St John's College Durham University has a strong track record of facilitating and delivering science faith projects and as part of a world leading University is one of the key places for science engaged theology in the UK. God and the Big Bang (GATBB) was started by Michael Harvey visiting fellow of St John's College Durham on behalf of the Diocese of Manchester after a General Synod debate that science and faith were compatible. God and the Big Bang the Expansion intends an exciting and rapid expansion and Michael Harvey will be the Principal Investigator on this project. Over the period of the project there will be 231 GATBB events reaching 20,000 students and their teachers in the UK.
Research by the University of Canterbury has shown the impact of putting well -trained science faith communicators in front of students is dramatic. Students start the day at 56% and end the day at thirty percent agreeing with the statement that science makes it hard to believe in God. It also indicated that after the workshops, school students were more open to the idea that science and religion fit together.
There will be evening church events after a day in the link church school. The project will commission Pop UK to write science faith compatibility songs and get children to rehearse them for a science faith compatibility evening of song and science faith interaction for the whole of the family, building on the work done in the school during the day.
GATBB will Identify, train and deploy a generation of science-faith communicators who will develop their speaking skills in front of students from nine to eighteen years of age.
GATBB will research into how students parents and adults in churches with a school link form and develop their ideas about the relationship between science and faith
The expansion project will produce a church school link resource to aid students parents and adult congregational members
