Origins Story
“Dr. Shane, you are not taking this seriously and you need to.” A graduate student in my science methods course took me to task for my indifference about the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Board trial that was adjudicated in a federal courthouse in Harrisburg, just up the interstate from my workplace, Shippens-burg University, where I had begun a new phase of my career teaching chemistry and training secondary science educators. Looking back, I am grateful for Kyle’s candor.
Since then, teaching about relationships between science and religion has become a central part of my professional and missional life. Within academic circles, conference presentations, science education journal articles, annual Darwin Day lectures, and an interdisciplinary honors seminar eventually led to a group of us publishing a primer through the National Science Teaching Association, Making Sense of Science and Religion: Strategies for the Classroom and Beyond (2020).
Outside of academia, I have taught short courses at regional PC(USA) churches and public libraries. Church-based outreach, especially to combined adult and youth Sunday school classes, has provided some of the most meaningful experiences of my teaching career. It is quite different from science education, which emphasizes contemporary content and technological skills, and teacher education, that is based on an apprenticeship, theory-in-practice model.
Sabbatical Project with the Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER) Program
In 2020, I took a sabbatical leave to focus specifically on pedagogical concerns rather than historical, philosophical, and theological issues at the interface of science and religion. I am grateful for the DoSER (Dialogue on Science, Ethics, & Religion) program at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for naming me a Visiting Scholar during a pandemic year.
I primarily focused on studying peer-reviewed, empirical research (both quantitative and qualitative) as well as commentaries from experienced educators and institutions where teaching about relationships between religion and science are explicit goals. This included long-term projects such as Oxford’s Argumentation in Religion and Science (OARS) program, the Faraday Institute’s Learning about Science and Religion (LASAR) initiative, The New Biology led by Michael Reiss, President of the International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR), and the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program.
Beyond the United States, research participants included Tibetan monks, Christian students in Thailand, a rural Mexican community, Israeli science teachers from multiple faith traditions, indigenous teachers from various African countries, Muslim teachers in Senegal, and Lebanese biology students.
Here I summarize four “take home” messages from my study and review that guide my current practice.
Balance epistemology (what you know) and ontology (who you are)
There is some truth to the slogan, “science doesn’t care what you believe,” but this can be pedagogically detrimental when empirical knowledge may contradict or even threaten individual, intergenerational, and communal religious beliefs and core identities. I made that mistake more than once in my early outreach.
Beliefs, experience, and identity may be ancillary in science, but they are vital in science-and-religion education. Emphasizing autobiography and exploring the origins of one’s beliefs through history, anthropology, and sociology are useful classroom approaches that may have more in common with humanities and religious education.
Conflict is not inevitable, but tension is necessary
Any learning theory supports adapting to new experiences, knowledge, and beliefs. Discomfort and a sense of being off-balance are necessary precursors, but it is important for teachers to recognize the sources of tension that students of any age may have with relationships between their understanding of the natural world and their faith.
Prematurely focusing on contemporary, “hot button” issues may generate stifling conflict and prompt intellectual retreat and retrenchment. Create tension wisely with historical case studies, science-religion role models, and examples beyond students’ immediate context.
Mutual trust and risk
Trust between teacher and student is an obvious condition for enduring classroom learning. Risk, however, may often be considered in one direction, namely that students must take risks about what they know and who they are.
At the science-religion interface, educators also assume some risk, since students will have varied, often opposing, perspectives. Teaching in this space requires participation by all, and that will involve a degree of intellectual and existential risk when considering the arguments and experiences of others.
Make peace
Finally, I suggest that peacemaking be a central goal of science-religion pedagogy, where an admixture of epistemology and ontology will not, and should not, lead to any predetermined outcome or destination set by the instructor. Some will reconcile their religious beliefs with a newfound understanding of science. Others may become more sympathetic atheists. For those who were questioning the faith of their youth, the science-religion classroom may send them off with more perspective and confidence.
Peacemaking is not for the faint of heart, but nor does it require comprehensive expertise. If you are able, as sociologist of religion Elaine Ecklund recommends, to serve as a science-religion “boundary pioneer,” you can participate in this vital mission. (NOTE: Zooming in guest speakers was a great way to wrap up classes!)
