Through the 12 years prior to coming here, I typically began with “I bring you greetings from Clear Lake Presbyterian Church, which is just up the street from the Johnson Space Center in Houston.” I would follow with, “At Clear Lake, we know it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to run a church, but we have one in every pew just in case the need should arise.”
That opener always drew a good laugh from a crowd.
However, it fell short of expressing how much I reveled in my calling. For, while we knew we could manage the church without the help of high powered researchers, the earnest efforts of our many resident scholars to converge faith and science in their personal and professional lives brought to the congregation a wealth of faith-seeking-understanding that fed all of our souls.
In the 1980s, several of those members joined with my predecessor, B. Jay Cannon, to develop a set of videos with discussion guide that pondered the convergence of “God, Space and Science,” as it was titled, which was then published and distributed by the denomination’s headquarters.
The congregation popped its collective buttons in August 1996 when several members’ research was published in Science magazine, announcing that there appeared to be signs of life in a 3.6 million-year-old meteorite originating from the planet Mars. In the ensuing weeks, one of them collaborated with me in developing a lecture titled, “The Theological Implications of the Possibility of Extra-Terrestrial Life.” In the NASA community, that title brought out a big crowd! I presented the lecture again at the subsequent annual convention of the Association of Presbyterian Church Educators. One of our resident astronauts lectured there, too.
In February 2003, all Americans grieved the loss of the space shuttle Columbia and its crew. That loss was multiplied for the church members whose onboard, several-years-in-development, research experiments were also destroyed.
Nevertheless, the adventure and mission of faith-seeking-understanding was revived in them yet again. Their Easter faith in Christ compelled them to exercise their minds as constructive scientists. Their faith required them to seek understanding.
Unfortunately, science and faith have fought like Jacob and Esau for centuries. The relentless search for new understandings threatens the tradition built upon its proclamation of truth once-for-all delivered by the Sovereign of the universe. Just ask Galileo. Having been condemned as a heretic by Pope Urban VIII in 1633 for teaching the Copernican theory, it took 359 years for Pope John Paul II to overturn the church’s verdict.
The collisions between the disciplines of scientific research and religious proclamation have multiplied exponentially through the post-Enlightenment, empiricist era in which we have been raised. And, the conflicts have been exacerbated by hubris: arrogant academics mocking religion as an opiate and pompous clerics scorning science as satanic.
Through these centuries one can trace a thread of faithful believers pouring their efforts into studying the world God made, believing in their hearts that all truth is God’s truth no matter where it may be found. And for so many of them, their explorations have led to discoveries. And, their discoveries have produced applications they and others have put into service for the common good (and not just Tang, Teflon, and Velcro).
At the same time, a thread of ecclesiastical faithfulness has persisted against the culture’s worst anti-intellectual tendencies and against the church’s own reactionary protectiveness. In chapels and laboratories, faith and science have partnered together. And, as understanding has grown, so has faith. And vice versa.
It was Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) who made “faith seeking understanding” (fides quaerens intellectum) his personal motto. He coined that phrase in the context of forming rational arguments to prove the existence of God. Many a skeptic has been won over to faith through the reasoning he outlined. Were he with us today, I suspect he would continue to use the motto, but to prove not only God’s existence but also the validity of the scientific method. Perhaps a few believers might be won over to science through the faith he would model.
— JHH
