Anglo-American Science and Liberal Religion, 1840-1940

This paper examines the historical relationship between theodicy and science, with particular attention to Unitarianism in the United States. It focuses on how scientists and theologians appealed to a particular version of theodicy (natural law theodicy, an explanation of evil that appeals to the goodness of natural law, despite accidental suffering that might result from, say, two laws coming into conflict) both to defend science against its critics and to reconcile belief in natural law with their religious faith. The paper argues that the role of diverging theodicies is worth considering as one of many important sources of divergence and conflict between various versions of Christianity and the relationship between science and religion in the twentieth century.

The key to understanding the response of liberal intellectuals to the constraints that faced them in the post-Origin of Species era lies in an examination of the world of Victorian periodicals.  Macmillan’s Magazine was one of several new monthlies that, beginning in the 1860s, altered the dynamics of the public space for debating the issue of the relationship between science and religion.  These journals were founded just as the evolution issue sparked discussions about this relationship.  In effect, journals like Macmillan’s Magazine sought to expand the bounds of permissibility through the creation of a new format that encouraged the toleration of unorthodox views.  They provided an outlet for Darwinians who sought to establish themselves as respectable, cultural authorities while challenging the conventions of polite debate.  The period after the publication of Darwin’s Origin was also characterized by the founding of new popular science journals.  This paper mainly asks, how did popular science journals treat the topic of the relationship between science and religion from the 1860s to the early 1880s in light of the creation of new spaces for debate in the general periodical press?  An analysis of eight of the new popular science journals founded in this period reveals the adoption of four different strategies for maintaining open debate on controversial scientific theories.  In each case, these periodicals rejected or avoided the idea that science and religion were in conflict.

In the United States during the early twentieth century, liberal Protestant scientists and theologians were heavily influenced by Andrew Dickson White’s conflict thesis.  Owing to White’s famous two-volume book, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896), they did not believe that traditional Christian theology had ever had a productive conversation with science, and they agreed with White that the route to progress involved leaving orthodox beliefs behind.  This paper briefly reviews White’s version of the history of Christianity and science and shows how White shaped the attitudes and ideas of several major Protestant scientists and theologians prior to World War Two, most of whom were also leading public intellectuals: Edwin Grant Conklin, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Shailer Mathews, Samuel Christian Schmucker, and Gerald Birney Smith.