Search Procedure and Analysis

We aimed at finding Nordic research involved in international academic debates on science and religion. To find a representative data set, we used five major, acknowledged research databases to collect academic publications on science and religion. Three databases were large, interdisciplinary sources (Scopus, Web of Science, Academic Search Ultimate), whereas two search engines were specialized in social sciences (Social Science Premium Collection, Sociology Source Ultimate).

As a search strategy, the two terms “science” and “religion” were searched as a phrase. We are conscious that scholars of science and religion may adopt different terms to describe both science and religion. Science may be termed “research,” “academic,” “academy,” “higher education,” “discipline,” or the like. And there is a wealth of terms for religion as well, including “belief,” “faith,” “spirituality,” even “ethics.” It is important to note that some of the research on science and religion may be discussed under terms such as “values,” “secularization,” “moral,” or “metaphysics,” and limiting to the term “science and religion” overlooks these terminological possibilities. A broader, more comprehensive study would need to take these terms into account. However, in order to narrow the search results to research that concentrated on the interface rather than mentioning both terms incidentally, it was necessary to limit the search to one search term. Also, in the international research, it seems that the term “science and religion” is an established and much‐used term. Our aim was not to conduct a comprehensive literature review but rather to test what we can find with this primarily academically established search term about the international research tradition of science and religion in the Nordic context. Also, we needed to find a balance between retrieving enough relevant publications while at the same time restricting the search and screening to a functionally reasonable level.

There are other limitations regarding the search strategies that ought to be addressed here. All the searched databases were biased toward material in the English language. Tracking native‐language material would have required utilization of country‐specific databases such as Finnish Arto, Norwegian NorArt, or Swedish ArtikelSök. This task was considered outside the scope of this review, which focused on the general mapping of the international discussions and dynamics of the Nordic study area. In addition, more subject‐specific databases, like Medline or Cinahl with their content of health sciences, would offer possibilities to perform more specific mapping, for instance, on religion or spirituality in medical practices. Yet, the utilized databases provided also some such publications, and those were included in this review (e.g., Krupic, Sayed‐Noor, and Fatahi ).

The search was performed at the beginning of 2019. The databases that we used are updated with a delay, so many recent publications may not be present in the databases even if published in 2018. For example, Karl Bråkenhielm's The Study of Science and Religion from did not appear in our searches for this reason. In addition, the databases are limited in the sense that they cover mostly articles in international scholarly journals, and books are not included to the same extent (Moed ). This may be the reason why such studies as Stephen LeDrew's The Evolution of Atheism () may have been left out from the utilized databases. Besides, this review's focus on the interplay between science and religion could have excluded studies concentrating on more specific subjects within these domains (like atheism and its history). Overall, it is estimated that journals are the most important medium for publication, and that this trend would be strengthened in the future (Nederhof , 86).

Limitations of bibliographic databases are well acknowledged, not just concerning this review. These limitations cover—as well as the above‐mentioned emphasis on articles instead of monographs—also language bias in favor of English, especially in Web of Science and Scopus (used as sources in this review). That notwithstanding, in this review we are interested in the international level, which is, in general, suggested to be the research frontier in social and behavioral sciences (Nederhof , 84). It is, in any case, unlikely that particular social scientific debates on science and religion will be carried out in a particular language that does not show up at all in international scientific research presented in English. Further, comprehensive literature reviews in each country's language can test our findings.

We aimed to seek Nordic research involved in international academic debates on science and religion. Potentially relevant national reports, such as Finnish Science Barometer or the Swedish Vetenskap att tro på? were not considered to be part of international academic debates on science and religion even though they might generate some interesting social scientific results. Monographs, like reports, are more common at the national level (see Nederhof , 84; Mongeon and Paul‐Hus ); therefore, in order to locate those it would have required utilization of national databases on library materials (like Libris in Sweden or Melinda in Finland). Moreover, we did not use manual search methods or snowball sampling (e.g., skimming through the bibliographies of the articles or books) to complete our retrieval.

Database‐specific subject headings were utilized where possible to doublecheck the refinement of results. In Social Science Premium Collection, the inquiry was accompanied by a string that combined science and religion as separate keywords because this database is limited in size. The results of the topic search were then restricted to all five Nordic countries. This was undertaken either by combining the phrase search with a string “Denmark, or Finland, or Iceland, or Norway, or Sweden” or by utilizing available limitations in the database (affiliation, location). For a citation to be included as Nordic, it was required that at least one of the authors be affiliated with an institution or organization in a Nordic country. Since the retrieved literature was mostly produced during the past two decades, the limitation by publication year was not considered necessary. This means we took all the publications that we found in these databases. With this approach we found 213 studies. The first publication that appeared was from the year 1997 and the last was from 2018. The search strategies complemented by the numbers of assessed and included publications are presented in Figure .

Literature search and screening process.

First, the obtained publications were screened for doubles. Of the original 213 publications retrieved, forty‐three were duplicates, either within a single database, or overlapping with the publications retrieved from other databases. After this exclusion, a total of 170 publications were assessed in detail by two researchers exploring the publication type, title, and abstract. This task was performed double‐blinded. The result was a coded table that included the variables listed earlier as well as responses to these questions. Naturally, answering each of these questions involves some subjective judgment on the part of the two coders. To minimize variance, both researchers coding the data assessed each work independently, discussed any variations, and agreed on the final assessment of each of the final seventy‐seven works.

In this process, ninety‐one publications were ruled out based on the following, preset eligibility criteria. Editorials, letters, interview, book reviews, or other such types of publications were excluded. The few publications mentioning a Nordic country only incidentally in the body text were also excluded from our review. Third, we included only those publications whose focus was on science and religion, specifically the interface between them. For instance, we excluded some publications that focused merely, on the one hand, on science and, on the other hand, on the internal discussions across one discipline, and not on the interaction between science and religion. Some such articles concerned, for instance, the cognitive sciences and its emergence as a discipline in general, and some examined religious education without consideration of its scientific dimensions. The limitation to peer‐reviewed publications was used only in Social Science Premium Collection due to the diversity of its content when it comes to publication types. Regarding the other databases, we paid close attention to whether the publications had been reviewed.

The analysis was done in the following way. Two of us read through the abstracts of the articles with a primary aim to understand the approach to science and religion in these pieces of research. The analysis included mapping the theme and research frame, possible group of people that had been studied, the context of the study (Nordic or other, the population group or societal issue studied), and the aspect(s) of science–religion interface approached in the study. As an analytical toolkit, these questions helped us form our impression about the issues that were especially relevant for social sciences in these articles. After this in‐depth analysis phase, we formed preliminary categories of the articles and discussed which articles belonged to each category. Consequently, four preliminary categories were formed: (1) studies on science and religion not tied to the cultural and societal context, (2) research on science and religion that could tell about the cultural and societal context or social issues, (3) research that discussed some societal aspect of the debate on science and religion, and (4) contextually tied, empirical studies on science and religion. These categories were refined, further developed, and preliminarily written out descriptively. After several rounds of rewriting, these categories formed the backbone of this article, the four analytical sections presented in the Findings.

Sample Characteristics

Overall, we identified seventy‐seven eligible publications that scrutinize the interface between science and religion. These publications cover the date range from 1997 to 2018. A total of 66 percent of the Nordic literature was published between 2010 and 2018. More precisely, 4 percent were published in the 1990s, 30 percent between 2002 and 2009, 43 percent between 2010 and 2015, and 23 percent between 2016 and 2018 (see Figure ).

Annual trend of Nordic publications on science and religion.

Of these, 32 percent of the affiliations of the publications originated in Sweden, 31 percent in Denmark, 24 percent in Norway, and 13 percent in Finland. We did not find relevant publications on science and religion from Iceland. In Denmark, the top two most productive affiliations were Aarhus University and University of Copenhagen. In Sweden, Uppsala University was clearly ahead, followed by Lund University. In Finland, the most active was University of Helsinki, and in Norway, the most active was University of Bergen. Yet, considering that this review is not a bibliometric analysis, the above evaluation on affiliations is only indicative. That is, the affiliations were investigated based on distinctive affiliations marked in the publications, not on the numbers of the authors connected per se. Naturally, one acknowledged and active author in an institution can also increase the figures substantially.

The reviewed pieces cover articles (sixty‐six), books (three), and book sections (eight). Still, a total of 86 percent of the publications were articles. When it comes to the book material, several book sections were parts of a single book Sacred Science: On Science and its Interrelations with Religious Worldviews, edited by Simen Andersen Øyen, Tone Lund‐Olsen, and Nora Vaage (). The limitation to peer‐reviewed publications was used only in Social Science Premium Collection due to the diversity of its content when it comes to the publication types. Regarding the other databases, closer attention was paid to the scientific quality of the publications during the review process.

The articles were most frequently published in Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, which suggests that Nordic literature has its international presence in this multidisciplinary mainstream journal. Zygon published altogether twelve of the articles. Theology and Science published five articles, and Studia Theologica: Nordic Journal of Theology published four articles. According to the subject area categorization of SCImago journal and country rank, Zygon represents both arts and humanities and social sciences. Further, its subcategories are religious studies, cultural studies, and education. Theology and Science is ranked in the categories of arts and humanities and multidisciplinary with subcategories of history and philosophy of science and religious studies. Studia Theologica: Nordic Journal of Theology represents arts and humanities and, then, the subcategory of religious studies.

Yet, the overall range of journals is somewhat versatile. Besides more established disciplines dealing with science and religion (philosophy, theology, history), the reviewed literature was published in various journals within various subject categories, like in EMBO Reports (biochemistry, genetics, and molecular biology), Mental Health, Religion and Culture, and Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences (medicine, psychology), Astrobiology and Physics Education (agricultural and biological sciences, physics, and astronomy), Scandinavian Journal of Management (business, management and accounting, psychology), Science and Education, Research in Science Education and Punishment and Society (social sciences, education, law).

The Philosophical, Historical, and Theological Research Tradition on Science and Religion

The bulk of the research we analyzed consisted of philosophical, theological, and historical research. The dominant approach was text‐based analysis of writings about science and religion. Some of the authors analyzed scientists’ writings. Especially the works of Charles Darwin, Galileo Galilei, and the Nordic natural scientists Carl von Linné and Hans Christian Ørsted were discussed. Darwin was discussed, on the one hand, in the light of historical responses (Gregersen and Kjærgaard ; Hjermitslev ; Hellström ) and, on the other hand, more connected to contemporary perspectives, for instance, to neo‐Darwinism (Stenmark ; Thorvaldsen and Øhrstrøm ; Gregersen ). Some of the research was concentrated on philosophical thinkers such as George Berkeley (Airaksinen ) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (Pihlström ). It must be noted that many of the analyzed thinkers could be classified either as philosophers or natural scientists, such as the polymath Pierre Duhem, whose thoughts on “the physics of the believer” were analyzed, for example, by Helge Kragh (). Another thinkers in this kind of philosophical, theological, and historical research were contemporary thinkers in the area of science and religion (e.g., Barbour, Dembski, Golshani, Wilson, Lakoff, Pinker, van Huyssteen, Peacocke, Stenmark, Kärkkäinen).

The research on scholars and thinkers highlights the dynamics between scientific rationality and religious worldview and the contemporary debates in the field today. However, they do not deal with the boundary between science and religion as a societal question. In this research, the authors bring out very little detail about the society where the writings were published. Also, the research typically does not highlight the specificities of the Nordic context. In this sense, this research could have been conducted in any part of the world and indeed it is research very much rooted in the international debates regarding a particular thinker, for example, Darwin. Thus, the research clearly does not tell about how people in their everyday life live science and religion and how people actively make and negotiate the boundary between science and religion in the Nordic context.

However, this kind of research can tell about the themes and ideas that might be especially relevant in the academic Nordic context. This, in turn, might reveal something about the ongoing discussions around science and religion among the general public today. Based on our research material it could be concluded that central to many arguments among the assessed work is the theory of evolution and its compatibility or incompatibility with religion. One issue that is quite absent in the Nordic literature compared to the more general debates in the field of science and religion is creationism. Only two pieces of research among the reviewed material dealt with this phenomenon more common maybe in the North American religious landscape. Yet the theme does appear in the research material. For instance, Stefaan Blancke et al. () have conducted a review, with a multifaith approach, of European creationism. On the other hand, intelligent design as a more modern version of creationism was dealt with by several authors (e.g., Täljedahl ; Höst and Bohlin ; Loikkanen ).

However, a more thorough analysis of the themes and ideas that are academically discussed on science and religion in the Nordic context would be needed to draw broader conclusions. Our research material does not include all discussion about the themes of research in the Nordic countries as it is heavily concentrated on English‐language publications. Yet, based on our research material, we could conclude that within the philosophical, historical, and theological research studied here, the absence of the social and cultural aspects of science and religion is evident. This is because the idea of this type of research, as we understand it, is to participate in discussions on science and religion regardless of context and as such, it does not respond to questions about the social and historical surroundings within which these debates take place (see also Elsdon‐Baker and Mason‐Wilkes , 8).

The Nordic Cultural Dimensions and Social Issues Brought Up by Research on Science and Religion

Although the theological, philosophical, historical research on science and religion could be said to dismiss the social and cultural aspects, it does bring out several cultural dimensions and social issues that are relevant for understanding the science and religion interface in the Nordic context. Namely, a clear majority of the reviewed literature drew on Western culture and institutional Christianity. This is no wonder given that the Nordic states share a strong Lutheran Christian heritage. The emphasis on Christianity in the assessed literature denotes also the overall dominance of Christianity in the study field of science and religion (Burdett ). Furthermore, the abundance of philosophical, theological, and historical analysis instead of social scientific empirical explorations might have an impact on this situation.

However, there was also research in our material that embodied the religious plurality in contemporary societies (e.g., Mortensen ). In fact, two of the most productive Nordic scholars among the reviewed publications, Stefano Bigliardi (, ) and Mikael Stenmark (,b), viewed the relationships between both Islam and science and between Islam and Christianity. The Muslim perspective was also discussed in the context of medical sciences. Jonas Svensson () investigates the persistence of Muslim representations of HIV/AIDS as divine punishment, and Ferid Krupic, Arkan Sayed‐Noor, and Nabi Fatahi () analyze empirically the decision making of immigrants, most of whom were Muslims, regarding organ donation. Only one study investigated sociologically the interface between science and Islam on an empirical level (Fischer ). However, instead of focusing on a Nordic society, this anthropological study, aiming to reveal the interplay between consumer culture and religion, examined the halal production and trade in Malaysia.

New religious movements and their scientific discourses were highlighted in some publications (Rothstein ; Bjørnvig ; Bigliardi , ). However, spirituality and its connections to Asian traditions as a current European trend remained relatively invisible. Asian religions were under consideration in one book (Keul ) and, in addition, in a study on Indian spiritual movements (Froystad ), in which again, the target of the anthropological research was a remote society instead of the Nordic context. Another phenomenon in current religiosity, nonbelievers, was discussed in some articles (Mahlamäki ; Järnefelt et al. ).

Other social issues in need of reinterpretations in current Western societies were quite absent among the articles. Only two studies discussed gender issues. Mahlamäki () argues that more research should be conducted on the varieties and forms of lived gender differences within religion and nonreligiousness. Ilkka Pyysiäinen (), for his part, draws also attention to the ideological characteristics of all beliefs, religious or scientific. Stenmark () touches on feminist science in his article about the interfaces between neutral and partisan science.

Even though we found these cultural dimensions and social issues in the research on science and religion, we can still conclude that the studies bringing these up were relatively small in number. Also, the research does not concentrate on social and cultural issues; rather, these come in passing, and the research appears overall as culturally and societally blind rather than doing justice to the Nordic multicultural contemporary societies. We assume that multiculturalism will be increasingly interwoven with discussions on science and religion, but this is not yet, based on our material, the situation.

The Societal Aspects of the Debates on Science and Religion

Some of the research, rather than outright rejecting societal issues or mentioning them only in passing, discussed societal aspects of the debates on science and religion. There were comments, for instance, on the benefits that religion or theology could generate in global society, and how scientific and religious worldviews could be reconciled from the standpoint of cognitive sciences (Näreaho ). Antje Jackelén (), as a theologian, sees advantages in theology's expertise in hermeneutics, and Bjørn Grinde (), representing an atheist view, perceives religion and spirituality to hold potential if religious communities pay attention to more efficient ways to coexist and communicate with other worldviews.

Some of the research aims at building bridges between science and religion, and influencing the societal discussion of climate is a central goal in them. For instance, Stenmark (, 37) perceives science as a process that religion still has an influence over. One platform to reflect the boundary appeared to be the global issues that both bring threats (like fundamentalism) and possibilities (like multiculturalism). Sanna Urvas and Olli‐Pekka Vainio () discuss Veli‐Matti Kärkkäinen's works and his ecumenical theology, which builds on a dialogue with major religious traditions (Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam) and various worldviews. In a similar way, Viggo Mortensen () urges the dialogue both between different faiths and between intellectuals of different disciplines in the attempts to find humanistic values in the globalized world.

Some of the research highlights the role of ethics in discussions about science and religion. Ethical issues emerge in a topical way, for instance, through analysis of the role of faith communities in climate change issues (Bergmann ). Gunnar Skirbekk (), in turn, emphasizes the need for interdisciplinary study approaches and reflections on power relations when considering the solutions science can generate for modern societies. Furthermore, the dialogue between science and religion is highlighted in studies on social stratification and the changing role of religion in the history of modern societies. Jukka Kortti () investigates the role of the Finnish intelligentsia in the early twentieth century and Peter Scharff Smith () studies the implementation of the modern penitentiary system, which drew on religion as a technology of the self.

This bulk of research brings out the Nordic context in some ways, and in some pieces of research it does perhaps form a background, but the societal aspects discussed are not strongly attached to Nordic societies. As such, this research could be done in any other context as well. However, it highlights certain issues of societal significance, such as ethics or the benefits of religion in society, while discussing science and religion. But mostly these issues are discussed globally, abstractly, and intellectually rather than as rooted in the everyday life of people in the Nordic societies. The societal aspects discussed are also fairly narrow in scope, given the breadth of influence that the spheres of life science and religion have on people's lives today, epitomized by new medical technologies.

Empirical Studies on Science and Religion in the Nordic Context

It appeared that we could find a very small number of empirical studies on science and religion in the Nordic countries. There was one study on organ donation by Muslim immigrants in Sweden (Krupic, Sayed‐Noor, and Fatahi ). In addition, Hilde Frøkedal et al. () explore, in their study combining qualitative and quantitative methods, the national existential group practice run by mental healthcare chaplains in Norway. Outside the medical scope, Tor Arne Lillevol () examines family‐based sheep farms as part of the knowledge exchange between local religious culture and the wider industrial business environment. Yet the priority here is not religion or science, but rather the distinctive innovation climate in a Læstadian community.

Despite the scarcity of research on lived interface, we found three educational studies which examine social contexts where the boundary between science and religion is negotiated in practice. A Danish study investigates academic practices in public universities (Schepelern Johansen ). It discusses how the distinction between religion and science was produced in daily academic practices at two departments for the study of religion at universities in Denmark. Birgitte Schepelern Johansen concentrates on how students of history and sociology of religion are taught the conceptualization of religion and science. In addition, Lena Hansson and Andreas Redfors (, ) examine how upper secondary students combine religious worldviews with the views on the universe and its origin in their classes. This study shows that such views can differ and yet exist alongside each other.

These studies are clearly attached to the Nordic societies and they highlight several societal dimensions related to science and religion. However, they are very few in number and some of them are more attached to health and the local innovation environment rather than science and religion as such. The three educational studies summarized above begin to pinpoint how boundary constructions take place in different educational institutions, but there is clearly a need to explore the broad variety of institutions where boundaries between science and religion are negotiated and molded.