Seeking Science-Friendly Christianity: An Exploration of Scripture, Experience, Reason, and Tradition

This book brings together lessons from three journeys. The first journey began with my acceptance of Jesus at a young age, together with my growing recognition of the differences between the scriptural record and scientific understanding. It continued with a young man's adventure, a retreat into nature, and an encounter with war. War and life's darker side convinced me that even as nature brings awe and opens us to religious experience, we need morality.

The second journey began as I inquired into the ministry. When the church transferred the guide they had assigned to me, Bob Wessman became my mentor. Bob was an ordained pastor with a doctorate in theology. For twenty years, we read and discussed theology, including the Catholic ideas that I had discovered while teaching with the Dominican Sisters. Bob is in hospice care as I write this, and my library is full of the books that he gifted to me. Thank you, Bob.

I now had many ideas from my first two journeys, but they floated about in my head without an organizing form. The challenge was to find a form that would allow the ideas to come together and speak in harmony. Differences between Scripture and science had troubled me since my youth, and I could not ignore science. It was simply too good at finding truth to ignore. So science would have to help me. Science cannot touch all that religion touches, but science and technology can be in correspondence with theology. Researching and writing this book could explore that relationship. The result was to have remained personal, but then I thought that a reader might find an idea or two useful. A person who is literate in science might see why trusting Jesus is both good and reasonable. This book is the story of the third journey, an odyssey through science and Christian theology.