January 2022 Newsletter
In this Clergy Letter Project update you’ll find the following thirteen items:
- A Free Book Offer for Evolution Weekend 2022;
- Astrobiology News for January 2022: Why Doesn’t Our Solar System Have a “Super Earth?”;
- Heroes Amid the Horror;
- An Evangelical Climate Scientist Wonders What Went Wrong;
- Evolution 101, With Reference to Coronavirus;
- Evangelical Objections to Vaccines Not Sound;
- Giants at Rest;
- Pastoral Burnout;
- When Jews Argue in the Supreme Court about Abortion;
- 2022 Goshen Conference on Religion and Science;
- “Controversial Issues” Legislation in New Jersey;
- Taking a More Nuanced Look at the Faith and Science Discourse; and
- The Fall in Evolutionary History.
1. A Free Book Offer for Evolution Weekend 2022
It’s time! Well, if I’m honest, it’s actually well past time! Time to sign up for Evolution Weekend 2022 (11-13 February 2022) if you haven’t yet done so. Please, please do so today (or at least tomorrow!).
Given our Evolution Weekend theme this year (“The Pandemic, Climate Change and Evolution: How Religion and Science, Working Together, Can Advance Our Understanding”), it’s a great opportunity to discuss and demonstrate how religion and science, working together, can help us solve some of our most pressing problems.
As I’ve said so often, you can participate with your congregation, or other group, by doing something large or something small. What’s important is that you help spread the word about the compatibility of religion and science. If you’re not yet listed on our list of participants for 2022, please respond to this note and l’ll get you added.
And in case you need an added incentive, Jacob Thomas, a good friend of The Clergy Letter Project, has donated copies of his book, The Theology Basement, for me to distribute to those of you who think it might help prepare for Evolution Weekend.
Here’s how the book is described:
The new atheists caused quite the furor with books such as Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion. Christians were among those accused of promoting magical thinking and harmful ideology. Fifteen years later this claim still has emotional power. The Theology Basement de-legitimizes this claim by critiquing, at a deeper level, some of the concepts that empower it.
This concise read avoids easy, unhelpful alliances with the main stakeholders in this discussion, instead applying careful, biblical theology to multiverses, evolutionary psychology, and many other topics. Weeks spent in the basement’s tungsten glow led to the formation of one central idea – the existence of the Christian God really is existential for us.
With sections on both evolution and evolutionary psychology, this book might be perfect for you!
If you think you’ll find this book helpful, please let me know and I’ll award a free copy (you pay for postage and handling) to every fourth person requesting a copy until all are claimed.
_____ The book sounds great, please enter my name to receive a free copy and please add my congregation (or other group) to the list of those participating in Evolution Weekend 2022. I agree to pay $4 for postage and handling.
Congregation (or related group):
Location:
Your Name:
_______ I don’t need the book, but I would like to participate in Evolution Weekend 2022. Please add my name to the growing list.
Name:
Congregation or similar group:
Location:
2. Astrobiology News for January 2022: Why Doesn’t Our Solar System Have a “Super Earth?”
In this month’s Astrobiology News Grace Wolf-Chase, Senior Scientist and Senior Education & Communication Specialist at the Planetary Science Institute as well as a Clergy Letter Project consultant, explores new research on the creation of our Solar System.
Over the years, I’ve written a number of Astrobiology News columns that report on the incredible diversity of exoplanets that we’ve discovered during the past few decades. Eight years ago, in January 2014, I wrote a column on hypothesized ‘superhabitable’ worlds,(1) which might belong to a category of exoplanets that are known as ‘super-Earths.’ Super-Earths are worlds that are larger than Earth, but smaller than Neptune.(2) They are between two and ten times the mass of Earth, and they may have diverse compositions, including rock, ice, water, and gas. Roughly 30% of the exoplanets discovered to date have been classified as super-Earths, yet our own Solar System lacks such a world – why? A recent paper that appeared in Nature Astronomy traces the reason for this back to the early architecture of the Solar System, to a time when gas and dust rings surrounded the young Sun, and only the building blocks of what would become the planets existed.(3)
Large flattened structures of gas and dust around young stars are known as protoplanetary disks. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile has produced striking images of rings (and other features) in protoplanetary disks, and provided evidence that planets form within these structures.(4) The authors of the recent paper in Nature Astronomy used a supercomputer to run hundreds of simulations of the early Solar System to explore the connection between rings and features seen today in our Solar System. Rice University astrophysicist André Izidoro and his colleagues attribute the architecture of our Solar System to ‘pressure bumps’ that resulted in the accumulation of dust and the release of large amounts of vaporized gas at three places in the early Solar System.
In the Rice simulations, pressure bumps at the sublimation lines (where solids change directly to vapor) of silicate, water and carbon monoxide produced three distinct rings. At the silicate line, the basic ingredient of sand and glass, silicon dioxide, became vapor. This produced the sun’s nearest ring, where Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars would later form. The middle ring appeared at the ‘snow line,’ where ice sublimates to water vapor, and the farthest ring at the carbon monoxide line.
It turns out timing is very important – in the simulations where the middle pressure bump formed later on, there was enough material in the inner Solar System to form super-Earths. Izidoro and his colleagues have been able to reproduce a number of features of our Solar System that are missing in many previous models, including the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter; the location, stable orbits, and masses of Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars; the dichotomy between the chemical make-up of objects in the inner and outer Solar System; and a Kuiper Belt of small icy and rocky bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune.(5)
Finding evidence of protoplanetary disks around young stars is the goal of the Zooniverse project Disk Detective.(6) Disk Detective uses huge amounts of data from surveys of the entire sky, and relies on volunteers from all walks of life to help identify stars that are likely to be surrounded with dusty disks. Identifying such stellar candidates is the first step in finding good targets for high-resolution observations with instruments like ALMA that can help us learn about the different environments that produce diverse planetary systems. Learning more about the conditions that produce other planetary systems helps us better understand the birth environment of our own.
Until next month,
Grace
Grace Wolf-Chase (gwolfchase@gmail.com)
Senior Scientist & Senior Education & Communication Specialist, Planetary Science Institute (www.psi.edu/about/staffpage/gwchase)
Vice President, Center for Advanced Study in Religion and Science (CASIRAS: www.casiras.org)
1. http://www.theclergyletterproject.org/pdf/abnews12014.pdf
2. https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/what-is-an-exoplanet/planet-types/super-earth/
3. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-021-01557-z
4. https://almascience.eso.org/alma-science/planet-forming-disks
5. https://news.rice.edu/news/2022/earth-isnt-super-because-sun-had-rings-planets
6. https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/ssilverberg/disk-detective
3. Heroes Amid the Horror
I suspect that you’ve read and seen a great deal about the hostage situation at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas this past weekend. In addition to expressing my sympathy for all involved and my delight that all of the hostages managed to get free without physical harm, I thought I would share a bit more about some of those involved.
Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker managed the situation remarkably well and was responsible for ensuring the safety of his congregants and himself. The fact that he had frequent active-shooter training certainly helped but the fact that he felt it necessary to have such training in a relatively small town is truly depressing.
It turns out that Rabbi Cytron-Walker as well as two other rabbis who were involved in the situation, Rabbi Andrew Marc Paley and Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, are all members of The Clergy Letter Project. While all of us would be equally relieved that things turned out as well as they did regardless of this point, the fact that these clergy members are part of our group hits just a bit closer to home.
In case you want to read a bit more about Rabbi Charlie and the well-deserved praise he as been receiving, here are two articles from The Times of Israel (here and here) and one from The Washington Post.
Finally, let paraphrase a sentiment I recently heard in response to what happened in Colleyville: “We won’t defeat antisemitism by promoting Islamophobia.”
4. An Evangelical Climate Scientist Wonders What Went Wrong
The New York Times recently ran a fascinating interview with Dr. Katharine Hayhoe entitled “An Evangelical Climate Scientist Wonders What Went Wrong.” A simple summary of the piece will not do it justice; please read it. You won’t be disappointed.
5. Evolution 101, With Reference to Coronavirus
Dr. Paul Braterman, a member of The Clergy Letter Project’s list of scientific consultants, recently posted an article written by Dr. T. Ryan Gregory, Professor and Chair of the Department of Integrative Biology and the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario at the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. The piece is entitled “Evolution 101, With Reference to Coronavirus” and offers a wonderful summary of many important points. Take a look at this brief essay if you want to gain a fuller evolutionary perspective on what might be happening with the pandemic.
6. Evangelical Objections to Vaccines Not Sound
A recent op-ed essay written by Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson was recently published that might well be worth your time. The essay is entitled “Most Evangelical Objections to Vaccines Have Nothing to Do with Christianity.” His title explains the thrust of his piece well!
Along these same lines you might want to revisit an item I shared in the September newsletter. As I noted then, Archfather papa Rutherford of The Anglican Rite Roman Catholic Church and a member of The Clergy Letter Project released an encyclical dealing with the Covid-19 vaccine. He offers a nuanced view of vaccination making it clear that he is in favor of vaccines while being hesitant about accepting vaccine mandates uncritically.
7. Giants at Rest
December saw the deaths of two individuals, Desmond Tutu and E.O. Wilson, whose work was fully compatible with the goals of The Clergy Letter Project. The incomparable Bill McKibben wrote a brief but moving tribute to both that you’ll want to read. The piece is entitled “Giants at Rest.”
Finally, in case you haven’t seen it recently, I want to share one quote from Archbishop Tutu with you: “God is not a Christian. God accepts as pleasing those who live by the best lights available to them that they can discern. All truth, all sense of beauty, all awareness of goodness has one source, God, who is not confined to one place, time or people.”
8. Pastoral Burnout
The Washington Post recently ran a story entitled “The First Christmas as a Layperson: Burned Out By the Pandemic, Many Clergy Quit in the Past Year.” I fear that this article addresses an issue many of you are facing and I thought you might find the piece helpful.
9. When Jews Argue in the Supreme Court about Abortion
Roger Price, a good friend of The Clergy Letter Project and the author of the book When Judaism Meets Science, recently sent me the following note:
Hi Michael,
I hope this message finds you safe and well.
I just received a copy of the latest wide-ranging Clergy Letter and thought that some in the group might be interested in my recent post concerning Judaism and abortion. Rather than simply rehashing old material, I looked at the amici briefs submitted by over twenty Jewish organizations in the recently argued Mississippi abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Health. Needless to say, there were a variety of viewpoints expressed, some of which were science consistent and others which were not. My post, in significant part, delves into who said what, who omitted what, and how what they said compared to another brief filed by a group of biologists who claimed to be neutral on the merits of the case, but wanted the Court's decision to follow current science. The article "When Jews Argue in the Supreme Court about Abortion" can be found here: https://www.judaismandscience.com/when-jews-argue-in-the-supreme-court-about-abortion/. As members of other faith communities also filed briefs which indicated a lack of uniformity in their cohort, I thought that my article would not only be of interest to more than your Jewish readers and might prompt others to take a look at the briefs their co-religionists filed. Quite an eye-opener.
Happy holidays to you and yours,
Roger
I recommend Roger’s article to you!
10. 2022 Goshen Conference on Religion and Science
You can learn more about the conference and register to participate by going to their website.
11. “Controversial Issues” Legislation in New Jersey
Our good friends at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) have brought potential legislation introduced in New Jersey to our attention. According to the NCSE, the legislation “if enacted, require the state board of education to adopt rules to prevent public school teachers in the state from engaging in what they describe as ‘political, ideological, or religious advocacy in the classroom,’ establishing penalties for violations ‘up to and including termination of employment.’” Evolution and climate change are typically considered to fall within the category described in this legislation. You can read more about the situation here.
While I suspect that this particular piece of legislation will not be enacted it is worth noting that it has been introduced in the “blue state” of New Jersey. Clearly, our work at The Clergy Letter Project is far from over.
12. Taking a More Nuanced Look at the Faith and Science Discourse
Susan Barreto, a good friend of The Clergy Letter Project and editor of Covalence Magazine, entitled her commentary this month “Origin Stories and a Global Pandemic Still Dominate Faith and Science Discourse.” In addition to raising many interesting points, she gives a very nice shout out to The Clergy Letter Project and Evolution Weekend 2022.
13. The Fall in Evolutionary History
The January issue of Covalence Magazine, published by the Lutheran Alliance for Faith, Science and Technology, includes an article entitled “The Fall in Evolutionary History” by Jay Johnson. Johnson argues that “Our current understanding of evolution only deepens the mystery [of original sin]. It’s not hard to understand how an individual could ‘fall’ into sinfulness, but humanity appeared as a population. How could a population all ‘fall’ at the same time?” He offers a “proposed solution to the mystery of a historical ‘fall’ and original sin in an evolutionary context.” There’s much in his piece to mull over!
Concluding Thoughts
This has been a trying month for all of us with the explosion of the Omicron variant, the hostage situation in Texas, storms ravishing the country and the death of too many beloved public figures. I hope you and all those you care about have successfully navigated these hardships, have remained healthy and are able to enjoy a better year ahead.Before I close, I want to share a message delivered by Renee Lafair, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League in Austin: “When antisemitism increases, it’s usually a sign of greater issues of hate and division going on in society.” I very much hope that, together, we might be able to take steps to create a community able and willing to negotiate differences.
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. Spread the word; change the world. Together we are making a difference.
Michael
Michael Zimmerman
Founder and Executive Director
The Clergy Letter Project
www.theclergyletterproject.org
mz@theclergyletterproject.org