Secularity and Science: What Scientists around the World Really Think about Religion
Authors: Ecklund Elaine Howard , Johnson David R. 
Published: November 2022

SECULARITY AND SCIENCE: What Scientists around the World Really Think about Religion by Elaine Howard Ecklund et al. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. 352 pages. Hardcover; $31.95. ISBN: 9780191926755. *I was raised in the 1980s and 1990s under conservative evangelicalism, which means my father's bookshelf was full of creation/evolution texts, and we never missed Ken Ham when he came to town. The conflict narrative between science and religion was in full force then, and it remains with us today (if slightly diminished). Religious conservatives weren't the only ones talking secularization, though. Scholars such as Peter Berger had observed decades earlier that science often acts as a carrier of secularization. Berger lived long enough, however, to see that secularization did not unfold as expected, and he modified his view near the close of the millennium to indicate that secularization is not a uniform process. Rather, we observe "multiple modernities " marked by various trajectories of secularization and religious growth. *Such is the essential backdrop for Secularity and Science: What Scientists around the World Really Think about Religion. Here, Rice University sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund and her team ask a simple and compelling question: If science is linked to secularization--as the story so often goes--what do scientists actually think about religion? The answer comes via survey research on 20,000 physicists and biologists in France, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Taiwan, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as 600 in-depth interviews. The result is an impressive and wide-ranging report not only on the status of religion and science in a global perspective, but also on several theoretical and practical considerations surrounding the secularization debate. As sociologists they take care to address hierarchical and institutional matters (i.e., academic rank, university status and prestige, levels of science infrastructure, etc.), and as scholars of religion they investigate how religious factors vary across national contexts (i.e., definitions of religion and spirituality, religious characteristics of populations, state-church relations, antagonism between scientists and the general public, the place of religion in the scientific workplace, etc.). Each country or region receives a focused chapter, briefly summarized below. *The United States (chap. 3, "The 'Problem' of the Public") is characterized by a soft secularism in which 65% of scientists believe in God. US scientists aren't particularly antagonistic to religion, but significant conflict between scientists and the public exists due to the large, politically active, conservative Christian population. This public issue plays a role in undermining the US scientific enterprise. *In the United Kingdom (chap. 4, "'New Atheists' and 'Dangerous Muslims'"), 57% of scientists believe in God. The UK is characterized by a unique dynamic in which new atheist scientists speak at the popular level while at the same time half of the country's scientists originate outside the UK, often bringing religious values with them. UK biologists expressed concern about a growing Muslim population and implications for some realms of scientific thought (e.g., evolution). *In France (chap. 5, "Assertive Secularism in Science"), 49% of scientists report belief in God. French secularism is based on la√Øcit√© (freedom from religion) and the state actively excludes religion from public life. The result is that dialogue between religion and science is difficult to sustain, with la√Øcit√© disproportionately affecting Muslim women in science. *Eighty percent of scientists in Italy (chap. 6, "A Distinctively Catholic Religion and Science") believe in God. Conflict between science and religion is a non-issue, largely due to the monolithic nature of cultural Catholicism ("Everyone's Catholic. And nobody cares," p. 7). Even non-Catholic scientists, many of whom identify as "spiritual but not religious," tend to see religion and science as separate realms in what could be called "a version of religious modernity." Scientists belonging to certain Catholic networks appear to have better access to jobs, funding, and other opportunities. *In Turkey (chap. 7, "The Politics of Secular Muslims"), 94% of scientists say they believe in God. Turkish scientists broadly believe in God but do not see themselves necessarily as personally religious. They observe little conflict between science and religion when Islam is considered broadly, but express concern about the ascendancy of a political form of Islam which threatens academic freedom. Many Turkish academics are leaving the country, and scientific infrastructure has suffered in recent years. *In India (chap. 8, "Science and Religion as Intimately Intertwined"), 90% of scientists report belief in God, and religious affiliation among scientists is higher than in the general public. India is a growing scientific superpower, and religion is so "in the air" that Indian scientists often make connections between religion and science without even noticing. A number of Indian scientists observe that the "conflict" between religion and science is a Western construction. *In Hong Kong and Taiwan (chap. 9, "A Science-Friendly Christianity and Folk Religion"), 90% (Taiwan) and 74% (Hong Kong) of scientists believe in God or gods. Like India, affiliation among scientists is higher than in the general population. Both of these regions' education systems have been influenced by Christianity, and scientists in Hong Kong speak of meeting faculty and administrators in the sciences at Christian churches. Despite the influence of Christianity, the Western science and religion conflict narrative is not strong. *These summary points hardly do justice to the scope of the authors' project, but they do highlight something that they themselves hold up as a central finding: namely, that conflict between religion and science is an invention of the West. The data indicate that a conflict perspective animates just one-third of scientists in the US, the UK, and France, with the remaining countries evincing much lower numbers. Rather, science and religion are most commonly viewed as different aspects of reality--independent of one another--a view embraced by both nonreligious and religious scientists. Regarding religious scientists, the authors report that from a global perspective there are many more than commonly assumed. Even scientists themselves consistently underestimate the proportion of their colleagues who are religious. *Overall, the book provides tremendous insight, thanks to rich quantitative and qualitative data, into how national and social contexts shape and interact with scientists' views of religion. No other study of this magnitude exists, and that fact alone makes it a¬†remarkable achievement worthy of examination. Its¬†greatest strength lies in the treatment of each country and region, with effective data and storytelling illuminating the relation between science and religion in that location. *The primary weaknesses are the minimal synthesis of cross-national data and the limited discussion of how results fit within the larger secularization debate (which the authors use to frame the book). Secularization themes are treated on a country-by-country basis, but only seven pages of the concluding chapter attempt a synthesis, and the discussion is largely practical. Given the expertise of the authors involved, it feels like a missed opportunity for a more theoretically rich discussion. I would like to have seen, for example, discussion on whether the independence model (as opposed to the conflict model) is itself linked to secularization. The majority of the world's scientists may be at least nominally religious, but without explicit philosophical and theological work to engage science, isn't it probable that the independence model might just as easily contribute to secularization as oppose it? In other words, whose secularity are we talking about? Strong atheists may view independence as accommodating religion; the highly devout may interpret it as another facet of secularity. *That said, the book is an empirical rather than a theoretical work, and an excellent one at that. The data are rich enough for readers well versed in the secularization debate to incorporate them into their own hypotheses. The primary message, supported by a wealth of rigorous data, indicates that global scientists are more religious than we often realize, and that narratives around science and religion in the US are not the only ones requiring our attention. *Reviewed by Blake Victor Kent, Westmont College Department of Sociology, Santa Barbara, CA 93108.