Recent flooding across the Midwest highlights the need to build more resilient communities with new technology, land management policies, climate change science, and more. Yet these changes won’t be implemented without the approval of local community members. An individual’s worldview, including their religious beliefs and cultural background, informs their perceptions of scientists, scientific research, and the role of science and technology in society. Extensive national polling indicates that most Americans self-identify as religious or spiritual and affirm that religion is “somewhat” or “very” important in their lives. This social context should inform scientists and educators seeking to foster inclusive public science engagement, classroom instruction, or interact with diverse communities-including on topics central to ecology such as climate change and conservation, biodiversity, habitats, and ecological economics.
The “Engaging Scientists in the Science and Religion Dialogue” project (2016-2019) supports scientists and others in becoming effective ambassadors for science with diverse (and particularly with religious) publics. The project is a collaboration between the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion (DoSER) program and the AAAS Center for Public Engagement with Science and Technology. It offers evidence-based toolkits, strategies, and examples to guide constructive, dialogue-focused science engagement, particularly on topics that intersect with cultural values and/or religious perspectives. Outputs and activities include online/print resources, professional workshops, symposia and other programming at academic meetings, and university campus events.
Results/Conclusions
DoSER and the Center for Public Engagement staff have produced an array of free online and print resources; organized more than a dozen workshops, symposia, and other contributions to formal programming at scientific society meetings (including AGU, AAPA, AAS, and SfN); and held events on university campuses across the United States. As part of the campus events, the project sponsors awards to recognize science engagement with local faith communities and institutions. In pre- and post- workshop survey responses (n =300, n =217 as of April 2019), workshop attendees report greater comfort in interacting with religious audiences about a variety of science topics, in responding to questions informed by faith beliefs, and interest in doing more science engagement with religious publics. These results were reported irrespective of the scientific field discussed, including topics such as neuroscience, ecology and climate change, human origins and evolution, and astronomy and cosmology. Long-term project impacts are being assessed in follow-up surveys and interviews.