Strengthening the religion of church buildings via science would be the focus of a virtual conferenceJune 5 hosted by Rice College’s Faith and Public Life Program (RPLP).

The occasion, scheduled for 9:30 a.m.-Three p.m. CDT, will cowl a wide range of matters associated to Christianity and science in right this moment’s world, together with easy methods to foster social justice and equality within the scientific workforce, human reproductive genetic applied sciences, the start of life and human origins, and what it means to be human. As well as, convention classes will present sensible data for pastors and lay leaders on bridging divides between scientific and religion communities within the time of COVID-19.

“We’re holding this convention particularly to deliver collectively Christian communities and scientists to make use of analysis to foster collaboration between the 2,” mentioned Elaine Howard Ecklund, director of the RPLP and the Herbert S. Autrey Chair in Social Sciences. “Christian communities are probably the most quite a few type of non secular group within the U.S. and the non secular custom that has typically been positioned in most stress with science. Now – within the time of COVID-19 – getting religion and scientific communities to cooperate and assist each other has by no means been extra vital.”

Audio system and facilitators for the occasion will embody Mark Labberton, president of Fuller Theological Seminary; Praveen Sethupathy, affiliate professor within the division of biomedical sciences at Cornell College; Harvey Clemons, pastor of Nice Hill Baptist Church in Houston; Greg Cootsona, faith scholar at California State College, Chico; Jonathan Hill, sociologist at Calvin College; Rice alumnus Lee Hsia, a pastor of Houston’s First Baptist Church Downtown; Nichole Phillips, faith and sociology scholar at Emory College; and Gus Reyes, director of the Christian Life Fee, Baptist Common Conference of Texas.

The convention, made potential by a Templeton Faith Belief grant, is a part of an ongoing RPLP challenge designed to supply Christian leaders and constituents with empirically primarily based, accessible social scientific proof for easy methods to combine religion and science to reply questions on human objective, that means and supreme actuality. One other core goal of the challenge is to deliver a wide range of new voices to the dialog round religion and science – women and men; black, Latino and Asian Christians; and each pastors and lay folks.