AN APOLOGY FOR THE CHURCH'S 

 PERSECUTION OF SCIENCE 



By Donald McFayden 



The incessant conflict between science and religion is a phenome- 

 non which must interest every student of history. The story of this 

 conflict in the Christian centuries has been told by Dr. Andrew D. 

 White in two fascinating and learned volumes.' But most accounts 

 of the struggle, not excepting even Dr. White's, leave the reader un- 

 satisfied. He rises from their perusal with a sense of bewilderment. 

 Why should this thing be ? Just why has nearly every advance that 

 science has made encountered the church's opposition ? Few his- 

 torians, not even Dr. White himself, give an adequate explanation. 

 One gets the impression from them that the church simply has been 

 criminally stupid. Now no man is ever consciously stupid and no 

 good man is ever consciously a criminal. Any tendency which has 

 been shared by any considerable body of intelligent and conscientious 

 men must have had some justification, real or apparent, in both reason 

 and morahty. The justification (not the folly) of the church's oppo- 

 sition to science has been the cause of that attitude. It is necessary, 

 therefore, for the historian to try to understand that justification. 

 For lack of such understanding the ordinary books upon the subject 

 are wanting both in truth and in interest. They degenerate from 

 tragedy to melodrama. They represent the struggle as one between 

 light and darkness; truth and error; absolute right and absolute 

 wrong; whereas it has been in reaUty a struggle between two rights, 

 two methods of approaching truth, two vital human interests. 



It is the purpose of this paper to point out three causes for the 

 church's intellectual conservatism: (i) a marked divergence in aim 

 and interest between science and the church; (2) an unfortunate but 

 very natural misapprehension on the part of the church as to the 



■ White, Andrew Dickson, A History of the War/are of Science with Theology in Chrislendom. New 

 York, 1896. 



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