For Twenty Years, the Multimillion-Dollar John Temple- Ton
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FI June-July 07 Pages 4/26/07 12:39 PM Page 27 or twenty years, the multimillion-dollar John Temple- ton Foundation has pursued an agenda broadly understood as bringing science under the guiding Fhand of religion. (Last year, it granted $60 million to some three hundred projects.) During its life, the Foundation has moved steadily from the lowbrow fringes of our intellectual establish- ment to its respectable, highly privileged center. The methods by which this transformation was carried out have been crude but effective: the Foundation has simply bought up scientists, teachers, and educators. 27 http://www.secularhumanism.org June/July 2007 FI June-July 07 Pages 5/3/07 2:23 PM Page 28 But before there was a Templeton Foundation, there was the “deep ethical truths built into the physical universe” can only Templeton Prize. In 1972, financier John Templeton, who would be discovered, never invented; (2) that Professor Townes later create the Foundation, announced an annual “Templeton attributes his discovery of the maser to “a ‘revelation’ as real Prize for Progress in Religion.” The title was later amplified as any . described in the scriptures”; and (3) that Charles (although perhaps not clarified) to describe the prize as honor- Taylor, in his 2007 acceptance speech, praised “Sir John” for ing progress toward “Research or Discoveries about Spiritual recognizing the “crippling” effect of “barriers between science Realities.” By stipulating that his prize must “always be worth and spirituality,” and denounced Stephen Weinberg (a Nobel more than the Nobel,” Templeton spelled out in hard cash his Prize winner in cosmology) for declaring that “it takes religion” conviction that “spiritual discoveries can be quantifiably more to make “good people do bad things.” significant” than discoveries in the secular disciplines favored Not until 1987 did John Templeton create a grant-making by Nobel. Today, at almost one and a half million dollars, the institution around the framework of his annual prize, launch- Templeton Prize is the juiciest plum in the academic world. ing the John Templeton Foundation. Today, the Foundation sup- The first winners of the Templeton Prize were Mother ports some three hundred projects, many of which center on Teresa (1972) and Billy Graham (1973). Revered though these bringing science and religion closer together—usually, with recipients may have been as religious enthusiasts, neither religion in the dominant role. Another focus of Foundation giv- stood high in the scientific pecking order. In later years, the ing is research into the study of forgiveness. Templeton Prize would significantly upgrade its scientific and Through the years, the Templeton Prize, the Templeton Foundation, and John Templeton’s public mission have contin- ued to evolve. They are evolving still; only now can we begin to discern a new layer in the Templeton agenda. In John Templeton’s master strategy, corrupting science may be only “In John Templeton’s master strategy, corrupting the beginning. science may be only the beginning.” THE ENDOWMENT MILL—AND WHO RUNS IT If the unparalleled Templeton Prize—and the scientific and religious virtuosos who nowadays tend to win it—occupy the ideological firmament of the Templeton universe, we can find academic standards. The 2000 awardee was theoretical physi- its terra firma among the myriad lesser grantees who receive cist Freeman Dyson, a professor emeritus at Princeton’s a few thousand to a few hundred thousand dollars each: stu- Institute for Advanced Studies. Subsequent winners have dents, teachers, science writers, medical journalists, and col- included George F. R. Ellis (2004), the mathematician who co- leges and universities. Recipients are found all over the authored (with Stephen Hawking) The Large Scale Structure Western world, though especially in the United States and the of Space-Time; Charles Townes (2005), an astrophysics and United Kingdom. In the online journal Slate, David Plotz astronomy researcher at Berkeley, already a Nobel laureate for reported that Templeton disburses $10,000 a year each to one his work on microwaves, masers, and lasers; and Frank D. hundred colleges for sponsoring courses on the reciprocity of Barrow (2006), a physics professor at Cambridge and the co- science and religion, as well as comparable sums to “medical author (with Frank Tipler) of The Anthropic Cosmological schools for classes on healing and spirituality” (see Principle. The 2007 award (announced March 14) moves from www.slate.com/id/1822). It supports “empirical” research such cosmology to the social sciences: its Canadian-born winner, as the Duke University study into how prayer affects longevity, Charles Taylor, currently a professor of law and philosophy at as well as an investigation under way at Johns Hopkins on the Northwestern University, is perhaps best known for his massive impact of meditation on brain activity. It awards “lifetime study, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, achievement awards” to “conservative scholars”: past recipi- published by Harvard Press in 1989. ents include Gertrude Himmelfarb, Milton Friedman, Walter The Templeton organization is eager to show that its Williams, Julian Simon, and Mary Lefkowitz. awardees’ scientific distinction is matched by their spiritual The Templeton Honor Roll “celebrated 126 universities, luminosity. Thus, by way of the many-gated Templeton Web site departments and professors and even textbooks that upheld (www.templeton.org), we learn (1) that Professor Ellis believes traditional . educational values.” Open to adolescents, the “Laws of Life Contest” offers $2,000 prizes for essays about Alexander Saxton is a professor emeritus of history at the “spirituality.” The award “For Inspiring Movies and TV” University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of extends $25,000 subsidies to “shows that acclaim faith.” Mel books including The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ came in as a double winner Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth Century America in this category for $50,000. (1990, 2003) and Religion and the Human Prospect (2006). He Aside from direct grants to educational institutions, the is currently working on a study tentatively titled Foundation maintains its own publishing house and sponsors “Spirituality” in the Digital Era. the magazine Science and Spirit, a bimonthly devoted to free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 28 FI June-July 07 Pages 4/26/07 12:39 PM Page 29 Sir John Templeton [Photo via Newscom] John Templeton Jr. [UPI photo/Monika Graff] “exploring things that matter.” Headquartered in Quincy, solidly within the corporate neoliberal mode that expects reli- Massachusetts, it acknowledges “generous grants” from the gion to serve as catalyst in the globalization of free enterprise. Templeton Foundation. The editor in chief, Karl Giberson, As we shall see, that is no accident. teaches physics and history of science—as well as courses on The geographic distribution of the Board of Advisors’ mem- the reciprocity of science and religion—at Quincy-based bership is illuminating. The United States and United Kingdom Eastern Nazarene College. Additionally, the Foundation indi- together account for 80 percent of the total, contributing fifty- rectly subsidizes selected academic journals by placing full- four and eleven board members, respectively. Nine more mem- page ads for its own publications and conferences within their bers hail from six nations of Western Europe, two from Eastern pages. Europe, and three from the Middle East—two of them from A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education esti- Israel. Africa contributes but two, both with strong first-world mates that the Foundation has so far spent more than $250 mil- ties: a French-educated astrophysicist based at Casablanca lion on its multiple programs; since John Templeton has just and a Briton—Professor Ellis, the 2004 Templeton Prize win- thrown another $550 million of his personal fortune into the ner, who now teaches at Capetown. No Templeton advisors hail Foundation’s capital pot, annual outlays can be expected to from southern or eastern Asia or from Latin America. double from the current $60 million per year. Geographically at least, the Board of Advisors mirrors the con- Giving away all this money is hard work, and a great many temporary Anglo-American alliance, even including its tenuous people earn their livings helping the Foundation do it. Many affiliations with Western Europe. work for subsidized subsidiaries and so may not appear on the But this may convey too narrow an image of the Templeton central organization’s personnel rosters. Presumably oversee- apparatus. We should also examine the backgrounds of the ing all of this activity is a very impressive Board of Advisors, a nine judges for the annual Templeton Prize. The current panel far-flung body presently comprising eighty-one persons (eleven of judges might be described as an ecumenical work of art. Not women and seventy men). Of these, sixty-four hold PhDs in sci- only in terms of geographic origin (India, Indonesia, Greece, ence or theology (several in both), four are medical doctors, Poland, Britain, and the United States) but also in respect to three are lawyers, and three hold master’s or bachelor’s religious orientation (Buddhist, Hindu, Greek Orthodox, degrees. Only three list no college credentials (though one of Roman Catholic, Anglican, and U.S. Protestant), the nine them is a well-known physicist and member of the Royal judges are unquestionably ecumenical. Moreover, their collec- Society). A substantial number hold appointments at major tive scientific profile is impressive, since, among the judges, we universities. The advisors’ qualifications are principally scien- find a Nobel Laureate in medicine, a pioneer in agricultural tific, academic, or theological; few have backgrounds in social ecology, and the current director of the Human Genome Project welfare, community organizing, or “entitlement” programs like (yes, Francis Collins, author of The Language of God: A public education, health care, or Social Security.