News and Views

By Rev. E. Maynard Moore, PhD
President, WesleyNexus

Several days ago, many people around the world were treated to a shower of “shooting stars,” an event that scientists identify at the Perseid meteor shower. In fact, 2018 was an excellent year for observation, because the new moon of August arrived in Saturday the 11th this year, perfectly timed to bring dark, moonless nights at the shower peak period. The earth passed through the shower’s richest display about 9 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday, August 12.

The Perseids no longer hold the title of the "most prolific" of the annual meteor displays; the December Geminids now produce meteors in greater numbers. But the Perseids are still the most popular because they appear during balmy summer nights as opposed to the wintry Geminids. Of course, the Perseids are not stars dropping from their fixed positions in the sky. Rather, they are tiny flecks of material that were shed by Comet Swift-Tuttle each time it swept past the sun. Comet Swift-Tuttle was discovered during the summer of 1862 by Lewis Swift, an amateur astronomer based in New York, and Horace Tuttle, a professional astronomer at the Harvard College Observatory. The comet has an orbital period of roughly 130 years and was last sighted in December 1992. Its next expected return is slated for August 2126.

The comet has likely circled the sun many hundreds of times and has left a "river of rubble" in its wake. Because the respective orbits of Earth and Comet Swift-Tuttle nearly coincide in the middle of August, Earth ends up sweeping through this rubble river. As we plow through the debris field, these tiny pieces of comet dust ram through the upper atmosphere at 37 miles per second. Friction with the atmosphere raises these particles to white heat and produces an incandescent trail of ionized gas, which leads to the "shooting star" effect.

This is one of the wonders of the natural world, and the science of astronomy has provided us with a thorough and accurate description of this phenomenon. That is an excellent example of what science does. But we were wondering – what did the ancients conclude about this phenomenon when they observed these flecks of light streaming through the sky. Of course, “shooting stars” was one such conclusion, but others would have attributed this phenomenon to divine activity, perhaps some conflict or battle among the gods? Who could blame them?

This common sense interpretation of heavenly activity would reflect widespread credence, because in the ancient world, everyone knew that the heavens were the abode of the gods. Those of us on earth lived in a three-tiered universe – the heavens above, the earth in the middle and then the waters below the earth, the realm of the dead and demons. And, most importantly, their cosmology provided the framework for their theology. You can see this is the Genesis story and in the stories told by other cultures across the ancient world. The principle is the same everywhere: cosmology shapes theology.

Which raises a question for us. Given our knowledge of the expanding universe that is 13.7 billion years old, and our place somewhere in the mid-range of the “milky way” galaxy – itself one of millions or billions of galaxies, made up of billions of stars – what does this mean for our theology? Surely it makes no sense to speak of a “god up there” who “looks down on us” and occasionally lifts a finger on our behalf. So why do we persist, in our bible stories to children and in our sermons, in speaking this way? The answer is that we may be too lazy to think about alternatives.  We at WesleyNexus believe it is time that we wake up to the challenge before us. Our young people have left the myths of the past behind, and reject the language on the ancients. But they have no way, no resources, with which they might fashion a coherent theology for the present and future.

Into the void steps the new myth makers, the screen-writers who give us Star Wars and Star Trek and Guardians of the Galaxy – all fighting the battles of the Wild West. All of us – not just our young people – are caught up in these images and epics, and we can even find traces of timeless truths, and religious values, and heroic qualities that deserve attention and respect. We can even find important “teaching moments” in the epic when Anakin Skywalker sacrifices his life for his son, Luke. We can easily connect the wisdom of the Jedi sages to the wisdom of the Hebrew prophets, and find Christian themes in the relationships in the rebel alliance.

But none of this builds a theology for the post-modern age in which we live. The Force is not the God of the Bible, but we have no clue as to how we might make the God of the Bible relevant for our age. 

Of course, there are some among us who are working on that project. One such is theologian Dr. Ted Peters, who co-edits with Robert John Russell the journal Theology and Science at the Francisco J. Ayala Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. Dr. Peters is a long-time friend of WesleyNexus, and recently sent us a galley of his newest book, ASTROTHEOLOGY: Science and Theology Meet Extraterrestrial Life (Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers, Eugene, Oregon, ISBN: 978-1-5326-0639-7 paperback). Actually, Dr. Peters, while being the lead author, serves as editor of this volume, that includes chapters by more than a dozen scientists and theologians. It is a massive publication – more than 450 pages – but one can predict that if and when NASA and other space probes do turn up evidence of life elsewhere in the solar system, when the debate manifests itself in the public arena as to the “meaning of it all,” this may well serve as the definitive treatment of the subject. Each chapter – all 24 of them – provides extensive documentation of sources that have framed the discussion up to this point in our history. All of the “big questions” concerning the search for life in the universe are addressed here. Most importantly, Dr. Peters provides the framework for the entire discussion in the initial two chapters.  He introduces the field of astrotheology; he identifies four basic sources for a theology of nature; he identifies the four immediate tasks of the astrotheologian; and he outlines squarely the opportunities and difficulties posed by the creative mutual interaction between science and theology. Although the treatment is exhaustive, the authors find that no coherent international policy has emerged for planetary exploration or extraterrestrial life. Dr. Peters concludes: “Unfortunately, in our judgment, this SETI version of evolution is over embellished with optimism and disguised ideology. In fact, the concept of evolution through which SETI scientists view their subject matter looks like a secularized myth of gnostic redemption. The task of the astrotheologian is to point this out and to argue for a cleaner science, a science that recognizes the limits imposed by confirmable empirical knowledge.”

There is another prominent theologian who helps us navigate our way through the newly emerging cosmology: Dr. John Haught, emeritus professor of theology at Georgetown University, whose newest book The New Cosmic Story: Inside Our Awakening Universe (Yale, 2017, ISBN: 9780300-217032), offers a coherent framework within which we are called to theologize for our time. In this book, Haught provides an antidote to the pessimism that prevails in some circles concerning the human future, and lays out a positive trajectory that refreshes our theological conversation. As physicist Kathleen Duffy says, Haught “transforms the universe of Big History into an evolving cosmos with heart and mind.”

What Dr. Haught is doing in this book, what is a task for all of us who provide a contemporary framework for Christian theology, is outlining a pathway for us to tell a new cosmic story – just as did the Hebrew writers who gave us Genesis to understand a three tiered universe. Since that story no longer fits with our knowledge of an expanding universe, we must think anew. Helping us to do that, Haught makes two main (basic) assertions that undergird everything that follows in the book: (1) The universe, from the inception of the big bang, includes subjectivity, and (2) The universe only can be understood as process, which continues even now.  This means that there is an “insidedness” – an interiority – to reality, and secondly, that “the cosmos is in fact a story in emerging interiority.” Science passes over this, but Haught insists that the universe is an unfolding story, a drama, “namely, the emergence of an interior world consisting of sentience, intelligence, moral aspiration, and religious passion.” Haught will go on to show that all of the great religions (those emerging from the axial age), recognize this aspect of reality. He refers to Hinduism (Brahman, the Upanishads), as an example and in each subsequent chapter he identifies twelve common aspects of these great religions to make his claim. As he demonstrates, this notion is basic to our self-understanding as Christians.

Haught sees this understanding in terms of our aspirations. He says, “Viewed cosmically, religion is a new chapter in an impressive adventure of awakening…. The feeling of “being lost in the cosmos” that often accompanies religious subjectivity is not a signal that the cosmos is alien to us. Instead, our religious uneasiness is an indication that the whole cosmos is still estranged from its final destiny. From anticipation's dramatic cosmic perspective, religion, in spite of its seeming world-weariness, brings to conscious expression the incompleteness not just of our personal lives but also of an entire universe…. Instead of looking at religion psychologically, sociologically, or biologically, we are now poised to look at it cosmically and in accordance with the anticipatory vision…. The arrival of religion is the most dramatic episode of transformation ever to have taken place in cosmic history…. In modern times, before Darwin and Einstein altered our whole sense of nature, the cosmos more often than not seemed basically mindless and lifeless…. But such an idea, as we have seen, is self-contradictory. Its exponents fail to see how thoroughly their physicalist reading of nature sabotages trust in their own minds. Anticipation on the other hand sees the cosmos as a drama of the awakening to rightness, and religion is the most alert stage in that awakening.”

Dr. Haught is a long-time member of the WesleyNexus Advisory Board, and will be visiting the greater Washington area in September. He will be keynoting the fall meeting of faculty for the member institutions of the Washington Theological Consortium, being hosted this year by Wesley Theological Seminary. In conjunction with WesleyNexus, the Potomac United Methodist Church (9908 South Glen Road – at the corner of Democracy and Falls Road -- Potomac, MD) will be hosting Dr. Haught in a public forum on September 22, beginning at 9:30 a.m. and dismissing at noon. This will be a compelling illustrated presentation of these ideas that are so important for contemporary Christians. There will be an opportunity for questions, answers and dialogue, coordinated by Dr. Laura Easto Blauvelt, so all are welcome.

Americans have now been introduced to our ten new astronauts who will, each in turn, travel up to the international space station, from which we will undoubtedly receive annual Christmas messages and enjoy cosmic new year celebrations. But that doesn’t satisfy our human yearning for meaning. Our task to theologize in the 21^st century is a huge one, but it is not formidable. Dr. Haught’s challenging insights draw us forward on a the great adventure of participating in the awakening universe, a bold and compelling vision of hope on the basis of which we might rekindle the fires of our faith.