“Generous and Gentle Conversations” ft. Pepperdine University’s Jay Brewster I Saturdays at Seven – Season Two, Episode Eleven

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In the eleventh episode of the second season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Jay Brewster, Professor of Biology and Provost at Pepperdine University. Brewster begins by discussing the role undergraduate research can play in the lives of students and why its benefits merit it being classified as a high impact pedagogical practice. Brester then offers an overview of the lessons he learned from leading Pepperdine’s Summer Undergraduate Research and Biology (SURB) program as well as lessons he and his colleagues learned from leading comparable efforts with high-risk students (i.e., in terms of persistence to graduation such as first-generation college students) during their first semester in college. Ream asks Brewster about his own formation as a scientist, his abiding interest in cellular health, and the transition he made from conducting research full-time to integrating research into his approach to teaching. They discuss the article Brewster contributed to the fall 2024 theme issue of Christian Scholar’s Review, what Brewster learned from the role nature played in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s exercise of the academic vocation, and the challenges facilitated by Emerson’s emerging transcendentalism. Ream and Brewster close their conversation by talking about the roles Christian called to science can play in easing tensions that may surface between the Church and the university.

Todd Ream: Welcome to Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. My name is Todd Ream. I have the privilege of serving as the publisher for Christian Scholar’s Review and as the host for Saturdays at Seven. I also have the privilege of serving on the faculty and the administration at Indiana Wesleyan University.

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Our guest is Jay Brewster, Professor of Biology and Provost at Pepperdine University. Thank you for joining us.

Jay Brewster: Thanks for having me, Todd. It’s good to see you.

Todd Ream: Data confirms widespread perceptions that undergraduate research is amongst the highest impact educational practices a student can experience. That high impact not only includes an opportunity to obtain and refine skills, but also engage in vocational discernment. 

As someone who served as a mentor to over 100 undergraduate students and still directs Pepperdine’s National Science Foundation funded undergraduate research program in biology, what do you think contributes to such high levels of educational impact for students?

Jay Brewster: Oh, great question, and happy to talk about that. But I just want to start out by thanking you, Todd, for having me and your partnership as we’ve worked on some things with Christian Scholar’s Review. I am so glad to be here today. 

Undergraduate research is, is one of several high impact practices, which is a bit of a catchphrase in higher education, really looking at practices that are effortful and intense that really benefit students in ways that are unique and so the common characteristics of high impact practices would be that effortful nature of the work. So it really is something that’s tangible. It’s different than the classroom. It’s not passive learning. It really is active 

It’s partnered with the ability of the student to contribute in a meaningful way to the greater good. Be it scholarship within a discipline, be it performing arts. You can kind of fill out the list. It’s really being in the trenches, in the discipline, doing the work of the discipline.

The other characteristic that’s common, another characteristic that’s common is community, that students coming into that high impact practice are part of a community that both is attentive to them, that they speak into, and that they contribute to. So a respected community, scholarly community, typically, and a community with which they spend significant time. So it’s time, energy, commitment, family in some ways. 

And the populations that benefit from that are at-risk students, right. So it’s students that really are on the margins where they’re vulnerable in different ways. They’re insecure, they’re unsure that they belong. They’re not sure they can survive in a particular discipline or an area. And often they come from support structures that put them at risk, right. An insecurity almost. So higher education professionals that study this say the benefit to a high impact practice early in collegiate life is retention in the major, retention in college, success at college, et cetera.

I’ve babbled a lot to lead to, in science, research is the piece that is, I would say, the key high impact practice. And I do work with students as teaching assistants and in other ways, but research I would say is the heart and soul of what I’d love to do. You can imagine the precious space of a laboratory, so every faculty member has an office. They have a classroom. 

But for a scientist, the laboratory is that inner sanctum where you go into the lab and you do hard things and you chase questions that you’re interested in and that really is kind of the heart of what draws most scientists into science is the curiosity about how things work, about the world in which they live. 

But it’s a place where things have to be done correctly. A laboratory space has to be managed appropriately. You don’t just bring classes in there and let them run around with your expensive toys, but there are a team of students that join that community. And when they’re in there, you often have a senior student and a junior student and maybe a first-year student, hopefully a first-year student, and they work together and you have I would say a healthy environment for impactful experience for the student.

You asked about SURB and our summer undergraduate research and biology program at Pepperdine has been going on for many, many years. Going back to a great colleague of mine, Steve Davis, who just retired recently, a botanist and a plant physiologist, just a legend in the space of working with students at research. And that program at Pepperdine has been going on for over 35 years now. 

And it’s a summer program where we bring Pepperdine students into the lab and students from outside Pepperdine into the lab. And we work full-time all summer together. It’s very hard, long days, students capturing data into the night in my group cause we’re always doing time courses. And we build into that program, social events, outreach for students from Los Angeles. We build in conversations about ethics, ethical ways to behave in science. We do things together that are fun. We go on a retreat. 

But at the end of the summer students talk about their results. And that’s really the pressure through the summer is, am I gonna be empty handed at the end of the summer? Am I going to have a great data set? And the answer is it’s always somewhere in between, where it’s not quite what you hoped and it’s something more than an empty hand. 

And the students would find at the end of the summer, the celebration is really about the effort that we’ve all shared, the intentionality, the questions that were asked, and we recognize some students have lots to talk about data wise, some have less, but all of that is still wonderful and accepted and encouraged.

And that program, SURB has been federally funded for years at Pepperdine, has been, I think we have almost 400 alumni of that program now. We usually bring in about 10 students per summer, maybe 12 or 13, some summers. And it’s changed lives. Those students are spread out in the sciences all around the country, really around the world. And it’s a really critical example, I think, of high impact practices. So I’ve loved that my entire career. I can give you other examples relative to that. 

It does consume your summers, you give deeply in that program, but for the right faculty, it’s one of those vocational spaces. It’s like, this is why I wanted to be a college professor, was to be in the trenches with young people doing hard things together. And I’ve always found it to be really satisfying to watch students get up and talk about what they’ve done as young scientists.

Todd Ream: Undergraduate research as an educational practice is most common in the natural sciences and, you know, now more so in the social sciences. In what ways as the Provost now at Pepperdine, do you believe that lessons that have been learned, perhaps, you know, points of excellence as an educational practice that have been learned through the natural sciences and the social sciences can be applied in the humanities and the arts?

Jay Brewster: Yeah, I do think there’s opportunity there. And I referenced arts and performances, right? So, music I think of plays on campus where they’re integrating young people into those, I would say, very active areas of product. So it’s really the scholarship of the discipline that those students are a part of.

I would say it is, one example I’ll bring up is a program that we started, also National Science Foundation-funded, called Students as Scholars, where we would work with first semester, this is crazy, it was a crazy idea from the beginning, but we would do research with first-year students in first-year seminars.

So these are, every student at Pepperdine comes in, every student at Seaver College, our undergraduate school, when they arrive, they’re right out of high school, we really want to work with them in a way where they’re transitioning well into college, they’re finding a home, and again, we’re thinking about high impact practices in that space. So we don’t want them to be sitting in large classes, being neglected, being homesick, thinking about getting in a car and heading back home. We want them to be drawn into community, drawn into the life of a faculty member et cetera.

So working again with Steve Davis, we developed this first semester program that, and I’m going to answer your question, I’m getting there, but it’s a research-based first-year seminar talking about faith, talking about science, talking about life in college, there’s always a curriculum built in, but we would do research with those students. I would break, you typically have 16, maybe 20 students in a group, you break them in a class, break them into small groups, and they would do research. 

And that program translates across disciplines. It’s very effortful. I think you have to be all in to build something like this. But the data that came out of that program with regard to retention in STEM was really amazing. The first trial of that was STEM-focused and we cut attrition from the major, attrition from STEM from scientific disciplines by half, in that program. It’s really shocking, shocking data.

And so moving forward with that, I’ve talked to others about it. How do you build this out into something bigger than a small program, a pilot program? And it is hard. There are obstacles: faculty bandwidth, cost just the investment of tenure track faculty in across all of that first cohort of students. But the bottom line is I do think it translates across disciplines, and I do think there’s something there that universities need to pay attention to, which is really investing in that first semester and, and trying to welcome students in.

I would say in the past, this will sound judgmental, but in the sciences, you can often throw the first-year students into large classes and see if they survive, right? It’s really a sink or swim model. Let’s just see if they can make it through. There’ll be a purge of students who just aren’t ready for science and off we go. And I would say this program really, we want those decisions to be made for, those attrition-based decisions, to be made for all the right reasons. Attraction to another discipline, not fear of their discipline or a conviction that they can’t perform in that discipline. 

So I really was blown away by the power of that experience to really settle students into life at Pepperdine, and as they walk across the stage four years later. You know, I’ve had those cohorts that I knew as first-semester students, you can really trace their engagement and their success at Pepperdine. And when you talk to them about it, they’re like the barriers between me and Pepperdine, and the Pepperdine community fell really quickly for me, and I had a cohort of friends. I had access to faculty. I felt at home. And so I really celebrate that program as a model, and I think there are probably versions of that model that other schools could adapt, but I do want to note that as something that translates.

Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you very much, sounds like a wonderful effort. 

I’m going to transition to asking you a couple details about your own calling as a scientist and as an educator. You earned an undergraduate degree in science education from Lubbock Christian and then earned a doctoral degree in biochemistry from Rice. The research you pursue indicates a particular fascination with cellular health. What experiences, if any, fostered that fascination and what individuals may have contributed to it?

Jay Brewster: Yeah, I mean, that’s a big question. I would say for me, even as a child, I was that kid on the block with the telescope in the backyard in the middle of the summertime. I had the chemistry set, I had a snake cage, and I was curious about the world, right? I was kind of the weird kid that had just a couple extra things under the Christmas tree that were unusual. 

I would say I had that strongly through elementary school and junior high. I lost it a bit in high school. I’m not quite sure what happened there where I was taking science classes, but I was focused on other things, but I got to college and you can begin to take, you think about it, you take chemistry, you take your math, you take your biology, etc. 

And I still love the sciences, but I got in, at the collegiate level to biochemistry, where you start to assemble the pieces, right? And that’s what I would say really drew me in to cell health, was in biochemistry, we began to talk about not just chemical structures, but how those structures inform metabolic pathways and energetics in metabolic pathways and structures within biomolecules.

And you start to put the pieces together and you see this amazing machine that works in real time in three dimensions, divides, talks to other cells, and there’s a beauty there. There’s a majesty there. I understood it I would say for the first time so the mystery was a little less fuzzy to me on how a living cell was alive. And, and there’s layers and layers and layers and layers of complexity below the simple, simple things that we talk about, but I was drawn in. 

And so in graduate school, I went from Lubbock Christian, a wonderful liberal arts, Christian university in Lubbock, Texas to Rice, really STEM focused. I was a graduate student, a PhD student there, just a different environment, but wonderful people as well. 

And we asked really simple questions that you would think, wow, has anyone asked this question before? We asked a question, how can a cell tell when water is escaping from within the cell? How does the cell sense when it’s being dehydrated? Seems like a really simple, trivial, almost trivial question. 

But our question was, the word sense is a big one cause we’re trying to, how does it sense that at the molecular level? And is it an important characteristic of a cell? It truly is. Water is a really big deal to a cell and cells have to maintain levels of water. We didn’t figure out how it detects. That was our goal. We figured out how they signal that change internally. So molecular, it’s kind of like wiring within a cell, a signal transduction pathway. 

So without putting too fine a point on it, it’s a fundamental mechanism of maintaining cell survival and cell health. And we learned a little bit about how cells talk and communicate. That was all done, believe it or not, in baker’s yeast, right? The same yeast that you make bread with. People would say, who cares about yeast, right? Why in the world would we want to study baker’s yeast, saccharomyces? And the answer is the signaling that the baker’s yeast display is there is a parallel of that pathway in human cells.

So pretty quickly after we published our first paper on a couple of genes that encode proteins that carry signals. This is in 1993, so this is a few years ago. A lab at Harvard reached out to us and said, we think we’re working on the human homologue of that gene/protein. And we want to partner in some ways. We want to see if the cells that you’ve created, which have mutations in those pathways, if the human gene can substitute for the yeast gene and vice versa, ultimately. 

And I thought that’ll never work. I think it’s a kind of an interesting idea. It’ll never work, but they took the human gene and put it into our yeast cells so it produces the human version of that protein. And it actually rescued the defect when we took our gene away. So it’s kind of like deleting a piece from one cell and replacing it with another, but we were replacing with a human gene and it worked. 

And that to me was one of those moments where I’m like, wow, this is a fundamental discovery about how oh, you know, I remember one day walking with my wife in the park in Rice, just by our apartment, north of Rice’s campus. All the trees are around, the squirrels are running around, and it’s one of those moments where I thought, I think every cell around me in every tree, every blade of grass, the bacteria in the soil, they have this signaling pathway where it’s sensing and responding to water loss. 

And that indeed has been the case. So to pull back the curtains and figure that out as part of your graduate work, such a privilege and such an exciting, you know, it’s a huge partnership, lots of people working on it, but, but you get to be a part of that. And so for me, cell health radiates out from that first experience. 

We study now toxins that affect cell signaling, toxins that cause cells to kill themselves. It’s a process called apoptosis, and these are just fundamental cellular questions of survival. Everybody wants to extrapolate it up to larger systems, but those are hard steps, and typically those are done at bigger, I would say R1, medically-oriented universities with, with the big budgets and the big labs.

Todd Ream: Prior to your appointment to the faculty at Pepperdine in 1997, you served as a research fellow and research associate with the McLaughlin Research Institute for the Biomedical Sciences in Great Falls, Montana. Prior to your appointment as provost, though, you also served as Pepperdine’s Dean of Natural Sciences. Would you talk with us about the discernment process that led you from research fellow to faculty member to dean and now to provost?

Jay Brewster: Yeah, I think for most faculty you don’t anticipate being the dean someday or being the provost someday. And I think presidents will all have really interesting stories about what led them to those roles. 

I joined Pepperdine because I loved the life that I experienced at Christian universities as an undergraduate. The community that I sensed, not sensed, that I experienced the friends that I made there, the faculty that I worked closely with, and the shared commitment to really having a faith-informed engagement of academic topics, right? A faith informed engagement of academic topics. That was rewarding to me.

And I missed it. I would say when I was in my postdoctoral days at McLaughlin, I love that. It was pure research all day, every day. It was just really, you punch a clock and you go and you’re well-funded and it’s really exciting and I enjoyed every minute of it, but there was a part of me that said, do you miss the life of the young scholar coming into your experience, because I worked with undergraduates even at Rice as research assistants. 

So as I began to think about what comes next after a postdoctoral fellowship, on the list was, believe it or not, Christian higher education. And that’s juxtaposed with, let’s go into the pharmaceutical industry, let’s go into the Research One world, and really go all in into almost industrial research, big research.

And that’s how you get famous, right? Those are the, those are the opportunities that you juggle and a position at Pepperdine became available and I was really excited about, I didn’t really want to move to California, frankly, I was living in Montana living the life, fly fishing and hiking and camping and just, it’s cold as well, but I don’t want to oversell it, but I loved my life there.

But I came down and interviewed in Malibu and walked the labs, met the faculty and they said, you know, we’re, and it was in the middle of the summer when the SURB program was going on. I thought, wow, this is kind of, this is what I dreamed of, I would say a vocational application of my heart into my profession.

And so I said yes. And we moved our family, my wife and I had a long walk talking this over. I think we want to move Montana to California. Let’s grab the cat, put our young child in the car seat and let’s drive to California. And we did, and we’ve been here for nearly 30 years. 

But my role as a faculty member, I loved it. I’ve been here a long time. I’ve taught a lot of classes, worked with lots and lots of students, but I was, you get these little opportunities to step a little bit out of I would say a well trodden path in your life, where you’re like, I’m good at this. I enjoy it. I love my job. 

And then there’s the knock on the door or the tap on the shoulder, where it’s like, we need something more of you or something different from you. Would you consider being the divisional dean of the sciences? And would you consider working with the provost on a project? And so I would say I prayed a lot about those things cause I worried about messing up a good thing or diluting my time. But I did try out those opportunities to administrate and sit, I would say, in, in positions of administrative leadership and enjoyed it. 

So really the thing that you have to embrace when you move into administrative leadership is you’re now helping others to move forward in ways that you benefited in the past. So people were good to me. Now I can help others succeed, young faculty come in, support them and guide them. And I would say build out an infrastructure that’s going to serve our students well. So I enjoyed that work as divisional dean. 

When the provost role came open, I really that’s a big job. We have six schools at Pepperdine, 10,000 students. I thought a little bit about it, but it didn’t initially apply. And it’s another one of those where I had a few colleagues tapping me on the shoulder and eventually I said, if you’re going to apply, you should really apply and really put your best foot forward. So I did apply and went through the process. 

But I’ve been provost now for three years, working with the president, working with all the deans of our schools, and it’s another landscape of just really good people, working really hard to build a university that benefits our students, that benefits the world that we engage with. So that encourages me. Though, I still do have a research lab that I sneak off and do some experiments now and again.

Todd Ream: In an undisclosed corner of campus.

Jay Brewster: Right, that’s right.

Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you very much.

Jay Brewster: Students are not impressed that I’m provost, so it’s very humbling when you get back with your research students. They’re like, where have you been? But anyway, it’s great to work with them, and I, I always appreciate their patience with me as my time is so subdivided these days.

Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. 

As a Christian university that’s rooted in its relationship historically with the Churches of Christ or Restoration Movement, how would you describe the relationship that faith and science share at Pepperdine? You echoed that a few minutes ago, but I wanted to ask you if you’d more explicitly talk about that.

Jay Brewster: Yeah, I mean the rub that is often brought up is can a Christian university fully embrace scientific discovery? Is it a healthy place for scientific discovery? And are there limits on things that we can talk about in the sciences? And there’s some history there. There’s creation/evolution debates, origin of life, age of the universe, age of the earth. Those are big, big, big questions. 

And  I do find at Pepperdine, those are all on the table, welcomed conversations. We do not have to agree on all of the details, but we talk about those things. The one thing that I’ve always been impressed by is we’ll have students that arrive with a range of opinions, right. So we’ll have students that are very concerned about science, and have been warned. 

You know, I’ve sat in the pew at churches. My son, he’s working on a PhD in engineering, but there was one sermon in particular where the minister kind of took a shot at college professors and science professors in particular, and he gave me the big elbow, it’s like, he’s talking about you. 

I get where the heart is there, the concern, that the scientists are going to tell you that that you should jettison any view of authorship of this universe, any view of the need for a better understanding of God’s hand in the world in which we live or the pursuit of that, that the college professors will steal your faith away, right, by talking a little bit too much about evolutionary biology, et cetera. 

I feel like at Pepperdine, we have, we treat those students with diverse views, with an open heart, we treat them with grace, we recognize that there are diverse viewpoints in the room. And I would say our faculty in biology have been really good at not in any way I would say, not speaking clearly on where their viewpoints are but partnered with a deep, deep, deep grace and attention to the students who come with a disagreement and recognizing that we’re, we might not ever agree on this issue. We think differently and you are just as important to me as the student who agrees with me. I honor you. I honor that viewpoint. 

So I do think the faith versus science concern at least at Pepperdine, we have our moments, but I’d say we’re fairly healthy in that space. We’re always going to have some, some moments, but I celebrate that we address that, I would say, comfortably. That hasn’t always been the case in my experience at Christian universities, and I do understand the rub there, and I do think scientists have a responsibility to speak clearly about the limits of our understanding of the world in which we live. And I think Christians have a responsibility to be attentive to what I would say is the truth that we’ve learned from the natural world. 

To partner, I would say, a belief in God with what I would say is a broken or problematic view of, of real strong scientific data, I think it burdens the Gospel message in ways that are problematic. And my, my one example in that would be a friend of mine that’s a physicist, PhD, Ivy League PhD. He became a Christian in his adult life, and we worshiped together for a while in Houston. And I had moved on, and I was in my postdoc, but he called me one day and said, at Church they want me to introduce and advocate for someone who believes the Earth is 6,000 years old. And they want my status as a physicist, a PhD physicist, to be kind of helped to kind of get him to the podium and welcome him. And they want me to advocate for him. 

And I’m like, he said, this rubs against my understanding and my academic training and my convictions related to the age of the earth itself. And his question of course was, so if I’m a Christian in this fellowship, and again, he was a fairly recent Christian, does it mean I have to take in this, this, and this, and this with the baggage that comes with it? And I said, absolutely not. And I said, you really need to be honest with people and just say, I’m not comfortable being the one to make the introduction. I want to, I would say, I think you should be there and hear the conversation that happens. You could probably be a helpful voice within that. But I said, the Gospel message is not tied to that particularity. 

And, and so this is a long answer to, and it’s a big question that you ask, but I do think communities of faith, I think churches, I think Christian universities need to be very attentive to our young people who are moving into, into their adult life and learning a lot about the world that’s around them. I just think we need to be careful about not burdening the Gospel message with something that, you know, is going to demand a choice on, on discovered truth. And so, I know that’s a, that’s a topic you’ve heard many, many times before, but I do think it’s an important one for our young people.

Todd Ream: Thank you. Appreciate that. I want to turn now to your article in the Fall 2024 issue of Christian Scholar’s Review, entitled “Christian Higher Education: Partnering Laboratory and Chapel.” Would you please share how you came to frame your article?

Jay Brewster: Yeah, you know, it’s been exciting to be a part of this project. It’s created a dialogue for a while now. We’ve been talking about this project for a while as a team. And I certainly am thrilled to root that in Emerson’s the American scholar conversation where, where Emerson, you know, 200 years ago was nudging us, was nudging American universities, which were in their infancy, to step into independence. 

And I would say some language there resonates in the area of nature. And I know Emerson’s nature is much bigger than just the study of frogs. It’s a transcendentalist approach to nature. But I see in his language, an encouragement in higher education to, to recognize the unity of life. It’s not just classification of life. There’s unity as a cell biologist. When I talk about a cell, I see the unity of life. I referenced that a little bit, and so it resonates with me. 

But I approached this article really looking at some historical moments in science. And I think in particular of the golden age of microbiology, where there is a bit of a mystical understanding of disease where it’s like, well, people get sick because the humors of the body are out of balance or there’s something in the air that causes someone to become ill.

The golden age of microbiology was an age where scientists really began looking at these microbes that they had just discovered in the 1800s that sometimes they’re growing in the wrong places and inappropriate environments. And we think they might be actually causing illness, so you could think of anthrax as an example or tuberculosis or a number of other diseases. And that began to guide the scientific community to really produce empirical approaches to studying the causation of disease. And it really, I think it mobilized the community to say, wow, the scientists are really helpful in medicine, because now we have a better understanding of transmissible disease. So bacteria, eventually virology. 

So I talk a little bit about that change over time, that scientists were benefiting society through discovery, benefiting medicine, which is a very tangible benefit of science to society, and what kind of became apparent is some universities then wanted to push off I would say the I would say the religious foundations of higher education that had been present up to that point. I think of Johns Hopkins in particular is really founded as a research university. And some vocabulary related to that from T. H. Huxley and others that really said we’re throwing off those limitations of religious affiliation, and we’re becoming a research university.

So I explore that topic, which is certainly a big one, and my argument in that article would be that that education, higher education, and the partnership with theological, philosophical religious considerations is a fundamental connection that I do think is important. It’s important in areas of ethics. You think about a couple of stories where, I, I would say scientists are really good at asking the question, how do we get there, right? How do we accomplish something? Should we do a particular experiment or is it ethical to do a particular manipulation? 

And there are these really tough examples of science kind of pushing so aggressively into discovery that there’s like an abandonment of the dignity of a human being. At the end of the day on this article, I arrived at, I think a fundamental argument that is valuable for scientists to train and I would say partner that piece of aggressive discovery with a recognition that there is, there are these profound questions, bigger questions that are okay for scientists to talk about, that are fair game.

And I do think we could return to a little bit more, a little bit better partnership between the scientific community and I would say the religious community. That’s a troubled relationship. And I would say there’s, there’s been an intentional kind of purge. It’s not often that a national conference that you’ll find, I would say religion or theological considerations addressed in any intentional way. But I think there are some efforts in that space. 

I credit BioLogos as one group that is working really hard to carry science into churches, so they bring top scholars, theological considerations, and connect that to communities of faith. So I think there are really positive examples that can be identified in that space. But I’ve had fun with the article. I’ve learned a lot. We’ll see if the reader that reads it can capture what I’m trying to communicate there.

Todd Ream: You mentioned working on this project with three other provosts across the country and Samford’s Mike Hardin, Wheaton’s Karen An-hwei Lee and Calvin’s Noah Toly. In what ways did they contribute to your understanding, as you’ve elaborated in your article? 

Jay Brewster: We’ve had meetings. They’re scholars across diverse disciplines. They’re leaders at universities. Each of our universities are a bit different, and I think we’ve had really healthy— so as a scientist, I’m not a liberal arts person. I’m not a comfortable liberal arts person. So a conversation about Emerson was a very new conversation to me that was really helpful. 

And to sit with people who are familiar with his contributions, and even the American scholar lecture that he gave was really powerful to me. I think it opened my eyes to fundamental changes in American higher education that have become very successful, right? We moved from being a bit behind to being renowned around the world, right? Those conversations were, I would say for me, allowed me to integrate sciences into that conversation. But at the same time, I did a lot of listening, trying to absorb ultimately a poet, right? Or an English professor speaking into what I would say are really critical questions within higher education.

Todd Ream: When you think about the academic vocation then and the formation of the next generation of scientists at Pepperdine and across Christian higher education, what are your hopes?

Jay Brewster: Yeah, I’ll focus on science maybe, but I think you could extrapolate this out to Christian scholars in general. I think Christian scholars need to be scholars, number one. I think we really need to make sure that we support, we facilitate, we guide as universities, we are in the conversation across scholarly disciplines. We’re not a side story. We’re not a separate group. We’re engaged. We’re in there. 

And I could tell you stories about being in a national conference and coming across to colleague, and we talk about lots of things always, but inevitably, there’ll be a cup of coffee or someone’s like, hey, can I talk to you for a second? And the question will be how do you integrate faith into the life of a biochemistry professor at a school like Pepperdine? Or a genetics professor at a school like Pepperdine? 

And sometimes it’s coming from someone that kind of surprises me. And it’s not a what’s the scandal? I have a personal faith, but it’s a scandal for me to talk about it at my state university or whatever university that they’re at. But they’re just curious about how we manage it. I think they’re trying to unravel whether I’m teaching something that they might view as problematic or whether we really are just having the big conversation that they’re very comfortable with. 

And that’s where I go, I’m like, we talk about everything. We read the books, we talk about them. And it’s not a scandal for that to pop up in the middle of a biochemistry class for a student to ask a question. So I would say that Christian scholars, science or otherwise, need to be scholars and universities need to support full engagement with the scholarly community.

I would say that, you know, within the context of that scholarship and integration of what echoes out for the Christian scholar is the context of that within an understanding of a created universe, a God that surrounds us, a conviction that there’s a God that surrounds us. So the theological conversations are important and comfortable and should not be discouraged, even in a discipline like science.

I also think that the Christian scholar is an ambassador for their discipline. So you’re a unique form of a scholar. And some people would say, I think we had talked a moment ago about Francis Collins offline when Francis Collins became Director of the NIH, there were scientists that said he’s intellectually broken because he has a faith. And therefore, he’s an invalid selection for the Director of the National Institutes of Health. 

That tells you that there’s a bias there that exists in the scientific community. And I do think scholars that are people of faith, need to be ambassadors for communities of faith in those spaces. So that is, there’s a little bit less of a problematic conversation to introduce the topic. 

And I would say the last thing is the faith on the faith and science topic. I would say the Christian scholar, the Christian scientific scholar, has a responsibility in that faith and science. I would say it, there’s a partnership that just needs to be facilitated. I think faith and science speak to each other well, and I do think the Christian scholar topic, to help us in that arena so that it’s less about the battle between faith and science and more about the partnership.

And so I feel like all of those pieces are important for us to facilitate in academic centers. And I do think that ultimately will echo out into a healthier experience for our young people as they move into training and in different disciplines.

Todd Ream: You talked about the occasionally strained relationship between the Church and the sciences. And so if we look at that ambassadorship that you’re encouraging scientists to have, in what ways could they be ambassadors not only to the scientific community, but perhaps also to the Church?

Jay Brewster: Yeah, that’s a hard one. I do think that at times you’re treated with a bit of skepticism when you speak up. I mean, two weeks ago I was in a Bible class where someone talked about interpretation of Genesis and how scientists have clouded that and, and interpreted it in problematic ways. And a statement was made, you know, if you can’t read the first two chapters of Genesis, then you’re broken as a believer. You know, it really was an accusation against anybody that would adhere to, I would say, a more a broader conversation about origin, stories of origins. 

And you know, my wife asked me about it, she’s like, you know, how do you react to that? And I’m like, I’m used to it. I’m not really traumatized by it, but I don’t know that in the middle of that particular Bible class, it was the time to have the creation-evolution debate. 

I do think people that are in communities of faith that I would say are in a place of scholarship need to find opportunities to speak into those issues in ways that aren’t divisive and problematic, but really relational to say, “No, I think a little differently about that. And I think there are really good voices in that space where there’s beauty in the natural world that I think enhances our ability to understand God, that guides us to God, and here’s how I approach that topic.” 

Rather than it’s, you know, you got to hit the red button or the blue button to agree on a particular position. It can’t be that trivial a conversation. And often it is, it’s kind of you got to pick one or the other.

Todd Ream: Thank you. 

As we close our conversation today then I want to ask in what areas, if any, of scientific education and research do you believe the greatest possible opportunities exist for the Church and the university to be of mutual service to one another? Where do those possibilities exist, perhaps topics, areas of exploration, issues that need to be addressed, and that the partnership between science and religion could be particularly helpful?

Jay Brewster: And I’ve alluded to this a couple of times, but I do think that we are in an age— so I’m from the Churches of Christ fellowship, and I think this is a common data point that a lot of churches are experiencing decline in attendance, right? This is across the board in different ways. We worry about that. Who are the people that we’re losing with regard to affiliation of individuals with churches? And part of that’s COVID, of course. 

But the conversation often focuses on young adults and that transition into adulthood from teen years, right? That next step. And I do think a healthier conversation about those things that challenge belief and really addressing them head on. So it is disruptive to have a crazy scientist talking in Bible class, but I do think I can be helpful to talk to young people in a way that’s generous in a way that’s not dogmatic to say, I do think that an understanding of the world in which we live can guide you to faith and strengthen your faith. 

And in fact, there are great stories of people who, the more they studied the world around us, the more they were convinced that there was an intelligent hand in putting that together. So it becomes an apologetics discussion. It’s very dangerous when you get into, I would say the, I can prove God with X, Y, or Z. It is a bit tricky, that, that’s a tricky conversation. I give you data point A, and that proves that there’s a God. 

But for a teenager that is in a high school that is very secular and the believer is ridiculed and mocked, and we haven’t equipped them to even have that conversation where it’s like, well, I deny everything that happened in science class, and I’m just going to sit in the corner, and eventually they’ll react against that. I would say it’s a problematic position that we put a young person in, they’re going to grow up, they’re going to arrive at the adult years, and they’re going to view, to choose Church is to choose a rejection of what I see as clear scientific evidence or discovered truth.

And so my answer to your question is I do think in churches, scientists can be more active. I think we could produce better literature related to this. I think BioLogos is a really nice example of they really began with homeschooling, right? They wanted to produce a curriculum that would help people in homeschooling environments to address science in a healthier way. And so I do think that the times in which we live require some important attention by our Christian scholars in spaces of belief, apologetics, and we, we just need to, in a generous and I would say a gentle way, engage those conversations.

Todd Ream: Thank you. Generous and gentle conversations. Yeah. But nonetheless conversations that do occur and need to occur for the faith, the fabric of faith for the next generation. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. 

Our guest has been Jay Brewster, Professor of Biology and Provost at Pepperdine University. Thank you for taking the time to share your insights and wisdom with us.

Jay Brewster: Thanks for having me.

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Todd Ream: Thank you for joining us for Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. We invite you to join us again next week for Saturdays at Seven.