The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) announced earlier this month that ten seminaries in the United States will be receiving a combined $1.5 million in grants so they can include science in their coursework. According to the announcement made on October 8, a diverse group of Christian seminaries that have been chosen, will be given amounts ranging from $90,000 to $200,000 by the John Templeton Foundation, a group that is known for sponsoring different efforts to bridge the gap between science and faith. The foundation has made a payment of $3.75 million to AAAS for the current project.
“Many (religious leaders) don’t get a lot of science in their training and yet they become the authority figures that many people in society look up to for advice for all kinds of things, including issues related to science and technology,” said Jennifer Wiseman, director of the AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion.
Evangelical Protestants are, as a matter of fact, twice as likely as other Americans to say they will refer to a religious leader, religious text or religious people of their congregation when they have a query about science, according to a study carried out by AAAS earlier this year.
AAAS’ chosen seminaries are representative of a broad demographic, denominational and geographic diversity. While working with the Association of Theological Schools, the umbrella group for all American seminaries, AAAS organizers received as many as 28 letters of interest from seminaries that were intrigued by their pilot program. The grants given are expected to cover events, faculty, science resources, guest speakers and other costs. The chosen seminaries can incorporate methods of science, applicable issues of modern technology and history of science into the subjects that their students already study such as ethics, church history, systematic theology and pastoral counseling.
“There are interesting intersections of all these types of courses with either modern science or the history of science or the philosophy of science that would be very useful for these students to become acquainted with,” Wiseman said.
AAAS will be providing the ten seminaries with resources, recruiting scientist-advisers from close by science research institutions and also organizing conferences for mainline Protestants, Catholics and evangelical Protestants.
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