Inside the Gate
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Understanding the Universe Schiffman Lecture reconciles religious and scientific worldviews BY DAVID MORRISON
PHOTO BY HOLLY GREENUP ’13
that don’t have to go off and reject what is one of the cornerstones of the biological sciences.” During his lecture, Brown urged a view of the universe that takes into account both science and religion. He cautioned against people taking the scripture too factually and argued that its greater value comes from the ways in which it helps humans understand existence. He also advocated for scrutinizing overly scientific views of the world as one would philosophical, ethical or religious ones.
The opening slide of Dr. Larry G. Brown’s Althea W. and John A. Schiffman Lecture in Religious Studies was a pretty clear giveaway that Brown is not afraid of thinking outside the box. It depicted Jesus riding a dinosaur. “Science, you’re a gift to religion,” Brown says. “And religion, you are a gift to science.” Brown, an ordained minister, professional storyteller and retired professor of Human Geography who still teaches at the University of Missouri Extension’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, spoke on the intersection between faith and science in a talk titled “Religion and Evolution” in front of a packed house at the Brouder Science Center’s Bixby Lecture Hall on Oct. 13, 2016. The
in-person attendance for the 16th edition of the Schiffman Lecture in Religious Studies numbered almost 170 people between Bixby and an overflow crowd in Brown Hall. Dr. Anthony Alioto, Columbia College professor of History and the endowed Schiffman Chair in Ethics, Religious Studies and Philosophy, brought Brown to campus as a counterbalance to last year’s presenter, University of Missouri professor of Health Psychology Dr. Brick Johnstone, who approached religion through its neurological underpinnings. “What if we had a minister to talk about how religion, especially Christianity, can deal with evolution?” Alioto says. “There are people I know, and he’s one of them,
“There is a place for progressive Christian values,” Brown says. “One can be a Christian and have intellectual curiosity.” That line of thinking, Brown says, is a direct descendent of the founders of Columbia (then called Christian) College, who were followers of Alexander Campbell and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Campbell preached critical thinking and the empirical method, and that science and religion are complementary disciplines. “We all need to know the big picture, and maybe we can call that knowing God,” Brown says. “We need to be people of integrity, and maybe we could call that spirituality. And we all need to do whatever we do honoring diversity, and maybe we could call that the practice of faith.”