Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Progressive Christian
White Evangelical Hostility to Science is Still a Thing

White Evangelical Hostility to Science is Still a Thing

Last updated on: January 4, 2018 at 8:53 am by Fred Clark

White Evangelical Hostility to Science is Still a Thing 2018-01-04T08:53:05-05:00 Fred Clark

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I’m calling shenanigans on this Religion News Service commentary by sociologists Christopher P. Scheitle and Elaine Howard Ecklund, “Evangelicals’ surprising view of science and what it may mean.”

This is partly due to the way they keep reshuffling the focus of their study. Observe:

Over the past five years we have conducted hundreds of interviews, visits to houses of worship and a survey of over 10,000 U.S. adults representing a wide range of religious perspectives, all with the goal of better understanding how Americans understand the relationship between religion and science. What we found does not support the conclusion that religious people are hostile toward, disinterested in or pessimistic about science.

That “wide range of religious perspectives” and reference to “religious people” morphs back-and-forth in this piece as something sometimes broader than, and at other times apparently identical to, the smaller category of [white] “evangelicals.” This is confusing, and at times conveniently so, since the allegedly “surprising” aspect of evangelicals’ view of science being touted here is that it may not be quite as reflexively hostile as you might think. Do you imagine that evangelicals go around saying “We don’t like science”? Well, they don’t.

I wouldn’t have expected that they would. I don’t find it at all surprising that interviews and surveys would find a significant share of white evangelicals claiming they harbor no hostility toward science. But I don’t think that interviews and surveys are the best measure of gauging such hostility. A better measure is not what they say, but what they do. To paraphrase the book of James, survey data by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

Surveys and interviews provide information about how people perceive themselves and about how they wish to be perceived by others. They don’t necessarily provide us any such information about whether such perceptions correspond to reality. (This is why, for example, one shouldn’t put too much stock in a survey finding that 99 percent of white Americans don’t have a racist bone in their body. Just ask them.) I think what Scheitle and Ecklund reveal is a not very surprising gap between self-perception and behavior when it comes to white evangelical hostility toward science.

Consider for example that white evangelicals have spent the past several years arguing in court — often successfully — that a fundamental aspect of their religious belief requires them to reject the basic scientific facts of human reproduction and of how contraceptives work, and that it would be impossible for them to enjoy “religious liberty” unless they are granted a special right to claim, contra-science and contra-fact, that contraception is “abortifacient.” This defiant refusal to accept science is, according to these white evangelicals themselves, essential to their religious identity. (That explicit claim of an intrinsically anti-science religious identity was made by, among others, the president of a college that enjoys referring to itself as the “evangelical Harvard.”)

Or consider that white evangelicals overwhelmingly support political candidates who claim that climate science is a “hoax,” who embrace magical thinking about Voodoo economics and the misapplication of the “Laffer curve,” and who call for the defunding of everything from the NSF to the CDC. Something like 80 percent of white evangelicals had no qualms about voting for an anti-vaxxer for president.

Or consider white evangelicals’ stubborn refusal to accept that “reparative therapy” does not and has not ever turned LGBT people into happily married heterosexuals.

Or white evangelicals’ generations-long embrace of “curse of Ham” folklore. This blasphemous white Christian “doctrine” has arguably done more to shape American history and culture than any other aspect of Christianity, and it’s just as anti-science as it is anti-gospel. (And if you think that folklore is only something from the distant past, you’re mistaken.)

Or think of white evangelicals’ highly selective enthusiasm for “biblical archaeology,” a spastic exercise in confirmation bias that celebrates certain details from a few findings while steadfastly denying the existence of the rest of the discipline.

This is PRE-biblical archaeology, so we have to pretend that it — like everything else more than 10,000 years old — does not exist.

And then, of course, there’s the big one: young-Earth creationism, which is based on a claim that is demonstrably false. Most white evangelicals recognize that figures like Ken Ham are Barnum-esque clowns, but other young-Earth creationists — Al Mohler, for example — are respected as intellectual leaders within evangelicalism despite their routine rejection of most of biology, geology, astronomy, etc.

None of that ceases to matter just because 48 percent of evangelicals surveyed “say that they view religion and science as having a collaborative relationship in which the two spheres support each other.” And it certainly can’t all be dismissed because:

Our in-depth interviews showed us that many evangelicals see support for their faith in science. As one evangelical we talked to said, “Science is fantastic and I thank God for this. … It isn’t as if He didn’t want us to find out about His incredible creation.”

That scientific “support for their faith” tends to be as selective as their occasional interest in Palestinian archaeology. “A man hears what he wants to hear / And disregards the rest.”

That’s a problem. And the problem with this study seems to be that it isn’t interested in addressing that problem, but in diminishing it. (As Hemant Mehta notes, this is typical of much of the research funded by the Templeton Foundation, which explicitly aims to demonstrate the compatibility of faith and science.)

Having said that, though, I think Scheitle and Ecklund’s research is helpful — just not perhaps in the way they seem to think. It doesn’t really support their RNS-commentary claim that white evangelicals are less hostile to science than a crude caricature might lead one to think. But it does show us that their hostility toward science is checked, somewhat, by their desire not to be perceived as hostile to science and their desire not to have to think of themselves as such. Perhaps that suggests a possible opening for a bit of corrective persuasion.

they are coming for your birth control

Previous Post

January 1, 2018

An Unbalanced Butchering of the First Amendment

Next Post

January 3, 2018 A 'Quadrilateral' for Those Not Living in 18th-Century Britain

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category class warfare evangelicals Iraq Left Behind Mammon music Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What famous cathedral is in Paris, known for its flying buttresses and rose windows?

Select your answer to see how you score.

St. Paul's St. Peter's Canterbury Notre Dame