Religion Vs. Science

In this follow-up to Ecklund’s acclaimed book Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think, Ecklund and Scheitle turn their attention to ordinary religious people in the United States and their views of science and scientists. What stands out most about this study is the impressive datasets they collected. The qualitative data came from 23 congregations (including Jewish synagogues and Muslim mosques) in Chicago and Houston. The research team conducted 248 congregational observations and 319 interviews. The quantitative data came from a general population survey with a whopping 10,241 respondents. The size of the survey allowed the authors to get meaningful results for “Non-Western Religions.” A disproportionate share of the interviews (143 out of 319) was devoted to evangelical Christians. This makes a certain amount of sense given that evangelicals’ troubled relationship with science has the most public visibility, as well as the most significant political consequences. Unfortunately, this choice obscured how liberal Protestants have their own complicated history in which embracing science was seen as the only path to survival in the modern world, and as demonstrating their supposed intellectual superiority over evangelicals.

Judaism · Political science · Politics · Population · Social science · Sociology · Sociology of religion · Theology · Demography · Evolution and Science Education · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies