Mission || Background || Advisory Committee || Partners || Acknowledgements
Local Societies Initiatives

Background and purpose
Innovations in the sciences (e.g., genetic engineering) are occurring at record pace and hold the potential to alter many aspects of the human condition: birth, life, illness, disability, death; and our ideas about family, religion, society, and humanity’s relationship with nature. We believe that Virginia Commonwealth University has an obligation to lead the rest of the community in exploration of the ethical and social meanings of scientific innovations and to consider carefully the questions raised by Religious communities regarding their practical implications.

The need for a public forum
We firmly believe that the critical science-religion questions are not just raised by religions in response to the innovations of science. Rather, we believe that both sciences and religions raise questions about the human condition, and both have important answers in response. What is needed, then, is a public forum in which these questions can be asked and discussed by leaders in their respective fields, for the betterment of all in attendance.

We also want both the concrete questions of public policies and the big questions about the nature of reality and meaning of life to be addressed. Moreover, we share the view of comparative historian of religions Huston Smith that these questions are most profoundly and provocatively posed when science and religion meet.

It is crucial for citizens to acquire better knowledge regarding science and religion than what can be acquired by reading brief newspaper accounts of the latest federal decision on stem-cell research or the latest school district to question the place of evolution in its public school curriculum. Only by engaging in structured and sustained conversations of the kind we have described, can citizens acquire the knowledge they need to understand and make wise ethical and political decisions.

Beyond VCU
While they differ on many issues, ethicists across Religious traditions argue that the public should be actively involved in discussions regarding developments in the life sciences. Being located in the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia makes establishment of the Life Sciences and Religion Community Forum all the more exciting and valuable. We hope and plan to include state legislators among our community of learners. In short, we view the establishment of the community forum as making an important contribution to sustaining a robust democratic culture.

Expanding our conversation beyond VCU will have the additional consequence of fostering interfaith dialogue and understanding among the diverse Religious communities. The remarkable growth in recent years of South Asian, Middle Eastern, Eastern European, and Latin American immigrants is dramatically transforming the ethnic, linguistic, and Religious geography of Central Virginia. Thus, in addition to providing forums in which persons representing a range of Religious and secular institutions, organizations and communities can discuss issues at the nexus of Religious traditions and the life sciences, we also hope to help foster inter-Religious education, communication and understanding.