As a trained oceanographer, pilot and high-profile prelate, Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori seems like the ideal ambassador to bridge the widening chasm between faith and science.
She will step up to that challenge Friday in Chicago when she champions collaboration between the religion and health care communities at two area hospitals.
During a public lecture at Rush University Medical Center, Jefferts Schori is expected to discuss healing ministries that Episcopal congregations have developed around the world. Later that day, she is expected to ordain Stroger Hospital’s first paid trauma chaplain.
I suggest she bridge the chasm between Christ and TEC.
I wish there were indeed voices for this and maybe she’s making a sincere effort with this visit.
But then you read stuff like [url=http://voices.washingtonpost.com/post-carbon/2010/11/cancun_talks_start_with_a_call.html] this [/url] (good catch MCJ) and you see how little science and reason really mean to the liberal protestant activists and their allies. The compromise made on the faith/religion side always means tossing the ancient claims of Christian faith while allowing for all kinds of hoodoo spirituality and uncritical acceptance of anything labled “science.”
It would be more accurate to say that the gap between technology and religion is growing. This is very different from C. P. Snow. The gap between religion and real science is shrinking – though the vox populi is unaware – because cytological engineering has reached such radical bounds that even scientists have begun to ask what the risks are and what they will mean; and the world of physics has begun to deal with true invisibilities and unmeasurable immensities which will defy standard assessment. The Dawkins and the Hitchens will speak for a smaller and smaller scientific culture, one left over from the days of the periodic table and the precise clock. Larry
I couldn’t resist this observation.
Since the “Presiding Bishop aims to bridge the chasm between faith and science,”
I just wonder if she will address and try to “bridge the chasm” between her Christology and Scripture?
I can only hope that when she speaks about healing at the hospital she will include her profound commitment to laying on of hands, unction, and proclaiming healing as Jesus did.
Science is the study of the wonders of God’s creation. It is thus a branch of theology.
She would do well to read Alister McGrath, who knows something about these things.
I would agree with Ralph (#6) on this. The best writers on this question have been what I could call “critically orthodox” Christians, neither fundamentalists (seven day creationists) nor liberal Protestants.
Among theologians:
Alister McGrath (Anglican)
John Polkinghorne (Anglican)
Thomas Torrance (Reformed)
Stanley Jaki (Roman Catholic)
Among scientists:
Francis Collins (Head of the Human Genome Project)
Owen Gingerich (Harvard Astronomer and Mennonite)
From a previous generation:
E.L. Mascall (Anglican)
Austin Farrer (Anglican)
In the medieval university, one had to tackle Natural Philosophy (what is now physics, chemistry, astronomy, etc.) and Natural History (what is now botany, zoology, geology, etc.) before you could be said to have master the much broader discipline of philosophy (which would also include the study of the transcendent orders of creation – ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, etc. – along with the merely physical). Only then, after completing your study of the created order, were you finally prepared to enter upon the the much more capacious “queen of sciences”, theology. This should give us some hint about the rightful relationship of theology to what is now rather sloppily (and with no small grandiosity) called Science.
Part, of course, of living in a particularly painfully ignorant and superstitious age is that philosophy is seen either as 1) a narrow discipline for those a) interested in that sort of thing and/or b) who don’t want a job after college; or 2) what you do after your third martini. Theology, of course, is only slightly less highly thought of – particularly by Episcopalians.
Daniel Muth has nailed it. Our general population is woefully ignorant of both science and theology. They get sensationalized sound bites from “journalists” who may have little if any education in these matters.
It takes a special journalist, IMHO, to have a deep knowledge of science or theology (do any exist that have deep knowledge of both?) and be able to translate that knowledge into clear articles, understandable to the general public.
When such journalists retain that special, child like wonder for science and theology, it comes through in their writing and makes it even better, in my experience.
[blockquote]Science is the study of the wonders of God’s creation. It is thus a branch of theology.[/blockquote]
ABSOLUTELY agree, Ralph! That has been my position for many years. I am fairly certain that there are more believers in the science departments than in the “humanities” depts and probably many more than in theology/philosophy depts. It takes a hardened heart/mind to not recognize the Creator when working with his creation. That is why I love science so! We get to study God’s creation!!