Evangelicalism in the Dock. Part II. On Accountability
Decimation of American Science
In Part I of this series “Evangelicalism in the Docket”, I emphasized that science as we have known it in the United States is being decimated, and—most importantly—it is members of my “tribe,” white-evangelicals, who are most responsible, not only for voting-in the current administration, but continuing to approve of its job performance while it dismantles the scientific enterprise.
Who in the Christian Community Should be Held Accountable?
Citing Molly Worthen, I wrote that evangelicals strive to find the right balance between the spiritual and what she called “rational” knowledge. I think she’s right. God speaks to us through revelation (his Word, for example), but he also speaks to us in a manner that leads to personal discernment. We are not called to live a robotic existence where the journey into that which is true is all laid out for us—turn-by-turn-by-turn.[1] Rather we take this journey together and the Spirit of God works through us in community as we seek to bring Christ into the cultural situations of today’s world. Paul stressed our dependence on one another on this journey into wise decision-making. For example, in Colossians 3:16 he writes, “Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom...”. Similarly, in Romans 15:14: “I myself am convinced, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with knowledge and competent to instruct one another.”[2]
So, given that we are called to be Christ’s Body—teaching and admonishing one another—should there be a sense of common guilt for what is happening to the scientific enterprise in this country? I think so. I suspect that those of us who are (justifiably) alarmed at what is happening could have done a better job of sensitively laying out the reasoning for the theological, scientific, and political alternatives to our current situation in a manner that reveals the true beauty of the Christ-centered life. So that’s the task before us now, and it’s not too late to do so.
On Holding Our Secular Leaders Accountable to Use Their Power Well
N.T. Wright has some important things to say about political power in his book Creation, Power, and Truth that came out last month (in North America):
“The early Christians, like the Jews of the same period, were not particularly interested in how someone, or some system, came to power. Nobody in the early church campaigned for more democracy, for an extension of the franchise; nobody would have imagined that, if such things had come to pass, justice and peace would have broken out at once. Rome had been holding elections for many centuries, and that hadn’t prevented major problems, ending with the bloody and bitter civil wars in the second half of the first century B.C.
No: the early Christians (and the Jews of the same period) did not worry too much about how people came to power. Rather, the early Christians were much more interested in what people did with power once they had it, and in holding up a mirror to power, like Daniel with Nebuchadnezzar or Darius, so that those in power might be reminded that they were responsible to the creator God and that, ultimately, they were called to bow the knee to Jesus as Lord.
If the church could recapture this vision, there might emerge a more mature political theology which would avoid the sterile left/ right polarization that has increasingly characterized the USA, and the equally sterile centre/ centre polarization (if that isn’t too paradoxical) that has characterized the UK. Our political discourses have become shallow and naive, following the postmodern fashion for spin and smear, and appealing to social and cultural feeling rather than to genuine issues of justice, power and freedom. The church is called to bear witness, over against the prevailing Gnosticisms which have hampered our witness before the powers, to the promise of new heavens and new earth in which justice will dwell. We must refuse to be conned by the rhetoric of either the new right or the new left, and must insist on bringing signs of that future to birth both in our own lives and in the world around, based on the resurrection of Jesus and the power of the spirit.”[3]
Wright states that we significantly misunderstand Paul if we think, based on Romans 13 for example, that Christ-followers should just “accept magistrates and emperors with a shrug of the shoulders,”[4] as though they are put in place by God to administer a separate kingdom. Rather “Jesus. . . is the anointed King, the kyrios, the Son of God whose gospel calls the whole world to loyal obedience, and generates a world of justice, freedom, and peace.”[5]
Further,
The church must affirm that the creator God intends the world to be ruled by properly constituted authorities, but insists that they be held to account, and that it is part of the task of the church to do this, to speak the truth to power, to affirm power in its proper use and to critique it in its regular abuse.[6]
By “church,” Wright makes clear that he doesn’t necessarily mean official church organizations. He means you and I doing our part to hold our leaders accountable and to “speak truth to power.”
On Holding Christians Accountable: Using God’s Gift of Science Well
So that’s a start on addressing the political/theological issues we ought to be concerned about. What about the scientific/theological ones?
Most of us are not scientists, so we may or may not fully understand the ramifications of all that is at stake as the current administration dismantles the scientific enterprise. I am not a practicing scientist anymore, but I am privileged to know some deeply committed Christians who are. For example, in response to my last post, my colleague, Dr. Mike Dorrell wrote:
We are at a critical time when the world needs both faith and science more than ever. God gave us the wisdom to pursue knowledge about His creation such that we are able to better care for ourselves and each other. Ignoring the facts obtained by those pursuits (examples: climate change, medical science, etc.) is ignoring God's gift to us, and ultimately puts humanity and its future in peril.
Mike and his students—along with many coworkers at the non-profit Lowy MedicalResearch Institute—work on an eye disease called Macular Telangiectasia, a disease which causes degeneration of the central part of the retina. It causes severely blurred central vision. He and others have made tremendous progress in identifying the cause and are well on their way to finding a successful treatment that will ultimately make it possible for the 0.1 percent of the population whose eyesight becomes highly blurred to move towards normal vision again
Sometimes I think we forget the healing power of scientific investigation. When I was a graduate student at the University of Alberta in the 1970’s one of my fellow students was working on cystic fibrosis (CF). It is a genetic disease, but there was no pathway to get to the heart of the disease—a defective gene. A cruel and, at that time lethal disease, it affects about 40,000 Americans (and many more worldwide). They often lived into their teens and twenties at that time, but then soon succumbed to lung infections or other health challenges and died just as their peers were entering into adulthood. At that time, we could not purify individual genes and most of us expected that would likely never be possible. But through absolutely astonishing achievements on the part of many scientists, things began to change. In his book, The Road to Wisdom, Francis Collins describes how he and his group were able isolate the CF gene, and today, as a result of this, and other follow-up work, many CF patients are beginning to plan for retirement rather than funerals.
I’ve given these two examples, because I wanted you to have something tangible to think about. There are thousands of similar stories where our scientific understanding of living systems is leading to a massive reduction in human suffering. I think we Christians should be asking, why would we want to cut back on that?
As the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew draws to a close, Jesus puts the final judgment scene into the context of what we did and didn’t do for those who are suffering. People like Mike and his colleagues in their highly successful progress toward using science to restore sight, and Francis and his colleagues in their powerful work on cystic fibrosis demonstrate the powerful potential of science to carry out the healing work of Jesus in our world today. It is far too easy to lose sight of the individual trees in the great forest as the chain saw cuts its swath through the scientific enterprise. Should we not be saying: “Wait a minute, have we thought through all the ramifications of this?” Have we thought carefully enough about Jesus words (paraphrasing) “In as you have done it unto one of these brothers and sisters of mine, you have done it unto me, and . . . in as much as you didn’t do it, (or perhaps stood in the way of it being done), you didn’t do it unto me.”
I’ll have more to say about this in the next post.
[1] My favorite book on this topic is Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God, by Dallas Willard, IV Press.
[2] Both quotes are from the NIV version.
[3] N.T. Wright, 2025, Creation, Power, and the Truth: the Gospel in a World of Cultural Confusion, Zondervan, p. 63
[4] Ibid, p. 53
[5] Ibid
[6] Ibid, p. 62
I recognized the Dallas Willard reference :)