Ellis, and Joanna Leidenhag). We are having sessions and panels at the American Academy of Religion (AAR), effectively organized by Ron Cole-Turner, just as we have had panels and been a partnering institution at the XXth ESSSAT Conference in Split, August 2024. We continue to develop the video/podcast series titled “ISSR in Conversation”. For five years, we have been part of the Directors for Zygon: Journal of Science and Religion, invited by its President, Arthur Petersen, and since last year we are part of the shared ESSSAT-ISSR publication, Reviews in Science, Religion, and Theology, sent to all ISSR members We thank the editor, Prof. Lluis Oviedo, and the ESSSAT Council for this collaboration.
Moreover, over the ten years ISSR has been able to receive major research grants on topics such as Human Nature and Embodied Cognition (2011ff), The New Biology (2015ff), Religion and the Social Brain (2017ff), Understanding Spiritual Intelligence (2020ff), and the South American Library Project (2021ff). By September 1, 2024, we launch a new project on comparing and measuring Three Spiritual Exercises (the SORSE Project), a project again led by Fraser Watts. We are grateful to the Templeton World Charity Foundation, and to other funding bodies, for offering us the possibility of being a genuinely research-operative Society. In this process, ISSR has gained a track record for disseminating its results too.
Where are We Going Now?
Where are we going in the coming years? Let me just mention two new emphases: Regional development and the organizational priority of ecology and the environment within ISSR.
The emphasis on regional development is, as we have seen, as old as ISSR. However, we want to act on our aim, giving it a new platform and attention. The Executive Committee just hired Ignacio Silva (Universidad Austral, Argentina) to become a new Associate Secretary with a special focus on regions outside Europe and the North America. Dr. Silva has a long-term commitment to this core aspect of ISSR’s life, and he will take contact and be in communication with the regional groups.
On regional development: Think of the simple fact that after Granada 2002, ISSR organized conferences in Boston (2004), Cambridge (2006 and 2009), and Oxford (2010). The next conferences, however, were co-organized with other partners, using more diverse settings such as Sharjar, UAE (2011) and Vienna (2015); we have been in South Africa (2018) too.
Currently, ISSR is working together with Indian scholars to co-organize a conference in southern Asia, hopefully in the spring of 2026. We hope to do something similar in south-east Asia at a later point in time. It should be noted, however, that ISSR wishes to co-organize future conferences with the expertise of local partners. Unless new funding opportunities come up, we will probably no longer be able to launch global conferences like the one we had in Granada. This is a regrettable fact, not least in view of new generations of younger scholars. However, co-organizing a conference in India may be fresh start for doing ISSR conferences in new global settings.
Second, I wish to highlight that ISSR has made Environmental Studies a thematic priority. We are very grateful to Professor Emeritus Susan Bratton (Baylor University) for convening organizational groups within ISSR. The purpose is to take concrete initiatives, both regarding research collaboration and potential conferences. This initiative will make ecology a central part of a future ISSR. I wish to thank Susan Bratton and the strong group of scholars around her for their work. We look forward to their ideas, and we will give the work as much support as we can.
Last but not least: There is obviously no ISSR without Fellows of ISSR (FISSRs). Allow me therefore to urge you to nominate scholars in the broad field of science-and-religion. Who might have an obvious interest in becoming a fellow of the ISSR, and who have a scholarly competence in or across the following criteria:
- Major contribution (e.g. books) to the field of science/religion; or
- Excellent standing in one of the relevant areas (science, religion, philosophy) together with sustained interest in or support of the science/religion debate; or
- Demonstration of significant organizational and entrepreneurial skills within the science/religion field, especially in geographical regions or religious traditions in which science-religion studies are not yet well-developed.
- Early career scholars whose publications in the science-religion field indicate outstanding promise.
Please send nominations to our Executive Assistant Secretary, Anthony Nairn, at execassist@issr.org.uk. And please send us a CV together with the nomination.
