SIUE to Offer Fresh Look at Religion and Science

By Elizabeth Donald, Belleville News-Democrat, Ill.

EDWARDSVILLE — SIUE will not only address controversial topics of religion and science, it will kick off a three-year, $30,000 series of events on the subject.

Every year SIUE’s College of Arts and Sciences holds a Colloquium, a two-day series of seminars centered on a controversial academic topic that affects different disciplines. This year the topic is religion, including controversial topics involving religion and science, religious politics and others.

“At this time in history, there is a lot of emphasis on religion and science,” said Greg Fields, director of religious studies at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. “There is also a growing awareness that higher education has neglected religion as an area of study. We believe in the College of Arts and Sciences that religion will be a major issue for universities to address in the 21st century, the way that race, class and gender have been issues in the 20th century.”

Carl Springer, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said the challenge is how to address the study of religion at a secular university, and this year, they hope the public will participate.

“We honor the separation of church and state, but we also honor freedom of speech and we have students who are religious,” Springer said. “Can we pretend (religion) doesn’t exist? For a long time we did, but it’s time for us to take that seriously.”

This year, the Colloquium also serves as the kickoff for a three-year series of seminars, guest speakers and exhibits relating to “the constructive engagement of religion and science.” The WoRKS series (World Religions, Knowledge and Science) is funded with a $30,000 grant from the Metanexus Institute.

“Our society here at SIUE is one of only 300 societies worldwide,” Fields said.

The WoRKS series will range from public lectures on the origins of the universe to discussions on issues in biomedical ethics.

“We’ll be looking at what the different world religions have to contribute to our understanding of the human person, nature, science and the divine,” Fields said. “We’ll be looking at convergence and divergence of religion and science.”

The WoRKS series will have an event about once a month during the academic year.

The Colloquium will kick off with an art exhibit titled “Divine Design: Sacred Arts of Africa and Asia” at 4 p.m. today in the Religious Center, including Taoist, Hindu and Muslim art and artifacts. Seminars will run all day Thursday and Friday. Guest speaker Stanley Fish of Florida International University will give the keynote speech at 7 p.m. Thursday. It is the only event that requires a ticket, which can be obtained free by calling 650-5049.

The Colloquium concludes with the fourth annual Celebration of World Faiths at 7 p.m. Saturday in the Religious Center, which also will focus on how Christians, Muslims and Hindus have dealt with issues in science.

Contact reporter Elizabeth Donald at edonald@bnd.com or 345-7822, ext. 21.

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