Negotiating Science and Religion in America: Past, Present, and Future

Science and religion represent two powerful forces that continue to influence the American cultural landscape. Negotiating Science and Religion in America sketches an intellectual-cultural history from the Puritans to the twenty-first century, focusing on the sometimes turbulent relationship between the two. Using the past as a guide for what is happening today, this volume engages research from key scholars and the author’s work on emerging adults’ attitudes in order to map out the contours of the future for this exciting, and sometimes controversial, field. The book discusses the relationship between religion and science in the following important historical periods:

• from 1687 to the American Revolution
• the revolutionary period to 1859
• after Darwin’s 1859 On the Origin of Species
• 1870-1925: the rise of religious modernism and pluralism to the Scopes Trial
• from Scopes to 1966
• the present: 1966 to 2000
• the third millennium: the voices of Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, and Francis Collins
• the future and its contours.

This is the ideal volume for any student or scholar seeking to understand the relationship between religion and science in society today.

Greg Cootsona is Lecturer in Comparative Religion and Humanities at California State University, Chico, USA. He is the author of Mere Science and Christian Faith: Bridging the Divide with Emerging Adults (2018) and C. S. Lewis and the Crisis of a Christian (2014).