The papers in this session examine some of the attitudes and beliefs that various religious liberals held in conversation with science in England and America, from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. The first paper demonstrates that American Unitarians used “natural law theodicy,” an explanation of suffering and evil rooted in natural laws, both to defend science against its critics and to reconcile belief in natural law with their religious faith. The second paper shows how Macmillan’s Magazine and several other Victorian periodicals provided an outlet for Darwinians who sought to establish themselves as respectable, cultural authorities. Although they challenged the conventions of polite debate about science and religion, they also rejected or avoided the idea that science and religion were in conflict. The final paper argues that an uncritical acceptance of Andrew Dickson White’s conflict thesis led some leading American Protestant scientists and theologians to abandon traditional Christian theology and to embrace theological “modernism.”
