"Science and Religion, Chicago Style: Religious Pamphlets by Leading Scientists in the Scopes Era"
Tuesday, March 4, 2008 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
In February 1922, William Jennings Bryan’s popular assault on evolution went upscale, when the New York Times published his essay, “God and Evolution.” This drew almost immediate responses
from biologist Edwin Grant Conklin, paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, and the famous Manhattan pastor Harry Emerson Fosdick. Shortly after this, the essays by Conklin and Fosdick were reprinted
as the inaugural numbers in what would become a series of ten “Popular Religion Leaflets” on “Science and Religion,” published between 1922 and 1931 by the American Institute of Sacred Literature, a
correspondence arm of the University of Chicago Divinity School. Shailer Mathews supervised the series and wrote one of the pamphlets himself; Fosdick later wrote a second. The other six were written
by prominent American scientists: Robert A. Millikan, Arthur Holly Compton, Kirtley Mather, Edwin Frost, Michael Pupin, and Samuel Christian Schmucker. Although the pamphlets were underwritten by
John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and distributed very widely, they are virtually unknown to both historians of science and historians of religion. This paper tells how the pamphlets were found, sketches
their history, and briefly analyzes their highly interesting content.
Edward B. Davis is Professor of the History of Science at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania. Best known for editing (with Michael Hunter) The Works of Robert Boyle (1999-2000), his
research has focused on the interplay of science and Christianity during the scientific revolution. With support from the National Science Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation, he is
currently writing about the religious beliefs of prominent American scientists during the 1920s.
