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torsdag 6. desember 2012

The Interaction between Science and Religion in American History

Hjemmeeksamen i NORAM4584 – Religion in American History, høst 2012. En pdf av oppgaveteksten finnes her

Throughout American history, the relationship between science and religion has been an uneasy one. Either has had to adjust to the other, having to redefine, reconsider or reconstruct itself as the other gained prominence. Sometimes there have been efforts to integrate and create synergies, at other times we have witnessed retractions and redefinitions in the face of the other. From the early paradigm-changing scientific breakthroughs in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries – among those most prominently the work of renowned English physicist Isaac Newton – and the Enlightenment period with its focus on rational thought and empirical proofs, both challenging the position of the Church, through to the present-day debate between creationists and evolutionists creating headaches for school boards throughout the United States, the tension between scientific and religious approaches to individual morality, communal organizations, the larger American polity and society, and the origin and make-up of creation itself has defined many of the most important existential debates in American history.


Thus, my guiding principle for this essay will be this: To identify and analyze not only interactions, but also reactions and proactions, effected and effectuated in the one by the presence and changing form of the other: Accordingly, my main inquiry for this essay will be: How have religion and science defined each other throughout American history?

Although a substantial portion of early colonizers dared the passage of the Atlantic by prospects of gold and other riches, religious devotees – more religiously zealous dissenters and non-conformists, “diverse in outward ecclesiastical form”[1] but generally denoted as Puritans – came to play a dominant role in the government of the colonies, especially in the north, during the gradual colonizing of North America in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. To them, God was not an abstract, an aloof principle or ideal, but a very real and deeply felt presence in their daily lives. They wanted to create a communal order inspired by Biblical tenets; the Congregationalists required a so-called conversion narrative “to qualify for full communicant standing”;[2] and the preaching of itinerant ministers during the First Great Awakening filled the listeners with a very real dread for the terrors awaiting them were they not to repent their sins and turn to God. This is an important backdrop for an understanding the radical nature of the changes in the intellectual climate in the colonies from around the beginning of the eighteenth century and onward.

Many of those who were to become the Founding Fathers of the new American republic were children of the European Age of Enlightenment – tentatively dated from “the Peace of Westphalia (1648) to the French Revolution (1789).”[3] This was “a time of rapid scientific advance,”[4] with a focus on the materiality of existence, rational thought, and empirical inquiry, when natural law for many “banished mystery from the world”[5] and supplanted earlier religious beliefs as explanations for natural phenomena: “The universe was simply a vast mechanism.”[6] Even so, it is important to keep in mind that scientists in this age still considered the universe as “the product of God the Great Mathematician.”[7] However, enlightenment thinking, a mechanistic view on creation, and the religious implications drawn from this understanding – i.e. the reinvented notion of God as the Intelligent Creator behind the design of the natural laws – were largely confined to elite circles.[8] And it was in elite circles, both in Europe and in the colonies, that these insights became an important foundational strand for the development of the “minimal faith”[9] we know as Deism.

Stripped to its barest minimum, Deists believed only in a few basic tenets of Christianity: the existence of a God; that he should be worshipped; that one should live virtuous and repent wrongdoing; and the existence of an afterlife with rewards and punishments for actions in this life.[10] Importantly, Deists often saw religion as a matter of personal conviction, and many regarded the participation in explicit ritualistic expressions of religiosity as solely a matter of social propriety. As one of the most prominent among the Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin – among many other vocations an inventor and a scientist – wrote in his Autobiography, “Tho' I seldom attended any public worship, I had still an opinion of its propriety, and of its utility when rightly conducted.”[11] Thus, when part-taking in religious practices, Deists were often unconcerned with the denomination of the church they attended. They regarded conventional contemporary religion as a social good, but only because it gave moral guidance to otherwise unruly masses.[12]

One might question whether Deists in general were religious only for pragmatic reasons – rationalizing that socially it behooved well to be so – or whether they were actual believers. However, to speculate about the hearts and mind of the long gone is just that: Speculative. Franklin has been accused of being “essentially utilitarian in relation to religion,”[13] but this is in all probability deduced from his pragmatic stances in general, e.g. for the necessity of social propriety and for adjusting his behavior to accomplish certain ends,[14] where attending church and donating to the establishment of new churches would be a part of that. More importantly however, Deism is a good example of an end result of the interaction between religion and science: Confronted with convincing new, scientifically based ideas of how one could explain the natural world – ideas more convincing than the ones offered by the church – many reacted by stripping down their religion to some basic elements – and to that which would be at the time minimally accepted by the society in which they belonged – leaving intellectual space to embrace the new ideas of the Enlightenment.

However, approaching the dawn of the American Revolution, especially in the time of political upheaval following the French and Indian War, there would emerge an important intellectual confluence point between Deists and Puritans, one that would prove vital for a unified revolution against the Crown, and which would define the young republic after the Revolution: In addition to the basic tenets of Christianity mentioned above, the American Deists also added a further one, singular to their version of Deism: They saw God as a “governing and overruling Providence who guides and determines the destinies of nations.”[15] The Puritans, on their hand, were attracted to the colonies precisely because they wanted to erect model communities, organized by Divine principles, their “City upon a Hill.” When, paradoxically perhaps, on the one hand the explication of the new nation was “cast in Hebraic metaphors – chosen people, covenanted nation,”[16] and on the other, the arbitrariness of state rule over religion was exchanged for the freedom for everyone to practice religion as they saw fit, this outcome would be one that suited both the more scientifically and the more religiously minded among the American revolutionaries. When Deist George Washington in his inaugural address declared that “it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe,”[17] this would resonate well across denominations present in the infant republic.

From a minimal elite phenomenon prior to the American Revolution, Deism would become much more outspoken, even revolutionary, after. Here it is important to keep in mind the religious climate in this age, as mentioned above: For large swaths of the population, God was a real presence in their daily lives, rather than an abstract principle. When, in the “first flush of enthusiasm evoked by the French Revolution,” Deism was “transformed into a popular movement,” attacking churches as “the enemy of progress,”[18] it should not be surprising that this was met with strong condemnation from church leaders. They utilized the terror and mob rule marring the aftermath of the French Revolution to discredit the Deists, but also for internal purposes: To rouse their congregations and “summon them to action.” Rather than ever being under any serious threat from the Deist movement, this presence of an outside enemy probably only served to solidify the strength of many congregations.[19] We should keep in mind that church attendance would rise rapidly in this period, especially at and after the turn of the century, in the age of the Second Great Awakening. In this clash between religion and, if not science per se, at least a movement advocating rationality above the supernatural, religion seems to have come out with the upper hand, not needing to change in any important ways, but rather using an outside threat to successfully rally its internal forces. This strategy, however, would prove less fruitful in the nineteenth century.

From the first landings in New England in the early seventeenth century, religion in America has, as we know, been highly and at times expertly and efficiently organized, and in diverse ways. One could mention the Methodists’ “circuit system” for spreading the Gospel; the much better organized revivals during the Second Great Awakening; the gradual erection of an educational system, first for prospective ministers and then for the religious education of children; and the present-day mega-churches, catering not only for the spiritual but also the social needs of their congregations.

Gradually, science took much the same course, both in terms of organization, and on the impact it had on society and the lives of its people. From meager beginnings – perhaps tentatively placed historically by the efforts of the abovementioned Franklin to establish a subscription library in his home town Philadelphia in the early eighteenth century – the nineteenth saw the creation of societies dedicated to the new sciences, the establishment of universities with curricula beside that which prepared for being a minister, and, especially toward the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth (and through to the present day) inventions and innovations that have made life easier and perhaps better for all of us.

It was in these societies and academies that new scientific discoveries were debated and to some extent disseminated to the public. Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, published in 1859 but reaching the American continent after the Civil War, made a tremendous impact in these circles, and in the general public debate: Within a decade after the Civil War, practically “every important American scientist had been converted to Darwin’s theory”[20] – and the societal implications drawn from this theory, known as Social Darwinism and championed by Herbert Spencer, equally made its way into the current intellectual climate. However – and although based on an extensive and impressive collection of primary data – Darwin’s theory was only the fruition of an intellectual development that had long matured in scientific circles, and not only in the field of biology. His data might have been his own, but the conclusion he drew on their basis was heavily influenced by current thinking – the natural balance assumed to stem from Adam Smith’s notion of an “invisible hand,” the Malthusian principle of an excess of births, the later scientifically refuted Lamarckism – and the development in many scientific fields in the decades before his seminal publication.[21] Even his basic tenet, that the various species had developed through natural selection over a period of millennia, had already been launched by a rival scientist.[22] The existence of fossils was already known, and speculations as to whether the earth was much older than the Bible told were already taking place. The important point here is that Darwin’s theory might not have been the drastic revolution one is wont to assume; that ideas similar to his already had been debated in the American public; and that, importantly, religion had already started a process of adjustments to what could only be seen as a threat to their epistemological hegemony.

We have already touched upon one strategy for reacting to new scientific ideas: Employed by the Deists, one could call it an assimilation strategy, where scientific ideas were subsumed under a pre-existing category, that being the idea of a God: The universe might adhere to mechanistic laws, but God is the one who put these laws in motion, perhaps even identical to its basic principles. This was the basic idea behind what in the early nineteenth century, and prior to Darwin, would be called Natural Theology. The term originating from an 1802 publication by William Paley, the adherents to Natural Theology assumed that the astonishing variations in nature was a result of a divine plan, and that, as the earlier Deists had argued, you could know God by study nature: The seemingly perfect interplay between plants and animals was seen as a central proof that there was indeed a God.[23] This strategy for incorporating science in religion met with two problems: First, that by no means all were convinced; and second, that the amazing scientific strides during the nineteenth century challenged religion to such a degree that it were not always able to adjust accordingly, and oftentimes reacted instead by retreating into itself.

The reason was this: Perhaps more than any other scientific breakthrough in this era, Darwin’s theory of evolution “seemed to strike at the very root of a biblically grounded faith.”[24] This, then, became a watershed in religious history, a defining moment posing existential questions that needed to be addressed. These “unsettling questions” with “disturbing implications”[25] met with a diverse range of reactions: Some, like Charles Hodge of the Princeton Theological Seminary, denounced evolution as unacceptable.[26] Others, like the President of Princeton University James McCosh, concluded that the biblical creation myth was not “inconsistent with developmental theories.”[27] Reverting to a common theme from the reactive approaches by religion to science, he saw “‘natural selection’ as the product of ‘supernatural design.’”[28]

A further development at this time was the definition and establishment of new objects for scientific inquiry, with their concomitant scientific disciplines: sociology, psychology and anthropology. This lead to the subjection of religion and religious experiences to sociological and psychological investigation, just like one would any other naturally occurring phenomenon. Sociological studies concluded that religious practices had their basis in social rather than divine forces.[29] Psychological studies described and mapped spiritual experiences of individuals. This development also lead to a twofold new approach to the letter of the Bible: First, that many came to view it as more of an inspirational book rather than a final and infallible truth, and that stories that did not fit with either reality or society should be seen as allegories or interpreted figuratively – in line with the view held by Princeton President McCosh cited above. And second, that the Bible itself became an object of study:[30] Historians, anthropologists, and literary theorists approached the Bible as they would any instance of written data, using the same methodology as they would when studying other objects. This struck at the very core of the identity of many belonging to one of the Judeo-Christian faiths: “The central issue was the authority of the Bible. Few great religions have been so dependent as Christianity upon a sacred book.”[31] One could interpret Genesis as an allegory, and perhaps reconcile that with evolution; but contradictions within the text itself, revealed by closer scrutiny by biblical scholars, were not so easy to handle.[32]

It is important to note a further influence science had on religion in this era. The end of the nineteenth century saw the creation of a myriad of sects, societies and the like, incorporating scientific methods in their religious or spiritual practices, in various ways. The so-called Scientific Modernism approached new scientific discoveries in perhaps the most proactive manner. Instead of regressing inwards, they embraced the new sciences, especially the psychology of religious experiences, in order to fashion an approach to preaching and conversion that would be maximally effective. Rather than seeing science and religious doctrine as opposites, they reinvented religion in light of strides made in the fields of investigations of personal religious experiences, and used that as their basis for their practice of religion.

This also translated into a belief in the healing powers of religion. Not only Scientific Modernism, but a whole array of different groups made physical health their priority when approaching prospective converts.[33] One could easily, but perhaps slightly cynically, call this an instance of appropriating scientific methods and lingo for the specific purpose of redefining spiritual practices in order to “sell it” as a way to a better life – not only to serve a God or to be rewarded in the afterlife, but to improve your life in the present. This development coincided with the first days of modernism at the turn of the twentieth century, with a reduced focus on the collective and a stronger focus on the individual – and must be said to have continued through to this day, perhaps reinvented again in the heyday of New Age movement from the late 1960s and onward. This pragmatic merger of science (or in this case perhaps “science,” being more of an appropriation of terms rather than scientific in the stricter and more methodological definition of the term) proved to be successful, and translated into a plethora of self-help and improvement books, new societies for the devotees, and probably some money for the ones driving this change.

Finally, this period saw the rise of at times harsh anti-religious sentiments, reminiscent of what we saw on behalf of the popular version of the Deist movement after the American Revolution. This was the time of atheism, antitheism and the Unbelief movement, the latter embracing science and criticizing religion for being conservative, regressive, “a prisonhouse of superstition,”[34] and a hindrance for progress, humanism, and technological advances. These are positions recognized to this day, e.g. in the uncompromising anti-religious stances of international champions of reason and rationality like Richard Dawkins, the late Christopher Hitchens, and the like.  

What was the outcome of this time of religious upheaval? It is instructive here to take a closer look at the various categories of religious reactions to the prominence gained by science at this time. The reactions were largely divisive within, rather than between, various religions. Corrigan and Hudson describe this in detail, and I think it is here appropriate to quote them at some length:
Some […] resisted the new intellectual currents and rejected any modification of inherited theological formulations. [Others] came to believe that the traditional forms of faith were no longer relevant and must be discarded and replaced […] A third group occupied an intermediate place between the two extremes, seeking to effect adjustments that would do justice both to the essential elements of the inherited faith and to the newer scientific patterns of thought.[35]
This tripartite division would be important for years to come, and would define the battling lines in many important discussions of the role of religion in society, in political life, and probably most importantly, in education.

The famous, or perhaps infamous, Scopes Trial (1925), dubbed the Scopes “Monkey” Trial, serves as a very good example of the tension between one important aspect of both religion and science, and, consequently, how this should be taught in school: How the world, its species, and man, came to be.[36] After Darwin, the domain of science assumes that the theory of evolution presents the most convincing answer to this important question; religion on the other hand – at least the monotheistic Abrahamic religions, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism – assumes a creator, a belief that translated into the doctrine of Creationism – another good example of the result of a need to reinvent itself when faced with a challenge from the other domain.

The Scopes trial, albeit to a large extent orchestrated by civil activists, deliberated the decision of a high school teacher who decided to teach Darwinian evolution in a school district that had banned this from its schools. The trial received much national attention, and resulted in the ridiculing of the local practice of the school board, giving the death knell to emerging Fundamentalists’ hope of gaining majorities in any of the major Protestant denominations, and pushing the “intermediate” group mentioned above into the camp of the liberals.[37] However, Fundamentalists gained a foothold in many local congregations, and even though one might say that this was a victory for science, this issue is by no means settled today. School boards throughout the US are still voting on whether or not to allow the teaching of evolution, or, maybe more prevalent today, deciding on whether creationism and evolution should be taught side by side and as equally valid theories. Court cases pitting creationism and evolution against each other continue until this day.[38] 

In order to get a full understanding of the historical foundations for the interactions between science and religion, I believe it is important to bear in mind that historically science, and not religion, was the system for understanding and organizing the world within and around us that was seen as mystical and foreign. Most everyone, throughout most of human history, have assumed as a fact of life the presence of gods, or a God; the emerging sciences came as a new way of viewing everything, and have been hailed as progress or condemned as dangerous and blasphemous intermittently and by various quarters to this day. Thus, it is no wonder that reactions many times were strong, and that science was seen as a threat to an existing order.

I began this essay by claiming that both religion and science have had to adjust and reconsider itself when confronted with the other. I would contend that the at times harsh anti-religious sentiments that have marked public discourse at several historical stages are testaments to science reacting to religion, becoming at times as fundamentalist, narrow-minded and belligerent as religion could be at its worst. However, from the vantage point of the present day, one must conclude that the last perhaps three or four centuries have seen a remarkable progress on behalf of the scientific – and that, accordingly, the domain of religion has been the one most in need of asking itself thoroughgoing questions as to its fundaments for existence.

From being exclusive to the domain of a marginal, educated elite, science today permeates the lives of every citizen of modern industrial nations. Being a pre-requisite for just about any kind of profession, the overall scientific basis for the educational system is a definite testament to that. However, as we have seen by the debate in school boards about evolution versus creationism, and as we witness the appeal to religion and not science in current debates on adoption, stem-cell research, abortion, sex and contraceptives, and gay rights and same-sex marriage, there is still a very tangible tension in the United States between these domains. The epistemological extensions – the area where they are to inform or decide matters of importance, in education, politics, and society at large – of the respective domains are still not clearly defined, and remain a contentious issue in contemporary American debate. 

Remarkably, it seems that the various religious reactions to science in the late nineteenth century – the tripartite division mentioned above – came to define and consolidate the dividing lines within religion up until the present day. I admit that I probably lack the thorough understanding of contemporary America to support this sweeping claim, but a cursory view of current political debates seems to reveal that these dividing lines, established at the end of the nineteenth century, still hold today: A group that has discarded religion altogether, and live their lives unconcerned with considerations about any supernatural entities; an important and politically influential group with the gospel as their primary guiding principle for their actions and view-points; and an intermediate pragmatic group integrating scientific discoveries with some of the basic principles of religion – the latter reminiscent of the balance found by the Deists at the middle and end of the eighteenth century.

As we have seen, reactions to science have been varied – from complete denial to complete embrace. The proactive and pragmatic adjustments made by Deists, the natural theologists, and the Scientific Modernists, serve as good examples of an important intellectual strand in American history, that of pragmatism. It is interesting to compare these responses with the various denominational approaches to revivals and “quickenings” during the Second Great Awakening. Rather than happening spontaneously, as might have been the case with the First, revivals were planned, organized, orchestrated, and used as a means to an end. They knew what they were doing, and why. This must definitely be called pragmatic, and utilitarian. But is this not also in a very fundamental sense scientific? What is science, if not to observe reality, draw conclusions based on those observations, formulate theories as to how the world and its people function, and then act upon these conclusions when faced with same or similar situations in the future?

Thus it might be argued that the fields of science and religion are in equal measures at least as much theoretical abstractions as they are fundamental realities; and that people, regardless of which camp (or sub-camp, for this exposition has hopefully shown a the existence of a myriad of these) they belong to, will still approach the world in much the same manner: With pre-conceived ideas, either from a religious or a scientific domain, which are then put to the test in everyday situations. What divides us, regardless of which camp we belong to, might easily be reduced to only one fundamental: The willingness, or not, to adjust your preconceptions when confronted with new evidence.



Bibliography

Bellah, Robert N. “Civil Religion in America.” Daedalus 96, no. 1 (Winter 1967): 1–21.

Campbell, James. “The pragmatist in Franklin.” In The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Franklin, edited by Carla Mulford, 104–16. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Corrigan, John, and Winthrop S. Hudson. Religion in America: An Historical Account of the Development of American Religious Life. 8th ed. Boston: Prentice Hall, 2010.

Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. Charles Darwin. Oslo: Gyldendal, 1997. bokhylla.no. http://www.nb.no/nbsok/nb/6c62d6bd2db36c48b974f26d55823846.nbdigital;jsessionid=BD9DAE09A522B7335D25A753C6EAAA09.nbdigital3?lang=no#3 (accessed December 4, 2012).

Franklin, Benjamin. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. 1791. Edited by Charles W. Eliot. New York: P F Collier, 1909. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=Fra2Aut.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all (accessed December 3, 2012).

Matsumura, Molleen, and Louise Mead. “Ten Major Court Cases about Evolution and Creationism.” National Center for Science Education. http://ncse.com/taking-action/ten-major-court-cases-evolution-creationism (accessed December 4, 2012).

Washington, George. “Inaugural Address April 30, 1789.” The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=25800&st=&st1= (accessed December 4, 2012).


[1] John Corrigan and Winthrop S. Hudson, Religion in America: An Historical Account of the Development of American Religious Life (Boston: Prentice Hall, 2010), 36.
[2] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 55.
[3] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 94.
[4] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 94–5.
[5] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 95.
[6] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 95.
[7] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 95.
[8] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 94.
[9] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 94.
[10] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 94.
[11] Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, 1791, ed. Charles W. Eliot (New York: P F Collier, 1909), Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library, http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=Fra2Aut.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all (accessed December 3, 2012), 82.
[12] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 122.
[13] Robert N. Bellah, “Civil Religion in America,” Daedalus 96 (1967): 6.
[14] James Campbell, “The pragmatist in Franklin,” in The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Franklin, ed. Carla Mulford (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 104.
[15] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 94.
[16] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 110.
[17] George Washington, “Inaugural Address April 30, 1789,” in The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=25800&st=&st1= (accessed December 4, 2012).
[18] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 122.
[19] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 122.
[20] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 232.
[21] Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Charles Darwin, (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1997), bokhylla.no, http://www.nb.no/nbsok/nb/6c62d6bd2db36c48b974f26d55823846.nbdigital;jsessionid=BD9DAE09A522B7335D25A753C6EAAA09.nbdigital3?lang=no#3 (accessed December 4, 2012), 80.
[22] Hylland Eriksen, Charles Darwin, 45.
[23] Hylland Eriksen, Charles Darwin, 61, 158.
[24] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 234.
[25] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 233.
[26] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 234.
[27] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 234.
[28] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 234.
[29] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 233.
[30] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 235.
[31] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 235.
[32] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 235.
[33] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 245 ff.
[34] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 240.
[35] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 233.
[36] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 314.
[37] Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 314.
[38] Molleen Matsumura and Louise Mead, “Ten Major Court Cases about Evolution and Creationism,” National Center for Science Education, http://ncse.com/taking-action/ten-major-court-cases-evolution-creationism (accessed December 4, 2012).

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