Why inter-contextual engagement is essential for the science and religion relationships
Rt Revd Dr Richard Cheetham
Co-Director for Global Engagement ECLAS
Member of the Anglican Communion Science Commission
On the home page of the ISSR website the president, Prof Niels Gregersen, states that, “the landscape of science and religion is dynamic and ever changing”, and that, “As an international society, we are very conscious that we live in a pluralistic world, including a great diversity of religions, as well as many different sciences. We aim to make the Society as representative of this cultural diversity as possible”. The interesting challenge is how this more pluralistic conversation might be achieved in practice. As a relatively new Fellow of the ISSR, I am grateful for the opportunity via this blog to both endorse this aim and to offer some reflections about how it might be realised based on my own experience.
This blog will explore how an inter-contextual approach is working in the Equipping Christian Leadership in an Age of Science (ECLAS) project, of which I am a Co-Director, and also in the work of the Anglican Communion Science Commission, of which I am a member. It builds on ideas expressed more fully in the Gowland Public lecture which I gave recently at the 50th Anniversary Conference of the Science and Religion Forum in the UK.
One substantial obstacle to achieving this aim is that most of the literature on the relationship between science and religion has been produced in a Western context with an emphasis on the Christian religion. However, there is now increasing awareness of the wisdom and insights generated in many different contexts, cultures, religions and worldviews, including indigenous knowledge. The challenge is how to create the structures and conversations which enable these contributions to be developed and shared in a much more widespread and creative way.
There is also a growing appreciation that some of the major issues of the 21st century such as AI, genetics, climate change and biodiversity loss, require far more than a narrow focus scientific analysis from a predominantly Western viewpoint. In a globalized, hyper-connected world, these issues need to be explored with socio-economic, political, ethical, philosophical, spiritual and theological lenses. It is equally important to pay close attention to the crucial effects of context on how the science and religion relationship is understood, which affects both which issues come to the fore, and how they are dealt with in any particular situation.
In the past few decades there have been several important developments which have shaped the nature of the science religion engagement. When I was at theological college in the mid -1980s the influences of liberation theology, black theology and feminist theology were becoming more prominent. All of these share an assumption that the context in which the theology is done, and the viewpoints of communities and individuals are extremely important in the methodology of theology. You could not assume that there was a grand over-arching way of doing theology which was context-free and worked in a simple way for everyone.
A second development is more philosophical. My doctoral studies (at King’s College, London) took place in the 1990s. It was a time when postmodernism was much talked about. There was considerable scepticism about the concept of a universal truth which everyone could accept. Rather, truth was relative to each individual, or particular community or group to which they belonged. This critique can descend into an unadulterated relativism, but it has meant that there is now much more recognition of the importance of context in how we see the world, and of inter-contextual conversation and engagement which does not give an unjustified priority to any one of those contexts.
Many scientists get understandably nervous if there is too much talk about context. Surely modern science depends on careful observation, repeatable experiments which yield the same results wherever you are, and a logic and reason which is not dependent on where you are situated? I will return to this important concern later on in the blog.
I have had close involvement with two organisations both of which are intentionally trying to expand the contextual base of science and religion organisations. The first of these is “Equipping Christian leadership in an Age of Science”, or ECLAS as it is often known. This had its origins around fifteen years ago in Durham university in conversations between the current project leader, Professor David Wilkinson and the eminent physicist Professor Tom McLeish who sadly died over two years ago just as the current phase of the project was starting. In their experience senior church leaders, with a few notable exceptions, were either tentative about, or not that engaged with, the science religion conversation. In addition, there was far too much focus on the idea of a conflict narrative and far too little on the idea of science as a gift of God.
Since then, ECLAS has gone through several phases, generously funded by the Templeton Foundation. We have sought to bring together senior church leaders, leading scientists, and theologians into a creative engagement.
A 5-fold approach has proved remarkably fruitful and robust throughout each phase of ECLAS.
- Original research into the views and attitudes of senior church leaders
- Conferences for senior church leaders with world leading scientists and theologians to explore various areas of scientific investigation
- Helping senior church leaders to engage in the public square with scientifically and theologically well-informed contributions on matters of major interest such as artificial intelligence, climate change and so on
- Funding theological colleges and training institutions to build science and religion engagement in at every level of the curriculum rather than a specialist one off course only for those who opt in. This followed a successful model of Science for Seminaries which began in the United States
- Funding smaller scale “Scientists in Congregations” projects run by local churches on science and religion matters. In these, a local minister teamed up with at least one scientist from the congregation to develop and lead these projects which have proved remarkably imaginative and varied.
The aim of ECLAS has been, and remains, to embed good science and religion engagement within the structures of the mainstream churches, and in relevant para church organisations where there is an obvious science link such as those engaged with the environment and biodiversity issues.
The latest phase of the project began in 2023 and runs for five years ending in 2027. Its’ main focus is to explore the question of how context shapes the science and religion engagement. This includes geographical and cultural context, theological context, and national and political context.
To this end we worked ecumenically with four partner institutions in different parts of the world which are:
- the Singapore Bible college working across Southeast Asia
- the United Theological College in Bengaluru in India
- Nicholas Copernicus University in Poland
- Saint Paul’s University in Limuru in Kenya
These are in addition to our already existing link with the Dialogue on Science Ethics and Religion ( DoSER) based at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The intention in our method of working is emphatically not to export a way of doing things which has been generated in the UK to other parts of the world. Rather it is to seek to create and stimulate good science religion engagement within those particular contexts. Each partner will be doing their own research into attitudes of senior church leaders, and giving out grants for Science for Seminaries, and Scientists in Congregations programmes in their areas.
We are actively building a community of conversation between those different contexts. There is considerable work going on to explore the research results in the different parts of the world in a manner which is genuinely inter-contextual.
I have been closely involved with the ECLAS project since it began. I am also a member of the Anglican Communion Science Commission which is another good example of an inter – contextual approach to science and faith issues. In 2022, the Lambeth conference of Anglican bishops worldwide, which takes place approximately every 10 years, produced several “Lambeth calls”, which were exhortations to the churches in the Anglican Communion to engage much more deeply and seriously with matters of major concern in the wider world and the Church. Significantly, one of these was on “Science and Faith” and was the first such major initiative in this area from the Lambeth Conferences and it received the full support of the bishops present – which is no mean feat for the Lambeth Conference! The Call began by saying:
The world faces multiple dangers in the coming decade from climate change and biodiversity loss, poverty, disease, war, famine and the careless use of new technologies. In the Call that follows the bishops assembled at the Lambeth Conference invite every Church of the Anglican Communion to recognise within science God-given resources for the life of faith and to offer the wisdom of faith to the work of science. We call on our Churches to make this a priority and to support and equip church leaders and scientists in partnership for such courageous and confident leadership.
It also quoted Pope Francis and an alliance of 40 global faith leaders who issued the following powerful call in October 2021: ‘Faith and science are essential pillars of human civilization, with shared principles and complementarities…. We must address [the challenges we face] using the knowledge of science and the wisdom of religion: to know more and to care more’.
The Call then went on to say:
We the bishops assembled for the Lambeth Conference commit ourselves to welcome and enter into theological dialogue with science, establishing how it is understood in different regions of the Communion, recognising within it God-given resources for the life of faith and offering the wisdom of Christian faith to its work especially to the ethics of its use and unequal impacts across the world.
We call on our Churches working with our ecumenical and interfaith partners and governments (where possible) to give this a high priority and to support and equip church leaders and scientists in partnership for such courageous and confident leadership.
To implement this an Anglican Communion Science Commission (ACSC) was set up with various senior church leaders and notable scientists. It has been my privilege to be a member of this since it began.
The first obvious question for the ACSC was that of context. This became very apparent at a seminar run at the Lambeth conference in which the bishops present were asked what issues were at the top of their agendas. Although there was some commonality, there were obvious differences both in topics and in the way they were handled. Following the Lambeth conference in August 2022, there have been three regional gatherings with the deliberate intention of exploring how these contextual questions shape the conversation in different parts of the world. These regional gatherings, held in the initial stages of the work of the ACSC, were very clear about the importance of valuing all knowledge systems and looking carefully at the impact of context and place when addressing complex global issues. There is due to be some further analysis done on those findings which will be very interesting.
However, there is another crucial foundation to our conversations in both ECLAS and the ACSC. This is that there is a deeper truth to be found which is not simply context dependent as in the famous quote from Pascal that truth on one side of the Pyrenees mountains is error on the other side. Saint Augustine of Hippo famously referred to humanity as the “community of truth”. When we engage carefully together we go more profoundly into the nature of the deepest realities. Francis Bacon, a leading figure in the development of natural philosophy and scientific methodology in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, said, “the enquiry of truth, which is the love making or wooing of it; the knowledge of truth which is the presence of it; and the belief in truth which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature”.
All those quotations point to the importance of the pursuit of truth which is central to both science and religion. The experience of our conversations in both ECLAS and the ACSC strongly suggest that these inter contextual conversations are essential. In them we are getting a deeper and more profound understanding of the great issues in science and religion. The presence of thoughtful people from very different contexts – theological, cultural and political – leads to a much richer conversation which neither allows one cultural norm to dominate nor collapses into an anarchic relativism.
Although, neither ECLAS nor the ACSC explicitly focus on inter religious dialogue, both point to the importance of encouraging that inter-faith conversation as well. The contribution, for example of Islam, to science is very well known. There have been some notable attempts to encourage inter-faith conversations on the understanding of and importance of science. This is certainly an area that needs much encouragement and development as we look forward.
I am very aware that what I have just written in this blog almost inevitably reflects my own context as someone shaped predominantly in a Western cultural situation. One of the enormous benefits of an inter-contextual approach for the science and religion relationship is that it offers other approaches to knowledge systems in which the conflict narrative between science and religion is much less significant, and which are much more at ease with the idea of the divine and transcendent, and bring other important non-western ways of thinking into the frame. That kind of material is now being produced within the frameworks developed by the ECLAS project and the ACSC. My hope for the future is that some of those approaches will be widely shared for the benefits of all.
