In Morals Not Knowledge: Recasting the Contemporary U.S. Conflict between Religion and Science, John H. Evans () challenges our understanding of the religion and science debates by demystifying the notion that conflict between religion and science is predicated on inherently incompatible ideas between knowledge systems. In a bold move, Evans argues that the current debate instead represents a moral conflict, one which needs to be understood through the attitudes and actions of everyday people.

To support this core argument, Evans sets out to synthesize the historical and contemporary landscape of research on conflict between religion and science and debunk myths that persist among scientists, theologians, and social scientists around the conflict paradigm. He then offers theories on the moral dimensions of this enduring social conflict in an effort to catalyze future research. Thus, Evans envisions that his book “not be considered the last word on this subject” but rather “a provocation” to have more informed public debate and inspire more research that interrogates the real conflict between religion and science (p. 13). In order to engage with this real tension, Evans emphasizes the importance of not only examining morality rather than knowledge systems, but also analyzing the views of the public rather than only societal elites whose voices often dominate airwaves and public discourse.

By conceptualizing an elite as “anyone who has a social role that allows them to influence the views of other people beyond their immediate acquaintances and family members on the issue under debate” (p. 6), Evans views scientists, theologians, historians, and sociologists (among others) as critical actors in propagating misleading notions about conflict between religion and science as one of epistemological conflict. Thus, Evans believes that it is not until we examine everyday citizens or “members of the public who lack this power” (p. 6) that we begin to unveil the propositional beliefs that afford greater insight into the moral tensions at the heart of this debate. For while citizens may not possess the same breadth of influence as many elites, ordinary citizens do have the potential to mobilize, affording a power in numbers that ultimately drives some of the most critical debates of our time. For example, as Evans explains, “the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, an elite, cannot engage in religion and science conflict by banning the teaching of evolution in public schools in Texas. But, he can eventually do so if he gets the public to start a social movement, and the public pressures elected officials” (pp. 6–7). By examining the moral attitudes of everyday citizens and what motivates these attitudes, Evans believes we can expose the blind spots of previous research and move past the epistemic frames that continue to dominate our understanding of the faith–science interface.

Evans supports this claim by challenging readers to consider the role of academic advocates in this debate. He acknowledges the contributions of “theologian synthesizers” (e.g., Ian Barbour, Alister McGrath, John Polkinghorne), dialogue associations (e.g., BioLogos, the “Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion” (DoSER) supported by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and elite scientists (e.g., Richard Dawkins, Jerry A. Coyne) who have become prominent voices in this public conversation. Drawing on the texts, seminar talks, and discussions of these elite figures, Evans highlights the salience of systemic knowledge in guiding religion–science dialogue. This same critique holds for the “observers” and “analysts” of the science and religion debate, which Evans unpacks by delineating previous work by historians and sociologists that are guided by these same epistemic frames.

Evans frames his case in the first half of the book by drawing on existing research and public discourse representative of the current scholarly and public debate about the conflict paradigm. He puts his moral conflict theory to the test in the second half of the book. Drawing on survey data from the General Social Survey, Evans examines the extent to which religious people are exposed to and agree with diverse scientific claims; he identifies three key types of moral conflict: (1) conflict over which types of institutions should be guiding what our society means and represents, (2) conflict over scientists’ moral perspectives and the implications of these moral attitudes on public debates, and (3) conflict over technologies that science helps advance, such as human embryonic stem cell research, technologies that blur moral boundaries of human capability. His findings reveal that conservative Protestants are the segment of the American public that perceives the most significant moral conflicts. Their concerns about biomedical technologies and the future of these technologies, in particular, is at the heart of this tension.

Taken together, Evans’s work not only challenges scholars to recalibrate what we think we know about the religion and science debates, but he also offers robust empirical findings that solidify what can be perceived as a rather nebulous conversation about morality by identifying key sites and frames that future research should further interrogate. In addition, Evans’s work compels scientists, theologians, and social scientists to think critically about our own roles in perpetuating notions of epistemic conflict, and the implications of the messages we may disseminate, even unintentionally, to the broader public that risk perpetuating the enduring perception of conflict between religion and science. Ultimately, Evans “hope[s] that after reading this book we can conclude that the religious opponents of the scientists are not ‘anti‐science’ but rather opposed to the moral values promoted by scientists” (p. 167). Thus, by focusing on these moral values and tensions, Evans posits the potential for better, more generative public debate that affords opportunities to move past the ideological gridlock.

Evans’s work is a vitally needed volume in a landscape beset by fights over ideas and knowledge paradigms but little robust debate about how everyday people view the moral implications of certain scientific technologies.

FOUR CONTEMPORARY VOICES AND PUBLICS THAT NEED TO BE INCLUDED

In short, we commend Evans’s work for being a game‐changer (Ecklund has already used the book in two courses!). Yet, while Evans broadens the religion and science dialogue beyond elites and advocates for a more informed public debate, his discussion of the American public is limited in failing to acknowledge the diverse “publics” that comprise the U.S. religious landscape (Wuthnow ). If the goal, as the title suggests, is to recast the contemporary U.S. conflict between religion and science, we argue that a broader understanding of the diverse groups that contribute to the religion–science conversation in the United States is needed.

In particular, we highlight four sets of “missing” voices from Evans’s analysis that, if considered, would offer more nuanced perspectives of the current social barometer regarding the faith–science interface. First, Evans focuses mostly on the views of white Americans, as opposed to racial and ethnic minorities. This limits an awareness of the spectrum of moral concerns that persist around U.S. science and scientists, especially among minority communities for whom scientific and medical mistrust hold a unique historical legacy. Second, Evans focuses primarily on individual views as opposed to religious communities, which misses how moral conflict around religion and science may be shaped by moral communities. Third, Evans neglects a growing segment of the rapidly diversifying U.S. religious landscape, those who are part of minority religious traditions. And finally, the views of everyday religious scientists are not considered as part of the public, a group who might be important interlocutors with Christians in the pews.

To be fair, Evans acknowledges some of these limitations in the book, but they remain key limitations nonetheless. Below we marshal evidence from data collected by Elaine Howard Ecklund and colleagues (Ecklund ; Ecklund and Scheitle ; Bolger et al. ; Ecklund et al. ) over the past 10 years across four different studies to explore how the views of such groups might set trajectories for future research on the relationships among religion, science, and moral values.

VOICES OF MINORITY CHRISTIANS

One set of perspectives missing in Evans’s work are those of individuals from minority racial or ethnic backgrounds. The same critique might be leveraged toward much of the social scientific literature on religion and science, but it certainly bears mention here. Indeed, Evans’s primary focus on white Americans fails to acknowledge how views of science and moral authority are shaped by race, class, and gender (Wilde and Glassman ; Bolger and Ecklund ; Tinsley et al. ).

For example, as Shiri Noy and Timothy O'Brien (, 54) note, “science has been traditionally organized by white men,” a reality that shapes how individuals from other social locations understand the moral threat of scientists themselves. We have found such perspectives articulated by U.S. black and Latinx Protestant Christians in our own work. For example, one Latino man (interview conducted in Latino Pentecostal Church, January 26, 2016), while explaining the persistence of racial inequality in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) occupations, told us that Latinx children “look at (science) as more of an Anglo field,” before going on to note that “they might be discriminated (against), they might be looked down on rather than looking equal in that manner.” The voices of Latinx and Asian Americans, however, are largely absent from Evans’s text. As such, views of potential moral conflicts are decidedly racialized in a way that Evans does not fully acknowledge.

Evans defends his lack of discussion of black Protestantism in noting that “it is unlikely that African American Protestants would be centrally concerned with issues of religion and science” (p. 95). Such a claim is supported by many of our interviews with African American pastors and congregants. Indeed, due to the historical oppression of African Americans in U.S. society, many of our interview respondents were largely unconcerned about issues at the forefront of the broader cultural conversation on religion and science. For example, one pastor (interview conducted in a black Protestant church, August 9, 2011) told us,

I think for most people within my congregation they are not dealing with it [evolution] but with the routine of living. If you're a senior and you've got money, you're dealing with health. If you're young and got health, then you're dealing with wealth issues.… Then you've got individuals who are dealing with social dysfunctionalism, criminal behavior and activities, and things of that nature.… And so they're dealing with probation officers and inability to get a job because they have a record.… And so to sit around and have a conversation about “What do you think about evolution?” is to say, “What in the hell is wrong with you?” [laughs]

As this particular pastor highlights, many African Americans have far greater concerns than developing a moral position on an issue like evolution.

That said, ample research suggests that science and scientists do have a highly salient moral legacy in many racial and ethnic minority communities in the United States. While we agree that African American Protestants might be unconcerned with the issue of religion and science writ large, some scholarship suggests that they might have even greater concern than white Christians about the moral threat of scientists. Not only have scientists historically promulgated views of the biological inferiority of African Americans, but they have also subjected black Americans to considerable suffering in the name of scientific progress (Morning ; Fields and Fields ). One prominent example of such scientific misconduct is the now infamous Tuskegee study, in which treatment was withheld from black men in Alabama suffering from syphilis. The study was conducted from 1932 until 1972, but an official government apology to the families affected by the experiment was not offered until 1997 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ). Even though most did not have personal experiences with the experiments, our black American respondents were well aware of these events (see Ecklund and Scheitle ; Bolger et al. ; Tinsley et al. 2018). For example, one African American accountant (interview conducted in a black Baptist church, May 4, 2016) noted that,

African Americans have been tested for syphilis and all that, but I think the kids today don't even know about all that… but the sad thing is that usually in culture these things repeat themselves even though you don't know why …I think with stuff going on in like Flint, Michigan and some of the Black neighborhoods that are closer to waste… So they really don't want to deal with science.

This 34‐year‐old respondent was born well after the Tuskegee trials had concluded. Her awareness of the event, however, spurs skepticism about the sources behind current health crises facing predominantly black communities, most notably the contamination of drinking water in cities like Flint, Michigan. This respondent's words also reveal what we have called the potential of the black church to hold a “moral community of memory about science and medicine” (Tinsley et al. ).

Our Latinx American respondents highlighted similar themes. For instance, one Latino real estate agent (interview conducted in a Latino Pentecostal Church, December 11, 2015) explained that “in the past, (science has) been very hurtful. If you look at evolution and you look at the studies of Darwin and what he wrote, he's even said that black people are not as smart as white people.” Indeed, while the moral concerns about science among racial or ethnic minority Christians might be different than those facing white Christians, they are no less salient.

Recent research also highlights the important implications of this fact. Numerous studies document the prevalence and extent of medical mistrust among African Americans (Corbie‐Smith et al. ; Kennedy et al. ; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ). Indeed, health and well‐being often are the main ways in which science—broadly understood—interfaces with the lives of black Christians. Research also suggests that black Americans see scientists as biased (Tinsley et al. ), a concern that often extends to science educators (Bolger and Ecklund ). This should not be surprising; Noy and O'Brien (, 40) argue that “the collective memory of gendered experiences with racism vis‐à‐vis science and religion contribute to group‐specific views of these two sources of knowledge and authority.” Evans leaves discussions of these types of “moral conflicts” largely untouched, making them a fruitful area for future research.

RELIGIOUS MORAL COMMUNITIES

Another missing voice in the broader scope of Evans’s argument is that of U.S. religious communities. Indeed, Evans overlooks the role of religious communities themselves in public dialogue as well as how they shape views of morality. Not only are religious communities spaces where views of science and morality are often formed (Guhin ; Ecklund and Scheitle ), but social scientists also frequently measure moral concerns in terms of the amount of trust individuals report having in social institutions (e.g., religious institutions, scientific community). For example, Bolger and Ecklund () find that black and Latinx Christians share fears about the bias of scientists and science educators, but the two groups differ in their evaluations of the “threat” of such bias in light of their confidence in churches. While black churchgoers see the child's faith as the responsibility of the family and faith community, Latinx parents expressed considerably less confidence in the local church to protect children from science‐related faith crises.

Therefore, the moral salience of particular scientific issues is filtered through the practices of local congregational communities. As Jeffrey Guhin (, 169) notes, “an issue gains its moral salience less from its relationship to ideas and more from its interaction with practices and sites of boundary contestations.” While Evans expertly marshals survey data to demonstrate the views of conservative Protestants, such data are limited in their ability to understand how the relationships among religion, science, and morality are discussed within religious communities. Indeed, Evans himself bemoans the “thinness” of concepts measured through surveys. We would extend this critique by suggesting that a fuller picture of the moral conflicts between religion and science (or scientists) requires more explicit engagement with religious communities themselves.

Religious communities are critical spaces that facilitate the construction of individual identities (Ecklund ), the negotiation of group boundaries (Ecklund ; Ecklund and Scheitle ), and the ascription of meaning around what is deemed sacred and moral (Durkheim [1912] ). Thus, they represent vital contexts in which to interrogate the moral frames and schemas individuals hold regarding the conflict paradigm—which may help inform the better research instruments that Evans calls for in order to conduct more robust, nationally representative analyses on moral conflict. Further, given the characteristic congregational organization of religion in the United States (Yang and Ebaugh ), cross‐national research is needed to disentangle how different types of faith communities shape moral concerns about science. One pitfall of relying primarily on individual‐level survey data rather than organizational ethnographic data is that views of science are decontextualized from the religious organizations and institutions that might shape and instantiate such views.

VOICES FROM NON‐CHRISTIAN TRADITIONS

From the outset of his book, Evans makes clear that he primarily examines Christians in the United States (in addition to Jews and nonreligious Americans) due to data limitations, his admitted limited knowledge of non‐Western contexts, and an intentional effort to “keep a sprawling topic under control” (p. 13). In so doing, however, Evans risks conflating religion and Christianity by speaking to perceived conflict between religion and science in the United States broadly despite largely focusing on Christianity and science. Evans correctly remarks that non‐Christian groups (with the exception of Jews) are not represented in large numbers in publicly accessible U.S. survey research. This does not mean, however, that concerns about morality are any less salient among non‐Christian groups. In addition, by limiting analysis to dominant religious groups, we risk overlooking critical ways in which increasing U.S. religious diversity may complicate the religion and science debates, and how new and different moral concerns among religious minorities may contribute to broader public debates.

Thus, in order to truly understand the moral conflict that Evans argues is at the heart of these debates, a more comprehensive perspective around the scope of moral concerns that everyday religious people have about science is needed—across faith traditions and across global contexts. Aside from data limitations, Evans notes that non‐Christian traditions comprise only a small segment of the U.S. religious landscape. This trend is changing at the national level (Wuthnow ) and is certainly not true globally. Take, for example, the national and global growth of the Muslim community. Muslims currently comprise only 1.1 percent of the U.S. population, increasing from 2.35 million to 3.45 million between 2007 and 2017. In addition, projections indicate that by 2040, Muslims will replace Jews as the second‐largest religious group in the nation, and by 2050, the percentage of Muslims will double to 2.1 percent of the total U.S. population (Pew Research Center ). Further, recent estimates suggest that there are approximately 1.8 billion Muslims globally, making Islam the second largest world religion after Christianity (Pew Research Center ). Such religious diversity further underscores the need for more research on the religion–science debate in the United States and globally (Ecklund et al. ).

Debates about evolution are being increasingly observed and examined across the Muslim world (Hameed ; Ecklund et al. ), with a significant percentage of residents in Muslim‐majority countries such as Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Egypt rejecting Darwinian evolution. However, this reticence to embrace evolution largely derives from the social and cultural threat many perceive the theory presents to Islam via its association with atheism, rather than theological differences that emerge from the Qur'an. In addition, moral attitudes around in‐vitro fertilization (IVF) among Sunni and Shi'a Muslims across different global regions exemplify the salience of moral concerns, but different moral concerns than those expressed by U.S. conservative Protestants (Inhorn ). Thus, Evans’s central thesis around morality may hold, but the nature of these moral debates may vary significantly by faith tradition and regional context. In addition, examining conflict between religion and science outside of the United States can afford more insight into whether the moral conflict that Evans theorizes is unique to the United States, or extends to other parts of the world. Non‐Western contexts (such as India) (Gosling ) have experienced very different trajectories of scientific development by virtue of their advancement outside of Enlightenment‐era thinking. Thus, examining other global contexts may serve to substantiate Evans’s core argument around whether the religion–science debate is, indeed, about morals and not epistemology.

That said, in the United States recent work suggests that some Muslims and Jews also perceive conflict between religion and science (Vaidyanathan et al. ). However, many religious minorities reject notions of conflict and perceive the religion–science debate that persists in the United States as distant from their own religious beliefs and expressions. For instance, as one Muslim engineering professor (interview conducted in a Sunni Islamic Mosque, July 18, 2013) we interviewed explained,

Unfortunately, what I see is that the conflict between Christianity and religion had been universalized as the conflict between science and religion.… In Islam, when we hear about science and conflict between religion, I say, “What religion?” Because in my religion, I don't see a conflict between science and religion.… What may cause a conflict in Christianity and science may not be valid for Islam and science.

For this respondent, the conflation between Christianity and religion that often arises in public rhetoric around the religion versus science debate was in conflict with how he viewed the relationship between Islam and science. In this way, conflict between religion and science was not perceived as a universal experience.

The notion of synergy or coexistence between Islam and science was echoed by a Muslim religion professor (interview conducted in a Sunni Islamic Mosque, July 13, 2013 in the United States), who linked this absence of conflict directly with the Qur'an. As he explained,

Qur'an was not a written text.… It was an inspired speech, okay? So… because of that, that inspired nature of the text, it's really not very detailed and very firm, you know, as a prose will be.… Qur'an is open to many interpretations. So if you feel that obviously there is a conflict we immediately interpret the text and we say that we will not take it literally so that also eliminates the conflict between the two [religion and science].

The openness that this sacred text afforded to allow “many interpretations” facilitated distance from conflict. This notion of “flexibility” was also shared by some Jewish respondents. For example, as a Jewish geology student (interview conducted in an Orthodox Jewish Synagogue, October 20, 2013) explained,

[W]hen you get to the core of science and religion, there really isn't much of a conflict. However, it does depend on what religion.… Christianity is basically a cheap knockoff of Judaism.… The vast majority of Christian philosophy is on taking what it says literally.… [T]he Torah has flexibility on a lot of different things to be able to say find leniencies for certain things under certain circumstances and to accept different interpretations of how the world works. There have been many different books published on how to corroborate the Torah and science, and because the Torah has that flexibility… science can therefore be a valid interpretation of how the world functions and how the world was created. Christianity… because you have to take it literally, you don't have that flexibility. That makes it much harder to corroborate the two.

Here, the respondent juxtaposes Judaism and Christianity by noting the latter's propensity toward biblical literalism (whether or not this is the case), thus suggesting that conflict with science is related more to interpretation than the substance of the religious text itself. Such a view of the “vast majority” of Christians, however, obviously fails to recognize the diversity of approaches to science and morality within Christianity, both in the United States and globally. Indeed, recent research (Chan and Ecklund ) suggests that literalism and “inflexibility” in interpretation of the Bible might not be nearly as common among Christians as the respondent suggests. These studies also focus specifically on the U.S. context, which brings up questions about the salience of biblical literalism as a boundary marker across national contexts.

Meanwhile, members of religious minority traditions may ascribe certain attitudes about science (i.e., not perceiving conflict) as a source of boundary making to differentiate from more mainstream debates around science and religion (Ecklund et al. ). As Brandon Vaidyanathan et al. (, 492) explain, “despite their theological differences, adherents of Judaism and Islam clearly shared an expressed desire to distance themselves from the conflict narrative in this study by distancing themselves from anti‐science views they perceived as typical of mainstream conservative Christians.” In this way, “science is an area where those outside Christian traditions draw out their differences with Christianity” (Vaidyanathan et al. , 493). Thus, we argue that this boundary work represents a kind of moral stance about the religion–science debate in the United States, such that members of some minority religious traditions—for whom this debate may be experienced differently from a theological standpoint—still interface with this moral conflict in the public sphere and feel compelled to respond to this tension by distancing themselves from it. Taken together, these findings offer insights into how everyday Americans of different non‐Christian traditions perceive and negotiate moral conflict around religion and science, which has implications for our understanding of the conditions that shape this moral conflict in the United States more broadly.

VOICES OF EVERYDAY SCIENTISTS

While Evans emphasizes the importance of examining moral attitudes among everyday citizens rather than only elite public figures, he acknowledges the critical role of public intellectual atheist scientists (such as Richard Dawkins) given their social position as scientists “with the biggest soap box(es)” (p. 21). However, while highlighting these elite voices Evans fails to deal in depth with the considerable religious and disciplinary heterogeneity among scientists. Everyday scientists, in particular, represent an important type of conversational public. Evans seems to overlook this heterogeneity given his perception that all scientists are “potential elites” (p. 6). We question, though, whether we could get more purchase on the moral terms of the science and religion discussion by seeing some groups of scientists themselves as a type of everyday public.

By not including a broad set of religious scientists, Evans risks implicitly conflating atheism with science and neglecting the salience of religion for many scientists. Further, the moral conflicts arising from scientific work differ across disciplines; biologists and physicists, for example, face different moral and ethical issues within their work (Drees ; Ecklund ). The moral implications of applied science might also differ from those in basic science, and the institutional context in which these moral implications (the academy or industry) are navigated might well be different as well. And these concerns might vary across national contexts, as our broader research suggests that scientists are more likely to be religious when compared to the general population in certain regional contexts (Ecklund et al. ).

The institution of “science” is, thus, considerably more heterogeneous than the word “scientist” suggests. Evans makes an excellent point when he says that “If scientists simply acknowledged that many people have moral concerns about science, they could mitigate conflict without having to take a moral position themselves…if scientists acknowledged that people have moral concerns with Darwin, they could at least join with the religious people to counter‐program against these supposed moral impacts” (p. 167).

But what if instead of looking at elite academic scientists, we consider individuals who are educated and trained in science and who work in science‐related occupations, but outside of universities? Our broader work reveals (Ecklund and Scheitle ) that when we expand the definition of a “scientist” to include individuals working in scientific occupations outside of universities, we find they are much closer to the general population when it comes to traditional measures of religiosity. We might think of these individuals as “rank‐and‐file” scientists. All in all, 65 percent of rank‐and‐file scientists in the United States are Christians. We also find that 16 percent of rank‐and‐file U.S. scientists identify as “very religious” compared with 19 percent of the general population. Rank‐and‐file scientists are also similar to the general U.S. population on other religion measures: 19 percent of these scientists read a religious text weekly or nearly weekly compared with 22 percent of the overall population, and 41 percent of rank‐and‐file scientists pray several times a week or more compared with 52 percent of the general population. But overall the religiosity of the American science community looks very different (and much more like the general population) when we look at rank‐and‐file scientists rather than the scientists working at elite universities.

That said, we find in our broader data that evangelicals, mainline Protestants, and Catholics are somewhat underrepresented among rank‐and‐file scientists in the United States. And yet, there are still a significant minority of everyday scientists who consider themselves evangelical Christians. Evangelicals, for example, comprise 24 percent of all survey respondents but 21 percent of rank‐and‐file scientists. As we see when we look at the adjusted percentages, however, these differences are mostly a result of other social and demographic differences between the groups, especially education.

We also find through our interviews that religious scientists often face scrutiny, judgment, and unfair assumptions from their colleagues and fellow congregants. Both religious individuals and scientists need to play a role in addressing the myths surrounding how scientists approach religion. Religious scientists, particularly those who sit in the pews alongside fellow congregants, despite their hesitancy and concerns can serve as a bridge between the two communities. More research is needed to examine the religious views of these rank‐and‐file scientists, and to explore how they differ from their religious and scientific peers in their religious beliefs and practices and in their views on the religion and science relationship, and how they might form a moral public.

CONCLUSIONS

In Morals Not Knowledge, John Evans takes on the difficult task of reframing a publicly prominent and often contentious debate between religious and scientific elites. This goal is apparent from the opening, as Evans exhorts individuals on both side of the supposed religion–science “conflict” to disagree with one other “for the right reason” (p. 1). Indeed, Evans compellingly calls for a fundamental reframing of the religion–science debate in the United States, including a shift to discussions of morals rather than simply knowledge, and a shift from the discourse of elites to the concerns of the general public.

We stand in agreement with Evans that “actual dialogue is a rare commodity” (Evans , 168) and that better social science research might actually promote such productive dialogue. We also argue that the question remains as to what “good debate” might look like and what the consequences of “bad debate” might be. To the latter question, scientists depend on the public for funding, and religious Americans, particularly conservative Protestants, are reticent to support funding for science and scientists with which they have moral conflict. Alternatively, if elites make policies and set public standards for research, then why should they care what “everyday people” think about the moral implications of their work? Thus, these questions have important implications, but the contours of the “good” and “bad” debate remain open questions. Considering a broader variety of publics who might be involved in debate about the morality of and moral implications of science will help us get even closer to envisioning good debate. To extend Evans’s statement in the opening page, we would argue that debates must not only revolve around the “right reason(s),” but also must include the right publics. Here, we have outlined four different U.S. “publics” that are absent from the text and whose voices might strengthen, complicate, and enrich the debate about religion and science.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Data collection for this paper was funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation, “Religion among Scientists in International Context,” TWCF0033/AB14, Elaine Howard Ecklund PI, Kirstin R. W. Matthews and Steven Lewis, co‐PIs; the Templeton Religion Trust, “Communicating Outlooks for a New Global Religion and Science Synergy: The Interpretative Challenge,” #TRT0197, Elaine Howard Ecklund PI, David R. Johnson co‐PI; the John Templeton Foundation, “Religious Understandings of Science” (Grant #38817), Elaine Howard Ecklund PI; and the Faculty Initiatives Fund at Rice University, “Religion, Science and Inequality,” Elaine Howard Ecklund PI.