The cultural context

What was the context in the 1950s when IRAS was founded? There had been the horror of the rise of Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, and World War II, as well as the threat of communism, the Korean War, and the “Cold War” between the United States and the Soviet Union. After August 29, 1949, when the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb, and after 1950 when both sides stated that they would work to develop the hydrogen bomb, the fear of nuclear attack was constant (H‐Bomb Development Summary ). People and communities built bomb shelters. Children in school learned the drill of hiding under their desks in case of a nuclear attack. On the cover of the Saturday Evening Post (May 23, 1957), a Norman Rockwell painting showed a young teenage boy and girl dressed for a prom. The young man was giving a corsage to the young lady at a drug store soda fountain. A soldier sat next to them, and the “soda jerk” was happily smelling the flowers in the corsage. Above and to the right of the painting, in bold black letters was an article title: “How Will America Behave IF H‐BOMBS FALL?”

Another important part of the wider cultural context was the development of a post‐war domestic economy. During World War II, when so many men were in the European and Far Eastern “theaters” of war, women entered the workforce at home, replacing men at their jobs, often in support of the war industry. “Rosie the Riveter” was an icon for these women. However, after the war ended, women returned to the home and began raising the baby‐boomer generation. This began increasing the demand for goods in the post‐war domestic economy. The United States and other countries faced the challenge of transforming primarily a war economy to a vibrant domestic economy. There still was a booming defense industry fueled by the fears of the Cold War; yet new domestic products also needed to be developed. There were new, large suburban developments like Levittown (build by William Levitt and his company), with mass‐produced homes that were subsidized by the government for returning veterans and their families. New household appliances, television sets, and automobiles contributed to the growing economy. By the mid‐1950s the challenge was to maintain and enhance a high level of production and consumption—in part to show that American capitalism was superior to Soviet communism, in part to fulfill the postwar American Dream. David Halberstam writes that “after the traumatic experiences of the Depression and World War II, the American Dream was to exercise personal freedom not in social and political terms, but rather in economic ones. Eager to be part of the burgeoning middle class, young men and women opted for material well‐being” (Halberstam , x).

In 1955, marketing consultant Victor Lebow wrote an article in the Journal of Retailing about the decline in the amount that retailers were able to mark up their prices, hence lowering their income. This was due to growth in three sectors of the economy: the increasing production by manufacturers of a wider variety of household goods along with the development of television, by which the dominant producers could advertise to a “captive audience,” the growing number of retail businesses, and the greater freedom of consumers to choose among products or not to choose any. To counter the impact of these factors on retail businesses, Lebow suggested the need for the cultural development of a “consumerist mentality”—a new form of spirituality:

Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption. . . . The very meaning and significance of our lives today expressed in consumptive terms. . . . We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing pace. We need to have people eat, drink, dress, ride, live, with ever more complicated and, therefore, constantly more expensive consumption. (Lebow )

Consumption of various kinds was on the way to becoming a religious phenomenon—consumption in shopping, television programs, spectator sports, eating out, and travel vacations. For many, such activities eventually replaced going to church, as well as participation in other local voluntary associations. Regular church attendance was at a twentieth century high in the 1950s, almost 50 percent of the population. It began to decline steadily in the 1970s to about 35 percent of the population in the mid‐1990s (Putnam , 70–71; for more detail. see Drees [this issue]).

The scientific context

IRAS was founded in the context of major mid‐century developments in science. One was the development of neo‐Darwinism or the “modern synthesis” of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection with Mendelian genetics in the 1930s and 1940s by people such as Ernst Mayr () and George Gaylord Simpson (, ), as well as Theodosius Dobzhansky (), who was occasionally involved with IRAS. In the social sciences there were Erik Erikson's stages of psycho‐social child development ([1950] ) and B. F. Skinner's behaviorism with its idea of operant conditioning ([1953] ). Skinner was a plenary speaker at the 1954 IRAS conference. Perhaps the biggest scientific breakthrough was the discovery in 1953 of the structure of DNA by Francis Crick, James Watson, Maurice Wilkins, and Rosalind Franklin (Watson [1968], ). However, as important as these were for the thinking of IRAS, the culturally dominant sciences were physics and chemistry, and their technologies that put people to work in a culture of materialistic growth.

The theological context

In many ways, the theological context for work in science and religion in the 1950s was as broad as the growing variety of sciences. A couple of individuals illustrate this. Reconstructionist Jewish Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan offered the important concept of Judaism as a civilization and developed a naturalistic understanding of God (Goldsmith and Scult ). Martin Buber's I and Thou contrasted two ways that humans lived in the world—the relational, intersubjective I‐Thou and the objectifying, depersonalizing I‐It. The book was published in Germany in 1923 and became popular in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s (Buber [1937] ). Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner delineated “the experience of self‐transcendence in every act of knowing and willing as pointing to the whither of human existence,” the whither being “absolute mystery” (Livingston and Fiorenza , 208). Jesuit priest, paleontologist, and geologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin provided an integration of progressive Catholic theology and evolutionary theory in Phenomenon of Man, first published in French the year he died, 1955 (Teilhard de Chardin [1955] ). American Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr was a pacifist and socialist earlier in his ministerial and professorial career. Known primarily as a Christian realist, he argued that evil was persistent in human life and politics, and stressed the hypocrisy of nations and classes ([1932] ). He rallied people to fight Nazism and justified American anti‐communist policies; yet he criticized American messianism and the American tendency to engage in self‐righteous crusades (Niebuhr [1952] ; Bennett ).

For me, three theologians were important. I remember in one of my classes at Union Theological Seminary in 1965, professor Daniel Day Williams said the three greatest Protestant theologians in the early and middle twentieth century were Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, and Henry Nelson Wieman. Especially for those in the tradition of Reformed theology, the dominant figure was Barth. Barth was the primary author of the “Barmen Declaration” that protested the Nazi attempt to make Christianity into a religion of the Third Reich. His basic claim was that there is only one source of religious knowledge or revelation—namely Jesus Christ. In 1934, he challenged his colleague Emil Brunner for holding to knowledge via nature as well as through the grace of Christ with the one‐word essay title Nein (No) (see Brunner and Barth ). In light of this it is not surprising that Barth held that Christian theology could not look to the sciences for truth relevant to religion.

However, Paul Tillich is known for interrelating Christianity with the wider culture. This included the growing academic interest in the study of religion in secular as well as religious institutions of higher education. Jonathan Z. Smith writes that “Tillich remains the unacknowledged theoretician of our entire enterprise” of the study and teaching of religion in North America. Tillich's thought played three crucial roles. First, his understanding of religion as an “ultimate concern” provided a suitable language for new departments of religious studies, especially at state‐run colleges and universities. Second, Tillich's interest in symbol as “that which points to” served as a legitimating vote of confidence about the worth of the academy's longstanding discourse on symbolism. Third, his “method of correlation” between the cultural analysis (primarily in existentialist philosophy and in literature) of the crucial issues of human existence and the responses from the symbolic heritage of religion shaped a new form of academic theology, in contrast to Barth. Furthermore, his broader interest in cultural institutions inspired such fields as religion and literature, and “subsequent cultural and anthropological studies of religion” (Smith , 1139). Relating religion to the wider cultural context also brought Tillich into contact with IRAS. After hearing Tillich's lecture on “The Impact of Psychotherapy on Theological Thought” at the annual meeting of the Academy of Religion and Mental Health, Burhoe invited him to be a speaker at the 1960 Star Island Conference. Tillich had to decline because he would be in Europe, but he offered his lecture to Burhoe for use at the conference (Burhoe ; Tillich ).

Most theology in the 1950s came from Europeans. However, there was one strand of religious thinking that had its roots in American pragmatism and in naturalism. The second chapter of Modern Christian Thought: The Twentieth Century by James C. Livingston and Francis Schuyler Fiorenza is about “American Empirical and Naturalistic Theology.” With historical roots in the thinking of Jonathan Edwards and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and in line with the work of William James and John Dewey, empirical theology grew and flourished at the University of Chicago from the late 1890s to the 1950s. It was called the “Chicago School” and it joined an “empiricist interest in religious experience with a self‐conscious commitment to the application of scientific methods to the study of religious phenomena” (Livingston and Fiorenza , 34). Its most prominent theologian and philosopher of religion was Henry Nelson Wieman. More than any other theologian, Wieman saw contemporary science as a primary context for religious reflection. He affirmed that science and its technology have great power for both good and evil. To avoid evil, people must be guided toward the service of that force which creates, sustains, and fulfills human life (God). However, when this force is portrayed in supernaturalist terms as wholly transcendent of this world, its actual operation in human life is beyond the reach of inquiry. For science and technology to serve the source of good, that source must be understood in such a way as to open to rational‐empirical examination. Wieman portrayed this force as the interactions among humans and aspects of the natural world that were creative of greater good—namely of expanding interdependent relationships with “felt quality” (Wieman [1946] ; [1958] ; Peters ). Among humans he named it creative interchange and creative communication. It was as an empirical, pragmatic theologian that Wieman was in sympathy with the thought of Ralph Burhoe and the purposes of IRAS.

The challenge of scale to the questions of meaning and morale

Most of our ideas about the world, values, religion, and philosophy have been based on the experiences in our everyday lives. Throughout human history, until the advent of modern technologies of observation, we have experienced only an extremely small part of the universe. Philip Hefner has said that we live in the “mid‐range” (personal communication). With our particular sensory and communicative capacities, our lives grow out of our interactions with others in our nearby surroundings. Most of our ideas about the unknown world beyond our immediate experience have imaginatively used metaphors drawn from our experiences in this mid‐range—our experience of rocks and trees; plants, animals, and human beings; rain, seas, and storms; sun, moon, and stars—and their dynamic relations to one another. It is not surprising that in past centuries and millennia, most of humanity's religious reflections are based on this midrange of experience. From this experience we create imaginative visions, from demons and hells to angels and heavens, as well as of personal deities (like us). Most people today live, think, work, play, and worship in this “mid‐range universe,” in which we daily live.

However, since 1800 when electromagnetic radiation was discovered, we have come to understand that there is much more to our universe than we immediately experience. Developing technologies of observation and mathematical reasoning have opened “windows” on the infinitesimal world of quantum mechanics up to the unimaginable gigantic universe of evolutionary cosmology. On July 4, 2012 physicists at the European particle physics laboratory, CERN, reported “that they had discovered the famed Higgs boson. . . .” Working with CERN's Large Hadron Collider (HCL) the scientists presented “evidence of the Higgs, the key to physicists’ explanation of how all fundamental particles get their mass.” This confirmed the particle “dreamed up” by theoretician Peter Higgs in 1964 (Cho ).

As to the very large, on January 8, 2014, the Hubble space telescope took pictures of galaxies that are 13.2 billion light years away, that is 13.2 billion years old. This is a time that Hubble astronomer Jennifer Lotz called “cosmic dawn” (“Hubble Captures” ). The current understanding from science is that the universe is 13.77 billion years old, and it consists of more than 70 thousand million million million (70 sextillion) stars in 100 thousand million (or 100 billion) galaxies.

This is the visible universe. However, the matter we observe, even with our new technologies, is less than one percent of the universe. According to theoretical astrophysicist Joel Primack and others, four percent of the universe consists of invisible atoms, 25 percent is cold dark matter, and 70 percent is dark energy. Even though we don't understand what dark energy is, it is steadily increasing the rate of expansion of the universe—all the galaxies moving away from one another at an increasing rate of speed. This means that in the distant future, any intelligent, sentient life will not see the universe we see today. They will only be able to observe their own galaxy (Abrams and Primack , 48–56, 81–84). What is the meaning of our lives in this vast, mostly mysterious scenario? What is our place in this amazing, tremendous scheme of things? This is the challenge to making meaning. What difference does anything we do here on Earth really make? This is the challenge to maintaining morale.

The challenge of human variability leads to the question whether there is a single human moral nature

There is evidence from history of a recognition that people are not all alike relative to morality. The caste/class system of ancient India held that there was variety in dharma, including different moral responsibilities for people born into different classes of society. This was given at birth and based on actions in previous lives or one's karma. Christian virtue ethics observed that people were prone to a variety of vices, so that according to Dante, people occupied a variety of circles of Hell. His characterization of some inhabitants is based on the notion of retribution or “measure for measure” where the punishment fits the crime—a principle in many ancient legal systems (see Himmelfarb , 75–76). In spite of this, my experience of studying Western philosophy and theology has been that all people are postulated to have essentially the same moral capacities, often based on the philosopher/theologians' own introspective analysis and everyday observations of others (again the mid‐range of experience).

The contemporary sciences, emerging in the past sixty years, challenge this universalist assumption. With the mapping of the human genome, developments in brain imaging, and correlations with the early human developmental environment, we have been able to see the bio‐social roots of variety in moral capability in a more neutral manner, that is, without blaming or praising persons for the way they are morally. This has an impact on considerations of moral and legal responsibility.

One example is the variability among humans related to the capacity for empathy. Having empathy for others is an important, evolved, biological capacity that is important for morality. Neuroscientist Christian Keysers suggests that it underlies reciprocity that is culturally reinforced by variations in the “golden rule” found across cultures (Keysers , 216–217). Empathy is an emotion that helps us “stand in another person's shoes” and do to them what we would do to ourselves if we were in their situation. According to Simon Baron‐Cohen: “Empathy is our ability to identify what someone else is thinking or feeling and to respond to their thoughts and feelings with an appropriate emotion” (Baron‐Cohen , 16). There are two stages in empathy: a cognitive stage of recognition and an affective stage of response. The latter involves being able to mirror the feelings of another.

However, not all people have the same capacity for empathy. On one end of a continuum we have a psychopathic serial killer like Ted Bundy. In his twenties, between 1974 and 1978, Bundy deceitfully ingratiated himself to at least thirty young women on or near college campuses in several states, and then captured, raped, and murdered them. He once called himself “the most cold‐hearted son of a bitch you'll ever meet” ().

People like Bundy have zero affective empathy for the feelings of others. However, they have cognitive empathy or the ability to understand the minds of others, so that they can easily manipulate others for their own ends. “The psychopath is aware that he is hurting someone because the ‘cognitive’ (recognition) element of empathy is (largely) intact, even if the ‘affective’ element (the emotional response to someone else's feeling) is not” (Baron‐Cohen ,120). On the other end of the empathy continuum, we have people like Hannah.

Hannah is a psychotherapist who has a natural gift for tuning into how others are feeling. As soon as you walk into her living room, she is already reading your face, your gait, your posture. The first thing she asks you is “How are you?” but this is no perfunctory platitude. Her intonation—even before you have taken off your coat—suggests an invitation to confide, to disclose, to share. Even if you just answer with a short phrase, your tone of voice reveals to her your inner emotional state, and she quickly follows up your answer with “You sound a bit sad. What's happened to upset you?” Before you know it, you are opening up to this wonderful listener. . . [who] has an unstoppable drive to empathize. (Baron‐Cohen , 27–28)

Between these extremes, most people fall on a continuum between 0 and 80, the possible scores on the “Empathy Quotient” (EQ) questionnaire developed by Baron‐Cohen at the University of Cambridge. Anyone can take this sixty‐item questionnaire at , which will be automatically scored for you. Zero to 32 = low and includes psychopaths and people with borderline personality disorder and with narcissistic disorder, 33–52 = average range, 52–63 = above average, 64–80 = very high, and 80 = maximum. On an average most men score about 42 and most women about 47. This range of people's empathy quotient illustrates how empathy in humans is variable. This supports my claim that there is no universal human nature for moral capability, at least for the kind of morality that is based on assessing the consequences of one's actions and taking into account the feelings of others.

There is another type of morality based on a lawful sense of right and wrong. Some people in the autism spectrum are good examples. The above questionnaire also identifies persons with Asperger Syndrome and autism. They are not able to show empathy, and they score in the low range of the EQ scale. However many are excellent systematizers—very adept at mathematics and at seeing patterns everywhere—more than most people see. Related to this, they have a strong sense of absolute right and wrong and of fairness. (For further discussion, see Baron‐Cohen , 95–124).

Underlying the variation in the kinds and degree of empathy are variations in brain structure and functioning. “There is a consensus in neuroscience that at least ten interconnected brain regions are involved in empathy (and more may await discovery)” (Baron‐Cohen , 28). What gives rise to these brain variations? It could be severe physical trauma such as in the famous case of Phineas Gage (Damasio , 4–6, 32–33). It could be maternal alcohol and/or drug abuse during pregnancy, or a trauma such as oxygen deprivation in the birthing process. There could also be variations in particular genes. In a 2009 study, Baron‐Cohen and others found four genes out of sixty‐eight candidates that are related to their Empathy Quotients (Chakrabarti et al. ; Baron‐Cohen , 138). The best known is the MAOA gene. This gene produces the monoamine enzyme, which regulates serotonin. The MAOA‐L version of this gene, often called the “Warrior Gene,” is a factor in aggression when one is provoked (McDermott et al. ).

Perhaps the most important factor influencing the empathy circuit is child rearing in the first three years. Studies have shown that child abuse and the lack of nurturing, especially in situations of continual stress, actually impairs the physical development of the brain, including circuits that are relevant for emotions and feelings such as empathy (National Scientific Council for the Developing Child ; Perry , ; see also Peters ). However, someone with the genes and brain of a psychopath, if raised in a loving family, can turn out to be like James Fallon, who is a professor of neurology and one of the leading experts on criminals who are psychopaths. The story of how Fallon has come to know himself as being a “borderline psychopath” (Fallon , 5) by understanding his own genes and brain, and his behavior in relation to his wife, children, and colleagues is told in his fascinating memoir The Psychopath Inside.

In my view, this variability in moral capacity challenges our understanding about how people think morally, act morally, and are responsible morally. What does it mean for each of us to be moral?

The challenge of detailed explanation

What is the task of theology in relation to detailed scientific explanation? Several years ago at an IRAS conference, I found myself wondering about the vast detail of scientific explanations in relation to theological accounts. In response to the question of how the universe came to be, I reflected that Western theologians say “God created the heavens and the earth.” Compare this with the 13.7 billion year scientific account of what has brought us into being. Which is more persuasive? I realized that—psychologically at least—the vastly more detailed scientific set of explanations was more effective than the theological account of one line or a few paragraphs.

The two previous sections that generally report what science knows about the universe and about empathy are good examples of this challenging detail. Another involves developments in brain imaging technology. Since IRAS was founded sixty years ago, several kinds of imaging technology have been invented: CT scans, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Most recently, a form of fMRI called diffusion spectrum imaging is able to track the movement of water through nerve fibers. Researchers can trace groups of neurons as they cross from one region of the brain to another in living individuals. This technology has made possible “the Human Connectome Project.”

The Human Connectome Project was begun in 2010, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Funding from the NIH supported the projects of two consortia of universities. One consortium, led by Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Minnesota, was funded by a $30 million NIH grant over five years. The purpose was to build a “network map” that would shed light on the anatomical and functional connectivity within the healthy human brain. The second consortium was led by Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital, and UCLA. With an $8.5 million NIH grant over three years the goal was to produce a body of data that would facilitate research into brain disorders such as dyslexia, autism, Alzheimer's disease, and schizophrenia. “Altogether, the Human Connectome Project will lead to major advances in our understanding of what makes us uniquely human and will set the stage for future studies of abnormal brain circuits in many neurological and psychiatric disorders” (NIH 2014). Ongoing information is available on a rich NIH multimedia website.

In light of the increasing detail that the sciences bring to explain how phenomena in our world occur in a way that can be used for human welfare, what then is the task of theology? Some believe that theology offers an alternative explanation of how things come about. However, theological explanations drawn from the mid‐range of human experience pale in comparison to the details of scientific explanation. This is the third challenge from the contemporary context of the sciences. Now let's turn to the challenges from the contemporary context of religion.

Challenges from academia—objectivity and the insider‐outsider tension

The recent history of science and religion includes both people within religious communities and those from the academic and research world of the natural and social sciences as well as the humanities, including philosophy and religious studies. The issues are whether people from within faith communities can be as objective about studying their own traditions as are academicians looking at religion from the outside. And can academicians really understand what it is like to be religious unless they participate in a religious community? Religions, like the various sciences, are vital enterprises. Can the study of any religion (or science) from outside capture this vitality?

An example of the issue of objectivity and the insider‐outsider tension occurred between two organizations founded in the 1950s, the SSSR and the Religion Research Association (RRA)—highlighted in an article on the history of the SSSR by sociologist William Newman. The RRA was formally organized in 1951 and was associated with the National Council of Churches. Like the SSSR, it was trying to establish a journal, and there was discussion about a merger between the two organizations, especially in regard to publications. Newman writes that “the situation is indeed ironic and is perhaps indicative of the relationships between academic social scientists and denominational researchers. In spite of the fact that for both organizations funding a journal was a problem and that many people were active and held membership in both organizations, it seems that the SSSR group let the opportunity for merger slip by. One cannot escape the impression that the academicians were overly cautious about affiliating with the churchmen” (Newman , 142).

The insider‐outsider tension and the challenge of objectivity exist within the more general cultural framework of religion in academia. There have been seminaries or divinity schools going back to Harvard University's founding in 1636 as well as other church‐related denominational colleges and seminaries since then. However, the growth of academically “neutral” and “objective” teaching and studying of religion—from “outside”—has mushroomed during the past sixty years. In the late 1950s I attended a small liberal arts college in Wisconsin, Carroll College (founded in 1848 and affiliated with the Presbyterian Church). At that time there was one professor each for Old and New Testament, and both were Christian. Today Carroll University offers a major in religious studies that “seeks to understand the full range of human religiosity as it appears in diverse cultures, in many times and places, from ancient Greece to modern Thailand, from Christianity to Buddhism and Islam, from women in religion to religion and politics. We approach religions (and religion) from diverse disciplinary perspectives, including historical, sociological, anthropological, theological, philosophical and psychological, including cognitive studies” (Carroll University ).

Religion is still taught from the inside in theological schools that offer courses that are intellectually rigorous with high standards of objectivity. Nevertheless, the primary objective is to train clergy to enhance the faith of particular religious denominations. Most students and faculty are people of faith, and religious worship is as much a part of seminary life as are academic classes. In comparison, the academic study of religion approaches its subject from the outside with sympathetic understanding of various traditions, yet requiring no particular faith commitment by students or by faculty. Although many professors of religious studies practice religion in particular faith communities, others do not. I personally did not attend any church during my first ten years of college teaching. In academia, the study of religion is done with the ideals of objectivity, and one is expected to teach all kinds of religious traditions including even small cult‐type movements. This is the challenge of objectivity to scholars in both theological schools and in colleges and universities.

If one looks at the people from religion who were involved in the original leadership of IRAS, most were liberal ministers. Beside scientists from academia such as Shapley and Hoagland, the IRAS leadership came from within religious communities, for example Lyman Rutledge and Dana MacLean Greeley. Booth himself was a Methodist minister, but he also was an academic, a professor of historical theology at Boston University (, , ). One important exception was Erwin R. Goodenough, who became involved in IRAS in 1966 and was strictly an academic. As an historian of religion at Yale, he was a scholar of Judaism and from 1953 to 1968 wrote the thirteen‐volume Jewish Symbols in the Greco‐Roman Period. An abridged version, edited by Jacob Neusner appeared twenty years later (Goodenough ).

Interestingly, at IRAS annual conferences there always have been chapel services at the beginning of the daily program, and the ordained chaplains, or lay chapel speakers, are expected to address and reflect on the theme of this academic conference. Not all people at the conference attend these services, but many do—enough to fill an historic stone chapel that seats ninety people along with a large number who sit outside “on the rocks.” Many also end the day by attending the evening candlelight service in the chapel. For one week each summer, IRAS is a hybrid organization that both studies and practices religion in relation to the sciences. It yokes these two enterprises together in theory and liturgical practice. In facing the challenge of objectivity, IRAS conferences are hybrids of insider and outsider activities.

Challenges from academia—pluralism

The statement above from the Carroll University website (2014) makes us aware of the advance of religious pluralism over the past sixty years. This is part of increasing diversity in the wider scholarly community, represented by the growth of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) from a relatively small organization in the 1950s and 1960s to what it is today. The AAR now has over 10,000 members worldwide and represents academic groups working on indigenous religions and each of the major world religions. It encompasses the disciplines of history, literature, comparative religion, philosophy, social scientific study, and the new field of the cognitive science of religion. It has ongoing working groups on Barthian, Tillichian, and empirical theology as well as newer groups on liberation, feminist, womanist (African American), and gay and lesbian theologies. There is also a new group on queer studies. A list of current AAR program units is available at .

The AAR has an ongoing group on Science, Technology, and Religion, initiated by Philip Hefner in 1986 as the Science and Religion Consultation. It also has groups on religion and ecology, religion and animals, and religion and health, which include relevant sciences. At the 2014 AAR conference in San Diego, there were 38 academic sessions sponsored by several groups on various aspects of science and religion (compiled by Whitney Bauman from the AAR program book). There was also the Hospitality Event sponsored by IRAS, the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS), the Zygon Center for Religion and Science (ZCRS), and the Institute for the Bio‐Cultural Study of Religion (IBCSR).

When IRAS was founded it was open to a variety of world religions. However, in actuality, except for Hindu Vedanta, it had few resources to cultivate non‐Western traditions. Today, in academia as well as in the wider culture, there is a vast new context for the work of IRAS, a context that includes the objective study of religion from the outside as well as a pluralism of religions and of approaches to the study of religion.

The challenge of apologetics

Some of the new journals such as Science and Christian Belief (SCB)—1989 and Journal of Islamic Sciences (JIS)—2003 are similar to Perspectives on Science and Faith—1949 in that they focus on a particular religious tradition in relation to contemporary science. SCB “is a journal concerned with the interactions of science and religion, with particular reference to Christianity.” The JIS carries the science–religion enterprise beyond Christianity as “a journal of Islamic perspectives on science, civilization and intellectual history.” Another journal, Theology and Science—2003, published by the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, carries this expansion even further. It publishes work related to all the natural and human sciences and well as multiple religious traditions, while maintaining that it is best if each of its various writings offer work within the perspective of a particular religion. Its “approach reflects the editors’ assumption that theology, as intellectual reflection upon one's religious tradition, should begin by expressing the fundamental commitments and worldview of a specific religious understanding, and that dialogue with science can best be pursued when such a religious understanding is given self‐critical expression” (Russell and Peters ).

One issue that arises from working within any particular religious tradition in relation to science and the wider culture is that of apologetics. Apologetics has a distinguished history. In Christianity it goes back to early church philosophical theologians, such as Justin Martyr, who wrote his First Apology to the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius, his son Marcus Aurelius, and the Roman Senate. Educated as a philosopher, Justin clarified language, made careful distinctions, and argued with reasons as he responded to charges that Christianity was irrational, atheistic, immoral, and seditious. He argued that Christianity was indeed a reasonable form of religion because it was grounded in the Logos (in Universal Reason itself that became present in Jesus). This was a form of “logos Christology” that emerged in the second century (Justin Martyr ca. 156 CE). Much work today carries forward rational apologetics by trying to find ways that the doctrines of a particular religion can make sense in the context of scientific understandings—often responding to attacks from specific scientists. Apologetics may help religious practitioners to understand their faiths in a more credible way and thereby deepen their commitment in a pluralistic world. However, this “insider” approach runs the risk of continuing to separate particular religions from one another, hence continuing ongoing tensions among religious communities. It also tends to isolate religions from the wider culture. Even though people with different religious understandings and commitments can and do work on common worldwide problems of peace, justice, and sustainably—each from their own perspectives and for their own reasons—this does not resolve the tensions among the religions themselves. That these tensions remain is what I call the challenge of apologetics.

The challenge of intellectualization

Some new journals tend to approach religion from “outside,” from the sciences. Religion, Brain, and Behavior—2011 and the Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion—2013 carry forward work in the academic/scientific study of religion that began in 1961 with the JSSR. As part of the legacy of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, these new journals make use of the biological sciences, especially neurology. Still others carry out other kinds of academic activity and seem to be more philosophical in their orientation. Omega—Indian Journal of Science and Religion—2002, published by the Institute of Science and Religion (ISR), “focuses on philosophy of science, scientific studies of religion, and the general academic study of religion. . . .” This is in contrast with its partner organization the Association of Science, Society and Religion (ASSR), which “focuses on how theological claims (largely Christian and Hindu, with some Buddhism to be found) relate to science” (Chicka ). The exclusively online journal Science, Religion and Culture—May 2014 focuses on “the various ways modern science—including the disciplines of physics, cosmology, biology, psychology, neuroscience, mathematics, sociology, and anthropology—support, oppose, inform, or are informed by religious, theological, and cultural perspectives.” Finally, Philosophy, Theology, and the Sciences—May 2014 “provides a platform for constructive and critical interactions between the natural sciences in all their varieties” and “provides the rare opportunity to examine together the truth claims found in theology, philosophy, and the sciences, as well as the methods found in each disciplines and the meanings derived from them.”

The challenge these journals bring to us is that of “intellectualization.” The ideas themselves and how they relate to one another or not, whether some are true or not, become the focus of science and religion, so much so that our enterprise becomes only of interest to academics. Of course, all journals, including Zygon, expect to publish the best sound, critical, intellectual work on various subjects, as is expected of any scholarly journal. However, the danger is that the scholarly activity can become an end in itself, sometimes carried out as a means to further someone's career or reputation—“publish or perish.” Over‐intellectualization runs the risk of ignoring and becoming irrelevant for pressing social and environmental issues facing the wider culture.

Two journals hold that a goal of their publications is to reach out to the wider world. Less explicit and perhaps somewhat ambiguous about this is the European Journal of Science and Theology (EJST)—2005. On the one hand, this online journal focuses on “insider discourse” that helps Orthodox theologians gain a better “understanding of the new scientific discoveries and studies that may be connected by their relevance to their own field or in associated fields” as well as sharing with scientists “new insights or a more profound attempt of understanding of the results of their research work.” Yet EJST also reflects on the “ethical, environmental and societal implications of the work performed by scientists and technologists, intending to contribute actively to European and international debates on these issues.” More explicit is the 1979 statement of perspective authored by Zygon's founding editor Burhoe and his successor Karl E. Peters, which has been published in every issue since then, usually on the inside back cover. The statement opens with: “The word zygon means the yoking of two entities or processes that must work together. It is related to zygote—meaning the union of genetic heritage from sperm and egg, a union which is vital in higher species for the continuation of advancement of life.” It concludes: “Zygon's hypothesis is that, when long‐evolved religious wisdom is yoked with significant, recent scientific discoveries about the world and human nature, there results credible expression of basic meaning, values, and moral convictions that provides valid and effective guidance for enhancing human life.” Immediately after the statement comes: “Zygon also publishes manuscripts that are critical of this perspective, as long as such papers contribute to a constructive reflection on scientific knowledge, human values, and existential meaning” (Zygon ).

The current editor, Willem B. Drees, writes about the expansive way in which this perspective is carried out:

Zygon is dedicated to the manifold interactions between the sciences and human religious and moral convictions. We seek to consider the whole range of the sciences; cosmology and physics, biology and the neurosciences, sociology, psychology, and anthropology. We seek to be open to religious and non‐religious perspectives, those rooted in the great traditions such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, but also to religious naturalism, secular humanism, and atheism, both variants at home in the Western world and versions elsewhere on our globe. We cover ideas (theories, theologies) as well as practices. We address ethical issues and analyze the history of the differentiation between science and religion and their subsequent interactions. (Zygon website )

The idea that I have been developing—that interrelating science and religion should not be an end in itself but that our work should be of help to the well‐being of all humans on a flourishing planet—leads to our final challenge.

The challenge of consumerism to our moral motivation as we face global long‐term problems—the case of climate change and suffering

I have been suggesting that science and religion be approached in a way that the outcome of interrelating them will have a positive impact on the wider world. This results from the growing awareness that the very large context in which all people live today—and their children and grandchildren will live—is at a major turning point for our planet. According to many, we are approaching a “tipping point” for significant global climate change: “the global ecosystem . . . is approaching a planetary‐scale critical transition as a result of human influence” (Barnosky et al. , 52). There already are increases in drought, wildfires, and violent storms, which increase suffering among humans and other sentient life. A search of the Internet can easily find pictures of an African child dying in the 2011 drought and famine in the “Horn of Africa” (). Or a picture of an American child sitting in the midst of his home in shambles with his drenched Teddy Bear at his feet—a result of Hurricane Katrina ().

As the warming of Earth continues, glaciers are melting, increasing the amount of water in the oceans. Further, as the seas warm they expand in volume. More water, expanded in volume, raises sea levels and threatens to submerge some Pacific island nations and many coastal areas of continents. There will be attempted mass migrations of plants, animals, and humans as well as the ongoing extinctions of many species—what some are calling the sixth mass extinction (Kolbert ).

Why is this happening? There is more than one reason. The one I will focus on is the context that was emerging when IRAS was founded. This was the post‐World War II transition to a domestic consumerist economy, which has resulted in a sixty‐year continuous increase of the invention of new products, planned obsolescence, and now militant in‐your‐face advertising on our computer screens. All this culturally shapes our brain on top of the evolved human tendency of our long‐ago ancestors, acquiring as much as possible in times of abundance to offset future probable scarcity. Over‐consumption in times of plenty is part of our evolved biological disposition (Konner , 390–91).

All this raises the most important challenge of motivation (alongside of challenges to meaning, morality, and morale). Let us recall some of the 1952 correspondence between Wieman and Burhoe, which I cited at the beginning of this essay. Wieman stated: “I am heartily in accord with the project you propose of having a journal devoted to joining the resources of science and religion in the common endeavor to mark out the way that [humanity] must go to attain [its] best and avoid self‐destruction” (Wieman, ). Burhoe replied: “I envision along with you a medium for setting forth the major directives for human living in terms that are motivationally effective. Such major directives should be the product of our contemporary epistemology and cosmology, and would agree with previous directives only because such agreement might naturally ensue, not because we premise any agreement” (Burhoe , italics mine).

Over the past sixty years much work in science and religion has been done in relation to the challenges of meaning and morality, for example, on science and theology as well as technology and ethics (e.g., Barbour , ). Less has been done on issues of morale (hope) and of motivation. Partly because we are creatures who evolved biologically to be concerned for what is good for our immediate families and tribes and for a couple of generations into the future, we have not effectively addressed the problem of motivation to do what is good for the coming centuries and the entire planet.