Just above her cornerstone and inside one of her second floor, corner classrooms, First Presbyterian Church of Waco makes space for conversations in Science and Faith each Sunday. The congregation has historically been a space for “thinking in our believing and believing in our thinking.” So, it was perhaps a natural evolution in the fall of 2018, when a longtime Sunday School class taught by a master teacher and professor in Baylor University’s Psychology and Neuroscience Department, Dr. Charles Weaver, was renamed “Weaving Science and Faith.”
Philosophical Work
The leadership of the class reviewed curriculum pieces along the continuum of approaches to science and religion/faith/spirituality. Noting how many of these educational materials privileged either science or faith, the class intentionally prioritized holding science and matters of faith in appropriate tension. This necessarily includes a deconstruction and reconstruction of our relationship with biblical stories that are authoritative for our faith journey.
Scope and Focus
The class has sought to be comprehensive in our attention to the sciences. The graph below is an example of categories that might keep a cohort or class mindful of comprehensive attention to the sciences.
An example of a fall/winter/spring lineup for our group is something like the following:
- Nature of Humanity – Neuroscience and Psychology (6 weeks)
- Geology and the Prominence of Land in Scripture (6 weeks)
- The Science of Navigation – An Advent Study (4 weeks)
- Healing and Illness in Scripture – Biblical Sociology and the Western Medical Model of Care (4 weeks)
- Ecology and Responsibility – 5 weeks
- Integrative method of reading scripture – 2 weeks
- Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World – A Review of Dr. Marcia Bjornerud book – 6 weeks
- Astrology and the James Webb Telescope – 4 weeks
- Science of Mind/Body Connection – 4 weeks.
Class engagement is meant to be an extension of
the scientific method
Class Engagement
The class environment is in the round and, since 2020, is held in a hybrid format. We use dialogue where all participants bring what they know to enrich the subject matter. So, while we receive snippets of lectures and printed resources, the main method of engagement is integrative. The participants are asked to think about the particular subject matter and offer questions/ comments as they come up from their life experience. In this way, the class engagement is meant to be an extension, albeit not a perfect one, of the scientific method, which can be appropriated to the classroom environment as:
- thoughtful consideration of subject matter
- active listening/observation
- offering past experiences/memories as the experiment/testing of hypothesis of subject matter
- dialectical engagement as a crucible for transformation of thought/modification of hypotheses
The class is consistently 8 to 18 people and makes the above engagement model possible.
Conclusion
Initially, when we introduced our Weaving Science and Faith class in 2018, we wondered if there would be enough subject matter for the course. What we have found as we enter the fall of 2024, is that science and faith are actually quite lively partners. Now the question is, does our group have stamina for the dance? We are ready to embark in the fall of 2024 with a September study:
The Science of Sensibility – Perceiving Deeply in the Call Narratives of Scripture –
1 – Call of Moses
8 – Call of Samuel
15 – Call of Jonah
22 – Call of Ezekiel
29 – Call of the Disciples
Here is a link to our zoom room should you ever want to drop into the experiment/experience:
