The Faithful Scientist: Experiences of Anti-Religious Bias in Scientific Training.
The tired but persistent cultural narrative of the conflict between science and religion continues to impede fruitful discussions by obscuring the meaningful and important role that religious identity plays in the lives of scientists and researchers. The conflict narrative is particularly problematic as faculty and mentors seek to prepare interested Christian undergraduates to attend graduate school in the sciences and to hopefully become faithful scientists themselves. Engagement with The Faithful Scientist: Experiences of Anti-Religious Bias in Scientific Training will lead readers to consider how to shift the conversation about what is most relevant and pressing in the day-to-day experience of religious graduate students in the sciences. Those engaging with the book will be challenged to consider what ideas and questions will most affect graduate students’ lived experience as they prepare undergraduate students to attend graduate school.
In an approach that is welcoming both to those who appreciate numbers and those who like to engage with narrative, author Christopher Scheitle meticulously collected data and stories about experiences of anti-religious bias in scientific training. The stories and recommendations presented are based on a study of 1,300 graduate students pursuing PhDs in physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, and sociology. Scheitle conducted in-depth interviews with over fifty of these students, with a particular focus on interviewing students who describe themselves as religious. While most previous studies of religion and science have focused on established scientists (most often those who stayed in academia), the focus of this study on scientists in training allows Scheitle to engage with religious scientists amid forming and negotiating their identities and values.
The religious graduate students in this book are not exclusively Christian, although Christianity is strongly represented in the sampled population. Scheitle explores the challenges faced by religious graduate scientists in a predominantly secular academic environment, highlighting the tension between personal faith and professional credibility. The book underscores the need for greater inclusivity and respect for diverse worldviews within the scientific community for the benefit of both the participants and the larger scientific project. While the title could suggest that the book primarily explores conflict, the focus is more often on the role that religion plays directly and indirectly in support of the desired but elusive diverse representation in the sciences. The data and stories collected come together to support an argument that religious diversity should factor into the broader conversation about the value of many kinds of diversity in the sciences.
The arguments in the book unfold across six chapters, starting with the religious lives of science graduate students and their perspective on the relationship between religion and science, and then looking more carefully at how the communities of religion and science can create challenges for engaging with and belonging in scientific training programs. The introduction sets the stage well by starting with the story of Danielle, a religious Black woman in physics who must grapple with the ways that all her identities contribute to her experiences as a physics graduate student. The story frames the questions that open the introduction and will be central to how the author engages with his data, including: “might the tensions experienced by religious scientists be more social and external in nature? How might religious scientists view their life and career differently from non-religious scientists? And what is or should be the role of religion in the larger effort to support diversity in science?” (4) Through this framing Scheitle shows how he plans to explore meaningful and lived engagement between scientific and religious identities. He argues that identity-work connections are particularly relevant in advanced settings like graduate school, where training instills a feeling of membership into a unique group to which the individual now belongs. The real conflicts that might arise for religious students in graduate school therefore are most often conflicts in identity as students are trying to learn how to navigate both the religious and scientific social worlds.
The first part of the book provides an overview of the religious backgrounds and practices of the graduate students that participated in the study. The study finds that 62% of graduate students surveyed are religiously unaffiliated. Religiously unaffiliated people make up 35% of the general population, so science graduate students are almost twice as likely to be religiously unaffiliated than in the general population. Of those who are religious among the survey participants, 25% are Christian, 4% are Jewish, and 9% have other religious identities. Religious students make up a sizeable minority of the population but are still rare enough in science to lead to students feeling isolated or perceived as unusual by others. In the subsequent chapter, Scheitle examines how graduate students understand the relationship between religion and science. Based on the model of religion and science by Ian Barbour, he articulates three ways to think about the relationship between science and religion: (1) in perpetual conflict, (2) independent of each other, or (3) in collaboration with each other.1 Nonreligious students are more likely to embrace the idea that religion and science are in conflict while more religious students tend toward a collaborative view of the nature between religion and science. Scheitle hypothesizes that highly religious students are connected to both science and religion and endorsing collaboration is an expression of an attempt to reconcile those two identities.
Scheitle then shifts his focus to examine how religion affects the everyday lives of graduate students in the sciences, as well as their future goals in science. Many religious graduate students experience hostility toward their religion from their fellow students, faculty, or the science community. The often-invisible nature of religiosity, which leads to an environment of assumed atheism, means that most religious students take for granted they are the only one, which can make it difficult for them to find or connect with other religious students. Religious students who hear negative comments about religion are in a difficult position about how to respond given the small social community of many graduate programs. Approximately 40% of students that identify as very religious indicated that they conceal or camouflage signs of their religious views or identity around people in their graduate program. Concealment often ends up being harmful to their own psychological well-being and sense of connection to others, as well as contributing to unnecessarily awkward interactions, where stigmatized individuals are on edge because they are worried about how they are perceived.
In further chapters, Scheitle discusses the support—or lack thereof—from mentors and colleagues. Interestingly, most students, regardless of religiosity, said that their advisor’s religion was not important to them and that demographic matching was more important in other areas of representation. There was little evidence that students’ religiosity was a point of conflict or strain on students’ relationships with their advisors. Scheitle notes that religious students have the benefit of having cultivated a broader community than just their scientific peers, which made it more likely they would spend time on relationships outside of their program. For many religious students, being a scientist was not their central identity. However, having a more balanced perspective towards one’s identity and work life didn’t mean these students put less effort or time towards their graduate programs or careers. In the conclusion, Scheitle underscores the value of fostering religious diversity within the scientific community. He argues that including diverse religious perspectives can enhance scientific innovation and inclusivity overall and that ignoring or being hostile to the religious diversity of the scientific workforce may harm our ability to achieve diversity among other dimensions. Scheitle returns to the argument he lays out in the introduction: “If diversity in science is beneficial because it brings new ideas and different perspectives to scientific workplaces, education, and outreach, then religious diversity itself would seem to be a natural contributor to that dynamic” (16). Religious students place importance on their family life and goals, often have identities not intertwined with their scientific careers, and see helping people as a key motivator for engaging in science, all of which can benefit a scientific lab and should be considered of value.
In this well-researched and engaging book, Scheitle documents and engages with religious scientists-in-training to better understand their experience as a minority population in science. He argues that the anti-religious bias they encounter is related to social identity rather than conflicts over religious or scientific knowledge. While navigating multiple identities is a reality for all graduate students, the question for religious students is particularly salient because of the strength of the religious identity and because the scientific identity being cultivated in students in graduate school sometimes excludes or competes against religion. Scheitle argues, however, that the data suggests there is space for students to maintain the two identities. A religious identity could be of benefit to work in the sciences, as it affects how they think about where science fits in their lives far more than what they believe about science and how they approach scientific inquiry. Among the book’s major contributions is its ability to highlight the ways in which religious identities intersect with other marginalized identities and how it might be used to enhance representation and diversity in science. Scheitle makes a compelling argument for the importance of religious tolerance in science by discussing the potential religious people have in advancing science in welcoming environments. It is of note that since the book focuses on the experiences of religious graduate students in the narratives shared, it does not provide as much context for the experiences and perceptions of non-religious graduate students and how that might contribute to the social identity and connection between the groups.
The stories of Christians in graduate school, confirmed and affirmed by the data collected for this book, should inform how we think about what it means to prepare students to enter graduate school in the sciences. Scheitle indirectly but importantly offers a challenge to expand our attention with our students beyond what they want to do as a scientist to also encompass questions of identity. How will graduate school form them as individuals? What will it be like to be invited into a new identity as a scientist? How can they navigate the growth of and relationship between their scientific and religious identities? The skills we teach students in scientific courses can lend themselves to challenging students to engage these further conversations as well. Sharing the data and supporting stories from the book as readings in a capstone or other forward-looking science course could offer a valuable opportunity to foster discussions about graduate school through a different lens with students. Exploring the narratives and data in the book could better help undergraduate students understand the breadth and peculiarities of the challenges they are likely to encounter in graduate school. A discussion around the book with undergraduate students could be of particular value if students are given time to reflect on and imagine the potential challenges they may encounter as they are invited into the community of science as newly trained experts and strategies they could employ to help them address these anticipated challenges.
Exploring the social-relational context of science also offers a unique avenue into discussing the strengths that a religious identity can bring to science, a topic that can sometimes get lost amid the still predominant conflict narrative. In Why Science and Faith Need Each Other: Eight Shared Values that Move us Beyond Fear, Elaine Ecklund Howard identifies shared values between faith and science, which include things like curiosity, humility, creativity, and gratitude.2 Scheitle similarly identifies values that are of benefit in the sciences, including the desire to help people as a motivator for engagement in and with the sciences. It is important that students hear that habits and values their religious identity has hopefully fostered can be of benefit in a scientific setting. This early training and reimagination of how a religious identity intersects with their scientific skills could help fight against some of the negative internal narratives Scheitle documents.
While I have particularly focused on the ways this book could be used in conversation with undergraduate science students, it should be of interest for many different readers. The book is well-written and provides sufficient background, making it accessible for those new to the topic. At the same time, it does not avoid going into details of the research and therefore will be useful for other researchers working on similar topics. In particular, the book would especially benefit educators and college administrators as they think about what it means to prepare undergraduate students to be successful in graduate school, especially in the sciences but extending into other areas of graduate training as well. Furthermore, anyone who mentors students in graduate school in the sciences, including pastors, may also find the book useful for understanding the development of a scientific identity and how it intersects with membership in a religious community. The data and narratives create opportunities to deepen and expand the exploration of what it means to grow in a scientific identity and support students pursuing and engaging in that path.
