Scientists and Religious Communities: Investigating Perceptions to Build Understanding

This project is one component of a complementary dual effort between Rice University (grant ID 38817) and AAAS/DoSER that will explore how religious people across different traditions perceive science, building understanding of how religious people interface with the scientific world around them. We will use comprehensive new data generated by the Rice University project to implement specific programs to increase understanding between the scientific and the religious communities. The project’s work will encompass four religious groups—Catholics, Mainline Protestants, Jews and Evangelicals—but will focus primarily on the evangelical Christian community as the one which has had the most uneasy relationship with science. We will develop online and print materials for Evangelicals and design local, community-based workshops that bring Evangelicals and scientists together to explore issues of mutual concern. These events will serve not only to increase positive understanding between these two groups but also as models from which Catholics, Mainline Protestants and Jews can develop activities for their own communities. Our work will conclude with a large-scale conference of evangelical and scientific leaders from a range of disciplines and organizations, along with more locally influential members of these communities. The purpose of this event will disseminate knowledge gained through project activities and plot a course for future engagement. We will also host separate, small workshops for Catholics, Mainline Protestants and Jews to bring the project’s data and experiences directly to those communities as well. Uniquely informed by resources, experience and data, the project will reach beyond the elite “usual suspects” who typically engage in the dialogue to the heart of the Evangelical community and beyond, seeding a sea-change in the science and religion dialogue between them and also, through strategic dissemination of data, with the US general public at large.