Abstract
This important book is intended as a resource for people working with young adults in church and parachurch contexts and it should be very useful to those of us responsible for teaching science to those who think that it conflicts with Christian faith. The book begins with recognition of the wonder and curiosity evoked by the natural world. Five of its eight chapters conclude with useful case studies that ground the more general discussion of the chapter in concrete situations or controversies. It concludes with suggestions of 10 books for further reading and 232 footnotes that provide references to works cited and short, explanatory comments on some parts of the text.
The substantial part of the book closes with a short reflection on two vignettes reflecting the distressing reality of the damage that questions arising from that wonder can cause for young people in our churches and one account that suggests a better way. Those final vignettes are drawn from Science for Students and Emerging Young Adults (SEYA), a project based on 638 surveys completed before and after a short course, discussions with an expert panel and 30 ongoing interviews. The 18- to 30-year-old participants represent a diminishing demographic in American churches and work such as SEYA provides useful data on why that might be so.
Cootsona’s previous experience in church and university prompt consideration of what he describes as the Haussauer Problematic (How can you believe in God after Modern Science and the Enlightenment?), Whitehead’s challenge (The future depends on how we decide that religion and science relate) and Nacho’s answer (Guerrilla baptism: selective appropriation of apparently useful science). He deals with all three through application of Bacon’s ‘Two Books’ metaphor, leavened by reflection on the impact that misunderstanding the strength and limitations of application of natural and revealed knowledge can have on personal decisions.
Cootsona acknowledges that his notion of ‘mere Christianity’ owes much to C.S. Lewis and the Nicene Creed, and his ‘mere Science’ is that constellation of beliefs currently shared by the majority of scientists within a particular field. There are vocal outliers in both scientific and religious communities, and this book encourages us to focus on work expressing the broadest contemporary consensus. ‘Our final goal is this: to weave together mainstream science and the good news of mere Christianity into a narrative that’s truly beautiful and beautifully true’ (p. 163).
The focus on emerging adults at the centre of this book suggests that they inhabit a world of possibilities that leaves them loose, curious and uncertain. Unsurprisingly, they value the room to move that such generalised tolerance provides, and they tend to drift away, physically or virtually, if the emotional temperature rises. They are aware of the public perception of conflict between science and religion but relations between the two may seem more personally cordial (pp. 4850).
Cootsona draws on both his experience and SEYA to identify and engage with what he sees as the ‘hot topics’ for emerging adults: climate change, technology (screen time, artificial intelligence and transhumanism), sexuality and gender, and materialism (both economic and philosophical), while providing a whole chapter on more traditional contention over Adam and Eve. In contrast to the popular perception of bitter warfare, he suggests that the emerging adult response is more likely to be characterised by spiritual ‘tinkering’ in a context of open spirituality. Cootsona recognises (page 42) that those of us who engage with such people as they veer towards and away from tensions between science and Christianity sometimes move between Ian Barbour’s four interactions between science and faith: warfare (Dawkins and Ham), independence (Gould’s NOMA and Karl Barth), dialogue (Collins and Russell) and integration (Barbour and this book).
Perhaps the most powerful contribution of this useful book is its recognition that these issues are not only intellectual for the emerging adults at its core. Young people do not engage with these things at a merely conceptual level, rather the trusted people around them provide the foil against which they will test their changing ideas. The SEYA results suggest that their pastors and teachers are among that influential group. Cootsona suggests that Haussauer and Whitehead demand more than Nacho’s answer: we can legitimately engage with both science and religion, doing justice to both, in the context of the relationships that we establish with emerging young adults and encourage them to establish among themselves.