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Science and Religion in (Global) Public Life: a Sociological Science and Religion in (Global) Public Life: A Sociological Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/89/2/672/6299230 by guest on 25 September 2021 Perspective Elaine Howard Ecklund* FOR the last fifteen years, I have devoted my life as a sociologist to understanding what scientists and religious people around the globe think about the interface between science and religion.1 I have done so because both religion and science are enormously significant in our social world. Over 5.8 billion individuals identify as religious—this accounts for nearly 85 percent of the global population—and many of those who do not identify as religious think of themselves as possessing some form of spirituality (Pew Research Center 2012; Ecklund and Di Di 2018).2 Religious institutions remain among the most significant ones in the world (Jurgensmeyer 2010; Prothero 2010). Religious belonging and iden- tity shape families and friendships (Edgell 2006; Olson 2019), influence law and politics (Bonikowski and DiMaggio 2016), and provide existen- tial security to people on every continent and across different eras (Berger 1990; Grillo 2011). Science is similarly significant. Over the past two centuries, medical and nutritional advances have nearly doubled the average human life span, more so in some societies than others (Roser 2019). Among Organization *Elaine Howard Ecklund, Religion and Public Life Program, Department of Sociology, Rice University, 6100 Main Street MS-28, Houston TX, 77005, USA. Email: [email protected]. This paper is based on a Gifford Lecture given in 2018 at the University of Edinburgh. The author gratefully ac- knowledges Rachel Schneider, the editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Andrea Jain, and the reviewers for helpful feedback on this paper. 1See https://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010–2050/. 2As a sociologist of religion and science, I am particularly interested in how religion is lived via its embodied forms and practices within the scientific community. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, June 2021, Vol. 89, No. 2, pp. 672–700 doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfab046 Advance Access publication on June 15, 2021 © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Academy of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]. Ecklund: Science and Religion 673 for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, the global science workforce in 2015 was between six and twenty-three million, depending on one’s definition of “global science workforce” (National Science Board 2018). But more important than the size of the actual scientific workforce is the influence of science itself. Any nation that is growing economically is trying to grow its science and technology infrastructure. A 2007 study Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/89/2/672/6299230 by guest on 25 September 2021 by the World Bank showed that in most nations, when students take more science classes in primary and secondary school, they tend to enjoy greater economic outcomes, no matter their chosen occupation (Hanushek and Wößmann 2007). According to social science studies of how people make decisions, both religion and science are main global cultural authorities (Brooke and Numbers 2011; Prothero 2010). People employ them to make sense of the world. As a result, the science and religion interface looms large in the public imagination around the world (Wagner and Briggs 2016; Ecklund 2020). And one’s views on the relationship between religion and science make an actual difference in the social world. Studies show that views on the relationship between religion and science can influence whether a parent encourages a child to take science classes. They then can influence whether a child pursues a science or technology occupation (Scheitle and Ecklund 2016b), meaning that such views are important if a society hopes to produce more scientists. Views on the relationship between religion and science can influence how a scientist themself interprets the morality of certain scientific technologies (Ecklund et al. 2019). And in democratic societies, views on the science and religion relationship can even influ- ence who an individual votes for and, by consequence, the public financial support for scientific research. In this article, I want to discuss important themes that have arisen over the last fifteen years as I have studied the connections between sci- entific and religious communities through my work as a sociologist, one who primarily uses the method of interviewing alongside survey work. First, I will argue for the necessity of the social sciences in contributing to a more robust understanding of the science and religion relationship. Second, I argue that when we turn to sociological data it becomes clear that taken-for-granted models of independence and conflict are inadequate for understanding what is actually happening on the ground in the social world. And third, I will argue that when we use a lived religion approach (Orsi 1985; Ammerman 2006; McGuire 2008; Ammerman 2015)3 to study the relationship between religious and scientific communities, rather than 3Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Twitter, February 5, 2016. https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/695759776 752496640?lang=en. 674 Journal of the American Academy of Religion studying only the relationship between religion and science as thought paradigms, we find that scientists who are religious can be boundary pi- oneers, ambassadors between religious and scientific communities for the good of society, by which I mean breaking down stereotypes that religious and scientific communities have of one another with the hope that they will work together towards common goals like increasing diversity in the Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/89/2/672/6299230 by guest on 25 September 2021 scientific community or addressing global challenges like the environ- mental crisis or global pandemic, such as that caused by COVID-19. SCIENCE AND RELIGION: THE NEED FOR A SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACH Understanding the relationship between scientific and religious com- munities requires a social scientific approach, and a sociological one spe- cifically. Scholars in the theological and philosophical world as well as scholars in the sciences have produced an impressive body of scholarship interrogating the interface between religion and science (Barbour 1990; Polkinghorne 1998; Keysar and Kosmin 2008; Alexander 2014; Habermas 2010). At the same time, if we want to understand how contemporary religious people and scientists actually live at the interface between re- ligion and science, we need the social sciences. Indeed, sociology may be the most relevant of the social scientific disciplines for understanding the range of ways contemporary people experience the religion and sci- ence relationship. This is true because the natural sciences in part con- cern themselves with the study of the physical laws of the material world. Social sciences concern themselves with the systematic scientific study of something much more ephemeral—human relationships and human be- havior. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, the famous astrophysicist, has tweeted: “In science, when human behavior enters the equation, things go nonlinear. That’s why Physics is easy and Sociology is hard.”4 Tyson is right, I think. The social sciences, and my own field of soci- ology in particular, which concerns itself with the empirical study of groups and communities, provide theories about how the social world works, how groups interact with one another. The sociologist, in par- ticular, is committed to the idea that we gain insight from studying hu- mans in groups or in relationship to one another. Émile Durkheim, the early French sociologist, suggested that “communal notions of the sacred reveal something about the community itself” (Lukes 1972, 44). Studying 4There is a lot of writing on the sociology of organizations and organizational cultures. If you are interested in this literature, one initial book I would suggest is Joanne Martin’s Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives (1992). Ecklund: Science and Religion 675 societies and groups, then, can reveal the social distribution of different religious frameworks and how these interface with particular aspects of science. Sociology adds distinct methods to the study of science and religion. Because sociologists like me are interested in group behaviors, one way we study this is by listening to people’s narratives and analyzing to what ex- Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/89/2/672/6299230 by guest on 25 September 2021 tent these individual stories represent the groups that these individuals are part of. Sociological research and data then allow us to get past the loud, combative voices that often drive public debate about current religion and science issues and allow us to gain a more nuanced and accurate picture of what groups of people think, value, and believe. Sociology helps us under- stand which group practices work best for accomplishing particular aims (Martin 1992).5 To be clear, sociology does not have the same tools as philosophy or theology; sociologists generally do not attempt to tell us the right way to think or live. But sociology does help place individual opin- ions and stories within the collective story of a group of people. Sociologists transform people’s perceptions into data. Sociologists also turn observations into data, recognizing of course that the social loca- tion of the observer, the one collecting the data, has an impact on which communities we listen to and how we listen to them. And these data are relevant to understanding both scientific and religious communities. The interface of science and religion is indeed a knowledge interface; science and religion are important sense-making systems. But my own discip- line of sociology shows us that religion and science are also embodied social interactions—the interface of science and religion then is also about people groups relating to one another. The interaction between science and religion is a thoroughly social one.
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