Dear ISSR Member,

I hope you and yours are keeping well, and that wherever you are COVID is coming back under control. With vaccine rollout speeding up in many places (I am getting my first next week!), my hope is that this third wave will come under control soon so that we may begin rebuilding our lives and communities better and more resilient than they were before.

Please enjoy reading May’s newsletter, and please remember that ISSR’s newsletter is supplied primarily by you—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. Our newsletter is a great tool for sharing important work on science and religion from different perspectives and different traditions. Also, our blog is put out around the 15th of each month and is written by our Fellows. If you are a Fellow and have a blog idea (about a new book, research, reflections, etc.) you may contact me for that as well.

ISSR Matters

  • This is an early announcement that our AGM will be happening this summer. This will likely be happening at the end of the summer, so please stay tuned to the newsletter for official times and dates.

 

  • A gentle reminder that ISSR Membership Fees for Fellows and Associates are due annually. You can check when your last payment was made, or make a payment, on our website by logging in here: https://www.issr.org.uk/join-issr/. You may also email me to find out when your last payment was made.

Publications

  • The latest issue of Modern Believing, which is a special issue devoted to topics on science and religion, contains articles by Tom McLeish, Neil Messer, Caleb Gordon and Hannah Malcolm, and Christopher Southgate. See link for information about this issue: https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/journals/issue/6147

 

  • Fraser Watts’ latest book, A Plea for Embodied Spirituality: The Role of the Body in Religion, has just been published by SCM Press (230pp; current Amazon prices £21.25/$44.50). The chapters cover: Introduction; Minds, Brains and Persons; The Embodied Origins of Religion; The Ascetic Life; Extreme Spirituality; Attending to our Bodies; Embodiment; Enacting Liturgy; Emotions; Spiritual Healing; Spiritual Bodies, Apparitions and Visions; Concluding Reflections. There is also an appendix by Sara Savage on The Body in World Faith Traditions. The book tries to bring scientific and philosophical literature on embodied cognition into dialogue with the study of religion and theological anthropology, and to make conceptual, theoretical, and practical contributions.

Lectures, Events, and Conferences

  • Rice University’s Department of Sociology is hosting a lecture this May that will highlight core findings from the largest and most comprehensive international study of scientists’ attitudes toward religion, gender, and ethics ever undertaken, including a survey of 20,000 scientists and in-depth interviews with over 600 of them. This lecture is based in part on the book that resulted from the study, Secularity and Science: What Scientists Around the World Really Think About Religion. In this lecture, Elaine Howard Ecklund, Brandon Vaidyanathan and David R. Johnson will explore the nuances of what scientists think about ethics, religion, spirituality and gender, opportunities for scientific and religious communities to better understand and appreciate each other, and the uniqueness of the science and religion interface in India. The lecture will begin with opening remarks from Prof. Arup Kumar Raychaudhuri, Distinguished Professor Emeritus and J. C. Bose Fellow at S.N. Bose National Center for Basic Sciences, and will also include an opportunity for speakers to answer questions submitted by attendees. The lecture will take place virtually on Wednesday, May 19, 2021 from 9:00-10:00 a.m. EST / 1:00-2:00 p.m. GMT / 6:30-7:30 pm IST. For more details and registration information please visit: http://bit.ly/science-religion-india.

 

 

 

  • The DePaul Humanities Center is proud to continue their “My Brilliant Pen Pal” series with Aerospace Engineer, NASA Scientist, and Mars Perseverance Mission Manager, Jennifer Trosper. The deadline to sign up and join in corresponding with Trosper, who will address the centrality of her faith to her work as a scientist, is Friday, May 7th. Link: go.depaul.edu/humanities. The poster can be viewed here: https://www.issr.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/MBPP_Trosper.pdf.

 

  • A reminder that IRAS, the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science, expects to have its conference in person again, June 27 – July 3, 2021, on Naturalism – as Religion, within Religions, without Religion. The conference will be on a small island in the Atlantic Ocean, Star Island, near Portsmouth NH. Speakers will be Owen Flanagan, Ursula Goodenough, Sarah Lane Ritchie, James Ungureanu, Carol Wayne White, and Willem B. Drees. There are still a few spots open, so please consider attending. Star Island is ensuring that safety and COVID protocol is maintained at the highest level. For more information and registration, see www.iras.org.

Again, if you come across anything that could be shared in the newsletter, do please send it my way. And, as always, please feel free to contact me should you have any questions or need anything related to the Society.

All best and stay well,

Anthony K Nairn
www.anthonynairn.com
ISSR Administrator
www.issr.org.uk