October 2019 Newsletter
In this Clergy Letter Project update, you’ll find the following eight items:
- Evolution Weekend 2020: We Can Make a Difference;
- Astrobiology News for October 2019: Using Earth’s History to Search for Habitable Planets;
- The Story of an Evolution Weekend Lecture Series;
- Returning to Nature in Zen;
- Evolution Is the Key to Understanding the Mind of God;
- Sinai and Synapses Fellowship;
- A Free Book to Help Prepare for Evolution Weekend 2020; and
- Down the Wormhole: Navigating the Religion and Science Interface.
1. Evolution Weekend 2020: We Can Make a Difference
As I trust you all know, the membership of The Clergy Letter Project voted to adopt “How Science and Religion Can Work Together to Deal with the Problems of the Climate Crisis” as the theme for Evolution Weekend 2020. Participating with your congregation (or other institutional group) in Evolution Weekend 2020 would be a wonderful way to spur action and to demonstrate how religion and science can work together to help solve complex problems.
There are a number of important things to remember about Evolution Weekend. First, you can participate whether or not your event conforms to our selected theme. Indeed, anything you opt to do that advances the nature of the dialogue between religion and science is not only acceptable but welcome. Second, regardless of the focus of your event, you can participate any way you deem appropriate for your congregation. You can deliver a sermon, host a speaker, lead a discussion, put a note in your weekly bulletin, or anything else you think would be of benefit to your congregation. Third, although Evolution Weekend 2020 is scheduled for 14-16 February 2020, if those dates don’t work for you, you can participate any time that does work for you. What’s important is that people continue to hear how religion and science can work together. We’ve already reached over one million individuals directly over the 14 years Evolution Weekend has been celebrated and many, many times that number via news reports. Let’s keep reaching out and continue to educate people.
And, for those of you who opt to focus on our theme for Evolution Weekend 2020, let’s demonstrate how, working together, we can help motivate tens of thousands of people to take actions to ease the climate crisis we are facing.
If you haven’t yet done so, please take this moment to sign up to participate in Evolution Weekend 2020. Over 100 congregations representing six countries have already signed up. Please join them.
_____ Yes, I want to help keep the movement of bringing religion and science together alive. Please sign me up to participate in Evolution Weekend 2020.
Name of Congregation (or other institution):
Location:
Your Name:
2. Astrobiology News for October 2019: Using Earth’s History to Search for Habitable Planets
In this month’s Astrobiology News, Clergy Letter Project consultant and Adler Planetarium astronomer Grace Wolf-Chase discusses how examining the Earth’s past can help our current search for habitable planets.
The NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) is a partnership between NASA and 10 NAI teams located at academic institutions, research laboratories, and NASA Centers. This month, I’d like to tell you a little about the “Alternative Earths” Astrobiology Center at the University of California, Riverside.(1) As with all NAI centers, Alternative Earths comprises a large team of scientists that span diverse disciplines. This team is focused specifically on exploring how the history of life on Earth might inform the search for signs of life on exoplanets.
The Earth has hosted life for most of its 4.5-billion-year history, but the signs of habitability on Earth have changed considerably over the eons. The Alternative Earths team is modeling what Earth’s atmosphere would have looked like in the past by combining data from the geology, chemistry, and biology of Earth’s continents, oceans, and atmospheres during four specific time periods. The guiding theme might be described as “follow the oxygen.”
Alternative Earth 1 focuses on 3.2-2.4 billion years ago, when the earliest forms of life began releasing oxygen into the atmosphere via photosynthesis; Alternative Earth 2, 2.3-2 billion years ago, when oxygen flooded Earth’s atmosphere and oceans; Alternative Earth 3, 1.8-0.8 billion years ago, examines the relationship between oxygen levels and the emergence of complex life.
Finally, Alternative Earth 4 focuses on exploring the period from 0.8-0.5 billion years ago, and the roles of biological innovation and environmental change in reshaping Earth’s ecosystems, atmosphere, and climate during the rise of complex life. The overarching goal is to determine whether the diversification of complex life was a major driver of shifts in oxygen levels and major climate changes.
The team is using their models to create many blueprints for habitability on other worlds by tweaking things like a planet’s rotation period, tilt, distribution of continents, and other parameters that influence biological activity and the connections between oceans, land masses, and atmospheres. They are using these blueprints to produce examples of chemical fingerprints of life (biosignatures) that might be distinguished from the effects of geological, chemical, or other (abiotic) processes on exoplanets. Two promising avenues of exploration are the presence of ozone as a proxy for oxygen, which is more difficult to detect, and how the presence of ozone varies with season.
The scheduled launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in 2021 is powerful motivation for research of this nature, since JWST will use “transit spectroscopy” to search for biosignatures in the atmospheres of “nearby” exoplanets. The Alternative Earths team is laying important groundwork for knowing what to look for and how to interpret what we find!
Until next month,
Grace Wolf-Chase, Ph.D. (gwolfchase@adlerplanetarium.org)
1. https://astrobiology.ucr.edu/
3. The Story of an Evolution Weekend Lecture Series
The Reverend Ed Womack was a very early endorser of The Christian Clergy Letter. Since that time, approximately 13 years ago, I’m proud to say that I’ve come to consider Ed a friend and I was particularly honored when he invited me to speak at the congregation in Arizona where he worships.
As you’ll see in this essay Ed wrote, he took the concept of Evolution Weekend to heart and created an entire annual lecture series! In addition to explaining the origin and evolution of the series, Ed offers 17 pointers to ensure that any such series can be a rousing success. Please take a look at his essay; I’m certain you’ll find it helpful.
_____ Ed has done a great job and has encouraged me to participate in Evolution Weekend 2020. Please add us to the list of participating congregations.
Name of Congregation (or school group):
Location:
Your Name:
4. Returning to Nature in Zen
Taiun Michael J. Elliston, a member of The Clergy Letter Project, serves as Abbot of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center. He writes a regular column and has offered to share it with Clergy Letter Project members. In this, the fourth of his columns I’ve shared, he explores how to productively deal with competing tensions, a core theme of The Clergy Letter Project. He explains that “Zen has a history of emphasizing the natural over the artificial. And there is nothing more natural than Nature. However, Zen has also insisted that the works of man, and indeed the very presence of humankind in Nature is also natural.”
He goes on to explain, “Zen is far from anti-intellectual. It just places the intellect in its proper context of experience and intuition, the empirical method, if you will. Sensory learning, and unlearning, are as important as the world of ideas.”
Take a look at his essay; I suspect you won’t be disappointed.
5. Evolution Is the Key to Understanding the Mind of God
The Rev. Russell G. Ruffino was a very early endorser of The Christian Clergy Letter and he and I have had many e-mail discussions over the years. Recently, in response to my request for suggestions for a theme for Evolution Weekend 2020, Russ wrote that “evolution is the key to understanding the mind of God.” When I wrote back and told him I was impressed by that sentiment and asked if he might be willing to expand on it for the Newsletter, he agreed to pass along the notes he used in a recent sermon in which he made exactly that point.
Take a look at what he wrote and perhaps you’ll want to adapt his thoughts for your own Evolution Weekend event.
By way of a more formal introduction to Russ, let me simply add that the Reverend Russell G. Ruffino is a priest of the U.S. Episcopal Church with a Ph.D. from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He is currently serving Anglican-Episcopal churches in Italy. You can read his thoughts here.
6. Sinai and Synapses Fellowship
Our sister organization, Sinai and Synapses, has just announced that applications are being accepted for their exciting fellowship program. Simply put, “the Sinai and Synapses Fellowship is a select interfaith group of clergy, scientists and writers who are committed to elevating the discourse surrounding religion and science.” The program brings fellowships and nationally renowned speakers together three times a year for two years for discussions and advice on the creation of content to be shared with the general public.
You can read more about the program and access the fellowship application by clicking here. Previous fellows have included members of The Clergy Letter Project.
7. A Free Book to Help Prepare for Evolution Weekend 2020
Sensei Anthony Stultz, a member of The Clergy Letter Project and the author of The Buddhist Clergy Letter, has authored a book that is scheduled to be released at the end of this month. I’m pleased to say that he and his publisher have generously donated copies to The Clergy Letter Project to help members prepare for Evolution Weekend 2020. The book is entitled The Three Principles of Oneness: How Embodying the Cosmic Perspective Can Liberate Your Life and Tony describes his efforts as follows:
At no other time in history has the world experienced the current crisis where "why things matter" (spirituality) has been separated from "how things work" (science). As opposed to our pre-scientific ancestors, we now have the opportunity to know, for the first time, how the universe actually works. This being in opposition to how we may have previously presumed.
Solutions offered around this problem have ranged from the denial of scientific knowledge, to pushing religious institutions to the margins of social dialogue and more respectfully, to separate silos of isolated inquiry. This is, as Carl Sagan once said,
“... a critical moment in the history of the world.”
This great divorce may possibly be the reason that we have seemingly become less resilient and more nihilistic, with a corresponding increase in anxiety, depression and self-destructiveness.
It is my intention that the pastoral offering of my new book, The Three Principles of Oneness: How Embodying the Cosmic Perspective Can Liberate Your Life, may become a popular parlance for better communication between science and spirituality, help heal the divide and foster the creation of stronger offspring where science is able to walk and religion able to see.
If you think that this book will help you prepare for Evolution Weekend 2020, please let me know and I’ll enter you into the drawing to receive a free copy of the book.
_____ Please enter me in the drawing to win a free copy of The Three Principles of Oneness. If selected, I agree to pay $5 for postage and handling.
______ I plan to participate in Evolution Weekend 2020. Please add me to the growing list of participants.
Name of Congregation (or other group):
Location:
Your Name:
If you’re not selected to receive a free copy of the book, you can pre-order a copy here.
8. Down the Wormhole: Navigating the Religion and Science Interface
I’m delighted to bring to your attention a new podcast created by Dr. Ian Binns, a member of The Clergy Letter Project’s list of scientific consultants, and four of his colleagues. The podcast, entitled Down the Wormhole, was designed to explore the interface between religion and science. Ian and his colleagues describe their efforts as follows:
When you hear the phrase, “religion and science,” do you think of polar opposites, warfare, and sworn enemies? Most people do, but it doesn’t have to be that way. We see people finding ways to navigate their scientific and religious commitments every day!
This leaves us with a question: How do we hold both in tension without compromising on either?
Our hosts will try to answer that question as we explore the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. This relationship is sometimes generative and sometimes destructive, but it always requires a closer look to understand the committed people on either side of the aisle, and often in-between.
Interestingly, Ian and his colleagues first met when they were all Sinai and Synapses fellows in the program outlined in item 6 above. If this doesn’t give you incentive to apply to join the next cohort of fellows (and to participate in Evolution Weekend 2020), I don’t know what will!
Concluding Thoughts
Last month’s newsletter appeared just days after the Global Climate Strike, an amazing event in which upwards of four million individuals on every continent came together to demand that political and corporate leaders, as well as average citizens, take action to reverse anthropogenic climate change. That event inspired by Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg and brought to life by the actions of students should provide not only optimism on the climate front but it should remind us what individuals can do when they come together to form a movement.
Now, one month later, scientists have taken similarly strong action. As you can see in this article that was recently published by Reuters, scientists have called for action to convince politicians to act. As one organizer stated, “The urgency of the crisis is now so great that many scientists feel, as humans, that we now have a moral duty to take radical action.”
With The Clergy Letter Project’s membership having voted to adopt “How Science and Religion Can Work Together to Deal with the Problems of the Climate Crisis” as our theme for Evolution Weekend 2020, we are joining an impressive collection of activists working to make a better world. I hope you agree and that, in addition to doing what you can to reduce your carbon footprint and to encourage your elected officials to take concrete steps, you sign up to participate in Evolution Weekend 2020. Let our collective voice be heard. Together we can demonstrate that religion and science can productively join forces in the important work of saving our planet.
Finally, as always, I want to thank you for your continued support and as I do every month, I urge you to take one simple action. Please share this month’s Newsletter with a colleague or two (or post a link via any social media platform you use) and ask them to add their voices to those promoting a deep and meaningful understanding between religion and science. They can add their signatures to one of our Clergy Letters simply by dropping me a note at mz@theclergyletterproject.org. Together we are making a difference.
Michael
Michael Zimmerman
Founder and Executive Director
The Clergy Letter Project
www.theclergyletterproject.org
mz@theclergyletterproject.org