CREATIVE NONFICTION 27Deb, with a PhD in biochemistry from Ohio
State, worked a while in cancer research, then
went on to direct Penn State’s Genomics Core
Facility for 20 years. She is also a lifelong
Baptist and identifies as evangelical.
“I was brought up in Ohio, with two
hundred years of Baptists behind me,” she
shares in a flat Midwestern accent. “Back in the
’60s and ’70s, being Baptist meant you weren’t
allowed to dance and you weren’t allowed to
have alcohol.”
Deb wears jeans, a striped shirt, a fleece vest
sporting the American Birding Association’s
logo, and the aura of someone who’s done tak-
ing crap from anyone. But then again, listening
to Deb’s life story, it doesn’t sound like she’s
ever had much tolerance for crap-givers.
The simple act of going off to college was,
she explains, “a bit of a rebellion” for a Baptist
girl in central Ohio in the 1970s. The idea of
an advanced degree in biology was even more
unusual, given her strong evangelical roots.
“Frankly, though, once I was I grad school,
I got more grief about my gender than I
did around my religion,” she tells me. “The
chairman of a department I was applying to
told me, ‘I don’t think women should go to
grad school at all. I have daughters and I don’t
think they should do this.’”
But she persisted, as the saying goes. On the
day we talk, Deb has been retired for almost
a year, trading in days spent sequencing the
DNA of coral, ancient bison, and bacteria at
the Penn State genomics lab for wandering
nearby forest land in search of scarlet tanagers
and golden-winged warblers.
Her LinkedIn page lists her “current” job
description as:
- Stay in Bed as long as I want
- Get up and have some coffee
- Get some exercise
- Go Birding, Go Birding, Go Birding
- Try out my “new” used golf clubs, visit
the local bowling alley, etc etc etc
I overcome a momentary surge of jealousy
to ask how she managed to strike a balance at
work between the empirical, evidence-based
nature of science and the Christian acceptance
of revelation and faith.
“I’ve never had a problem with being
a scientist and a believer. I don’t see any
contradiction, though a lot of people do,”
she answers.
Even the concept of “creation,” one of the
stickier issues separating people of faith from
scientific orthodoxy, doesn’t cause Deb any
sleeplessness. “For me, the idea in the Book of
Genesis was that there was a Creator, and that’s
as far as it goes. The Creator did this, the Creator
did that. The details aren’t that important.”
And evolution?
“Microevolution is easy to see. The problem
with macroevolution is that you can’t set up an
experiment to prove it. So, you look at what
evidence is there and you draw your conclusions.”
The conclusion she has drawn is that evolu-
tion makes sense.
“For some people in the church, my views
are wrong. But I believe we are created in
God’s image, with certain characteristics, and
one of those is intelligence. The pseudoscience
and antiscience people are driving me nuts. I
want to tell these people, ‘You’re not using the
intelligence God gave you.’”
I ask her if she was open about her faith
among her coworkers and fellow scientists
over the years, or if she primarily kept it
under wraps.
She closes her eyes a second, as if tallying up,
before answering.
“Well, I did keep it secret, sort of.”
She pauses again.
“I mean, if you call yourself evangelical
you should be witnessing all of the time.” By
witnessing, she means sharing the good news
of the Lord with everyone she meets. “But I
guess my approach was: if people want to talk
with me about it, fine.”
She pauses, considers her answer even further.
“God is going to direct people the way they
need to go. I’ve seen that in my own life ... in
the ways that I’ve been directed.”
One more pause, and a nod.
“So, okay, maybe that’s more supernatural
than a scientist would normally be, but that’s
my spirituality. It’s a leap.”