CREATIVE NONFICTION 73attempt to counter increasing talk of a conflict
between God and Evolution, most evident in Wil-
liam Jennings Bryan’s campaign to pass legislation
against teaching evolution in American schools.
In his contribution to the book, the influential
sociologist Ellsworth Faris described White’s
History as telling the story of an ongoing change
from dependence and submission to conscious
intervention and control. Human nature itself was
being brought within the realm of the sciences of
psychology and sociology, opening up the hope
that it could be controlled. And thus, Faris noted,
“war, poverty, and crime which were formerly
defended, apologized for and even conceived as
a part of the divine plan, appear to our modern
eyes as problems to be solved, as challenges to
the technique of control which scientific men
persistently seek.” Faris did not explicitly attribute
the possibility of progress in the sciences to God,
but another contributor, Eugene Davenport, did,
writing: “Whoever soberly considers what science
has achieved for agriculture in the short space of
half a century, can but render thanks to Almighty
God for His revelation of the laws of nature, and
he will face the future with confidence unlimited
and with gratitude unbounded.”
But it was exactly these kinds of “scientific
consolations” Billy Sunday had railed against ten
years earlier. Sunday found scientists’—and liberal
and modernist Christians’—emphasis on nature’s
laws a poor kind of salvation, which seemed to
sacrifice the truly redemptive power of prayer,
belief in miracles, and the comforting promise of
Heaven. It was useless, he insisted, at the bedside
of a dead child. By marked contrast, liberal and
modernist ministers described the very fate of
Christian faith as at stake if Americans turned to
Sunday’s brand of Christianity—a Christianity
that included, for example, petitionary prayer. In
a 1926 sermon, the Unitarian Reverend Harold
Speight described how often he heard people
complain bitterly of unanswered prayer: “The
desired aid did not arrive, the sickness was not
stayed,—and then faith went, as a candle flickers
and goes out if an outside door is open.” And yet,
Speight urged, it was at that very moment that
science could reestablish and strengthen faith.
If men and women only understood that at the
moment of loss, it was not God who was absent,
but the scientific knowledge required to control
nature—that someone’s ignorance “accounted for
the disaster which prayer had failed to avert”—
then not only could faith remain, but action could
be “diverted as rapidly as possible to the purposes
of science” so that men and women could be of
better aid in the future. Speight believed, in other
words, that God had organized the world in such a
way that skill could be improved, albeit slowly and
laboriously, via science. Indeed, for Speight, doing
science became a better form of prayer, for in
progressively alleviating suffering and pain, human
effort and ingenuity would ultimately vindicate
faith in God’s benevolence, power, and wisdom.
This, for Reverend Speight, was not just “scientific
consolation” but a religious call to trust in natural
law and pursue scientific progress.
John Ray, Erasmus Darwin, Robert Chambers,
Shailer Mathews, Andrew Dickson White ... all,
despite their theological differences, would surely
reply “Amen” in theory. But at the bedside of a
lost child, both believers and nonbelievers must
concede that Speight’s optimistic demand to take
the long-term view is perhaps too weak a comfort
for the human heart. I note above that inspired
by Claire, I began noticing—for the first time—a
meaningful thread in the primary sources I study
with my students. Why do I think this thread
is meaningful and important? Because I believe
that in attending to the moments and experiences
where decisions regarding the relationship between
science and faith are at their most starkly personal
and intimate, we might develop a more empathetic
understanding of both historical and present
stances, whether they agree with our own or
not. For who can judge the response of a mother
or father at the bedside of a dying child—in the
seventeenth century or the twenty-first? That
an individual’s attitude toward science may be
intertwined with answers to why God would
allow such things, or whether God exists at all, is
worth attending to. That attention might produce
a more historically accurate portrait of the factors
involved in controversies over the relationship
between science and religion. And just as
important, it will help ensure that we view stances
through a more compassionate lens, sensitive to
the meaning found (or lost) in moments of both
misery and bliss.