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Elaine Howard Ecklund | |
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![]() Ecklund in 2019 | |
Born | 16 February 1973 United States |
Alma mater | Rice University, postdoctoral Cornell University, BS, MA, PhD [1] |
Known for | Social Sciences and Religion [1] |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Science and religion Gender Immigration Race Culture |
Institutions | Rice University, 2008-present [1] University at Buffalo, SUNY, 2006-2008 |
Elaine Howard Ecklund (born 16 February 1973) is a published author and professor of sociology at Rice University. [1] She is also the director of the Boniuk Institute for Religious Tolerance at Rice, a Rice Scholar at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, and the president of the Religious Research Association. [2] Her research focuses on institutional change in the areas of religion, immigration, science, medicine, and gender.
In 2006, Ecklund published Korean American Evangelicals: New Models for Civic Life, an examination of the civic narratives, practices, and identities of second-generation Korean American evangelicals. [3] The book looks at how Korean Americans use religion to negotiate civic responsibility and create racial and ethnic identity. The work compares the views and activities of second-generation Korean Americans in two different congregational settings: one ethnically Korean and the other multi-ethnic. The book was reviewed in several academic journals. [4]
Ecklund's research project, Religion among Scientists in an International Context (RASIC) surveyed 9,422 scientists from France, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Taiwan, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and included qualitative interviews with 609 of these scientists. In 2016 Ecklund, along with co-authors, published "Religion among Scientists in International Context: A New Study of Scientists in Eight Regions" in the journal Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World.
In 2010, Ecklund published Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think, a survey of approximately 1,700 scientists with 275 interviews. In Science vs. Religion, Ecklund writes, “Much of what we believe about the faith lives of elite scientists is wrong. The 'insurmountable hostility' between science and religion is a caricature - a thought-cliché, perhaps useful as a satire on groupthink, but hardly representative of reality." [5]
Ecklund found that at least 50% of scientists surveyed considered themselves to have religious traditions. Some of Ecklund's other findings about scientists' self-reported spiritual and religious belief include the following:
Ecklund theorizes that scientists who believe in God may live "closeted lives" to avoid discrimination. Others are what she calls "spiritual entrepreneurs,” seeking creative ways to work with the tensions between science and faith outside the constraints of traditional religion. Ecklund reveals how scientists—believers and skeptics alike—struggle to engage the religious students in their classrooms. She argues that many are searching for "boundary pioneers" to cross the picket lines separating science and religion and overcome the "conflict thesis.” [ citation needed ]
Ecklund has published over 100 articles in peer-reviewed social scientific, medical, and other journals. [6] In 2018, she delivered the Gifford Lectures on Science and Religion in Global Public Life at the University of Edinburgh. [7]
Jason Rosenhouse, an associate professor of mathematics at James Madison University, has been critical of some of Ecklund's summaries and conclusions. He contests her claim that "as we journey from the personal to the public religious lives of scientists, we will meet the nearly 50 percent of elite scientists who are religious in a traditional sense" (page 6, Ecklund, 2010). Rosenhouse argues that "religious in a traditional sense" is never clearly defined. He suggests that she may be referring to her finding that 47% of scientists affiliate themselves with some religion but says that calling them "religious in a traditional sense" is therefore misleading because only 27% of scientists have any belief in a God, even though many more than that associate with religious cultures. [8]
Ecklund founded and served as the director of the Religion and Public Life Program (RPLP) at Rice University from 2010 to 2022. [9] The RPLP was launched in 2010 as part of the Social Sciences Research Institute at Rice University. [10]
Creationism is the religious belief that nature, and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans, originated with supernatural acts of divine creation. In its broadest sense, creationism includes a continuum of religious views, which vary in their acceptance or rejection of scientific explanations such as evolution that describe the origin and development of natural phenomena.
Sociology of religion is the study of the beliefs, practices and organizational forms of religion using the tools and methods of the discipline of sociology. This objective investigation may include the use both of quantitative methods and of qualitative approaches.
The relationship between religion and science involves discussions that interconnect the study of the natural world, history, philosophy, and theology. Even though the ancient and medieval worlds did not have conceptions resembling the modern understandings of "science" or of "religion", certain elements of modern ideas on the subject recur throughout history. The pair-structured phrases "religion and science" and "science and religion" first emerged in the literature during the 19th century. This coincided with the refining of "science" and of "religion" as distinct concepts in the preceding few centuries—partly due to professionalization of the sciences, the Protestant Reformation, colonization, and globalization. Since then the relationship between science and religion has been characterized in terms of "conflict", "harmony", "complexity", and "mutual independence", among others.
Christian fundamentalism, also known as fundamental Christianity or fundamentalist Christianity, is a religious movement emphasizing biblical literalism. In its modern form, it began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries among British and American Protestants as a reaction to theological liberalism and cultural modernism. Fundamentalists argued that 19th-century modernist theologians had misunderstood or rejected certain doctrines, especially biblical inerrancy, which they considered the fundamentals of the Christian faith.
Irreligion is the neglect or active rejection of religion and, depending on the definition, a simple absence of religion.
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The Oxford English Dictionary defines religiosity as: "Religiousness; religious feeling or belief. [...] Affected or excessive religiousness". Different scholars have seen this concept as broadly about religious orientations and degrees of involvement or commitment. Religiosity is measured at the levels of individuals or groups and there is a lack of agreement on what criteria would constitute religiosity among scholars. Sociologists of religion have observed that an individual's experience, beliefs, sense of belonging, and behavior often are not congruent with their actual religious behavior, since there is much diversity in how one can be religious or not. Multiple problems exist in measuring religiosity. For instance, measures of variables such as church attendance produce different results when different methods are used - such as traditional surveys vs time-use surveys.
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Criticism of religion involves criticism of the validity, concept, or ideas of religion.
Criticism of atheism is criticism of the concepts, validity, or impact of atheism, including associated political and social implications. Criticisms include positions based on the history of science, philosophical and logical criticisms, findings in both the natural and social sciences, theistic apologetic arguments, arguments pertaining to ethics and morality, the effects of atheism on the individual, or the assumptions that underpin atheism.
The conflict thesis is a historiographical approach in the history of science that originated in the 19th century with John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White. It maintains that there is an intrinsic intellectual conflict between religion and science, and that it inevitably leads to hostility. The consensus among historians of science is that the thesis has long been discredited, which explains the rejection of the thesis by contemporary scholars. Into the 21st century, historians of science widely accept a complexity thesis.
Christian Stephen Smith is an American sociologist, currently the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame. Smith's research focuses primarily on religion in modernity, adolescents and emerging adults, sociological theory, philosophy of science, the science of generosity, American evangelicalism, and culture. Smith is well known for his contributions to the sociology of religion, particularly his research into adolescent spirituality, as well as for his contributions to sociological theory and his advocacy of critical realism.
Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival was the first gathering of The Science Network's annual Beyond Belief symposia, held from November 5–7, 2006, at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California.
Cognitive science of religion is the study of religious thought, theory, and behavior from the perspective of the cognitive and evolutionary sciences. Scholars in this field seek to explain how human minds acquire, generate, and transmit religious thoughts, practices, and schemas by means of ordinary cognitive capacities.
In the United States, between 6% and 15% of citizens demonstrated nonreligious attitudes and naturalistic worldviews, namely atheists or agnostics. The number of self-identified atheists and agnostics was around 4% each, while many persons formally affiliated with a religion are likewise non-believing.
In the United States, evangelicalism is a movement among Protestant Christians who believe in the necessity of being born again, emphasize the importance of evangelism, and affirm traditional Protestant teachings on the authority as well as the historicity of the Bible. Comprising nearly a quarter of the U.S. population, evangelicals are a diverse group drawn from a variety of denominational backgrounds, including Baptist, Mennonite, Methodist, Pentecostal, Plymouth Brethren, Quaker, Reformed and nondenominational churches.
James Davison Hunter is an American sociologist and originator of the term "Culture Wars" in his 1991 book Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. Hunter is the LaBrosse-Levinson Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture, and Social Theory at the University of Virginia and the founder and executive director of the university's Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. He is also a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum.
Wesley J. Wildman is a contemporary Australian-American philosopher, theologian, and ethicist. Currently, he is a full professor at the Boston University School of Theology, founding member of the faculty of Computing and Data Sciences, and convener of the Religion and Science doctoral program in Boston University's Graduate School. He is executive director of The Center for Mind and Culture, founding co-director of the Institute for the Biocultural Study of Religion, and founding co-editor of the journal Religion, Brain & Behavior. Wildman's academic work has focused on interpreting religion and building theories of religious beliefs, behaviours, and experiences that acknowledge value in longstanding traditions while attempting to remain intellectually viable in light of the biological, cognitive, evolutionary, physical, and social sciences. He is an important figure in the religion and science field, along with scholars such as Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy, and John Polkinghorne.
The relationship between the level of religiosity and the level of education has been studied since the second half of the 20th century.