True Scientists, True Faith
R. J. Berry, editor
Monarch £9.99
(978-0-85721-540-6)
Church Times Bookshop £9
Christians and Evolution: Christian scholars change their
mind
R. J. Berry, editor
Monarch £9.99
(978-0-85721-524-6)
Church Times Bookshop £9
R. J. (SAM) BERRY, formerly Professor of Genetics, President of
the British Ecological Society, Gifford Lecturer, and a leading
figure in Christians in Science, ex-member of the General Synod and
a Reader, has been a pioneer for some decades in trying to wake the
Church of England up to environmental concerns.
Berry has edited both these books - one, a welcome reprint with
additional material, is a collection of testimonies - broadly
Evangelical in tone - from scientists about their Christian faith
and its impact on their work; the other a series of essays
specifically about creation and evolution.
One of the sillier things Richard Dawkins wrote in The God
Delusion is his reference to "Britain's three well-known
religious scientists", who "stand out for their rarity" and who are
the subjects, Dawkins says, of amused bafflement in the scientific
community. As so often, Dawkins has not taken the trouble to get to
know what he is talking about. Christians in Science has about 850
members. The Society of Ordained Scientists has more than 100
ordained clergy with research degrees in science.
True Scientists, True Faith brings together 19
scientists. Three are university professors at Oxford, three are at
Cambridge, one is in York, one in Durham, two are in London, and
two are from the United States, with a range of disciplines,
including evolutionary palaeobiology, nanomaterials, psychiatry,
genetics, and neurochemistry. Others have specialisms in
ornithology, geophysics, and environmental science. Francis Collins
directed the Human Genome Project, Ghillean Prance was Director of
Kew Gardens, Sir John Houghton chaired the science group for the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and Simon Conway Morris
was a pioneer in work on the Burgess Shale's pre-Cambrian
fossils.
All of them tell their own story, accessibly written for the
general reader, and explore the coherence of their faith with their
science. Several, such as Alister McGrath, started their careers as
atheists and came to faith in Christ later in life. A number pay
tribute to the influence of C. S. Lewis. The book includes a final
reflection by the late Professor Donald Mackay on the conversation
between Christian faith and science - both of them involving "trust
based on experience and on testimony judged reliable". I think this
book will be a real help to the many who still think of science and
faith in terms of warfare.
Christians and Evolution is less satisfying. It is also
a collection of testimonies - several from professors with wide
experience, some from students still young in the faith. Some are
deeply moving; others come over as simplistic. Many follow the
pattern of a person who grew up in a fundamentalist context,
committed to Six-Day Creationism, and whose loyalty to the Bible
was severely questioned on beginning to study evolution. How that
struggle is resolved varies.
Most of the authors are not from the UK, and I suspect that the
main appeal of this book will be to readers in the US, where huge
numbers visit the Creation Museum in Kentucky and see the dinosaurs
roaming the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. Surprisingly, only
one writer refers to the difficulty that Darwin himself found in
believing in a beneficent Creator, namely the apparent cruelty,
waste, death, and pain of the evolutionary process. I think there
is still quite a lot of Christian thinking needed on what St Paul
(and Christopher Southgate) called "the groaning of creation".
The most substantial contribution is Sam Berry's own
introduction, a helpful overview of the different ways in which
evolutionary biology makes an impact on Christian understanding of
divine action. The Christian Church continues to benefit greatly
from Berry's scientific wisdom and godly faith.
Dr David Atkinson is a member of the Society of Ordained
Scientists, and an assistant bishop in the diocese of
Southwark.