National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins was recently awarded the 2020 Templeton Prize. ELANA SCHOR, of Associated Press, reports on how religion is – or has been – part of life of some of the top coronavirus experts in the US…
New York City, US
AP
The relationship between faith and science has faced its share of strain during the coronavirus pandemic – but for some scientists leading the nation’s response, the two have worked in concert.
National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins founded a non-profit focused on “the harmony between science and Biblical faith.” Anthony Fauci, NIH’s senior infectious disease specialist, has said he isn’t active in organised religion but credited his Jesuit schooling with burnishing the values that drive his public service.
And Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, describes his faith and his public health work as mutually reinforcing.
“One of the great things about faith is, you can approach life with a sense of hope – no matter what the challenges you’re dealing with, that there’s a path forward,” Redfield told The Associated Press.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr Robert Redfield, left, and Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, depart after accompanying President Donald Trump as he speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington on 16th April. Faith and science are both under unprecedented pressures during a pandemic that’s asked them to deliver comfort or certainty – while at times straining their relationship. But for some leaders of the US pandemic response, the two have worked in concert. PICTURE: AP Photo/Alex Brandon.
The influence of faith on some of the government’s top coronavirus fighters illustrates its complicated connection to science. While tensions over public worship’s effect on public health arise amid the pandemic – with President Donald Trump declaring religious services “essential” – personal spirituality, in all of its forms, remains an unquestioned guidepost for some scientists guiding the US response.
Redfield said that during major crises he’s faced, such as his role responding to 2010’s Haiti earthquake and the death of his son, his faith had helped orient him toward the potential for “greater good” to arise from tragedy. Faith and science have not been in tension for him, Redfield said.
“One of the great things about faith is, you can approach life with a sense of hope – no matter what the challenges you’re dealing with, that there’s a path forward.”
– Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
During the early weeks of the pandemic, the 68-year-old virologist was not as much of a fixture at the televised White House briefings as Fauci, his fellow Catholic. But Redfield’s modesty is itself a facet of how his faith plays out in his public persona, as his longtime friend William Blattner put it.
Redfield sees people of faith as “not holier than anybody – we’re just who we are,” said Blattner, who co-founded University of Maryland’s Institute of Human Virology alongside Redfield and a third prominent AIDS researcher, Robert Gallo, in the mid-1990s.
“You don’t see him jumping up to the microphone. You see him speaking as he’s required,” Blattner said of his friend. Faith helps Redfield “filter out the noise and distraction” of the push to contain the virus, Blattner added, affording “him, and us, the ability to see more clearly.”
Redfield was tapped by Trump, while Collins and Fauci’s stints as government scientists predate 2016. Collins, for his part, was already a vocal advocate for communicating what he sees as the consistency between religious belief and evidence-based science before he was named to lead NIH.
National Institutes of Health Director Dr Francis Collins, left, speaks with Chairman Senator Lamar Alexander prior to a Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee hearing on new coronavirus tests on Capitol Hill in Washington. Collins has lauded the majority of American faith communities for treating the pandemic as an opportunity to live out their values by helping the vulnerable. He also offered careful criticism for the “occasional examples of churches who reject the scientific conclusions and demand the right to continue to assemble freely, even in the face of evidence that this endangers their whole community.” PICTURE: AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, Pool.
After writing a 2006 book about his journey from youthful atheism to belief in God, the 70-year-old Collins founded the BioLogos Foundation to help further a dialogue about religion’s relationship to science. Since the pandemic began, he has received a major religion prize for his work.
“I see science as the most reliable way to study nature – and that includes this virus. But science doesn’t help me with deeper questions like why suffering exists, what we are supposed to learn from it, what is the meaning of life, and whether there is a loving God who grieves with us at a time like this. For that, I rely on what I have learned as a person of faith.”
– Francis Collins
“But science doesn’t help me with deeper questions like why suffering exists, what we are supposed to learn from it, what is the meaning of life, and whether there is a loving God who grieves with us at a time like this,” he added. “For that, I rely on what I have learned as a person of faith.”
Collins lauded the majority of American faith communities for treating the pandemic as an opportunity to live out their values by helping the vulnerable, adding that “most of that loving and altruistic behavior doesn’t get much attention.” He also offered careful criticism for the “occasional examples of churches who reject the scientific conclusions and demand the right to continue to assemble freely, even in the face of evidence that this endangers their whole community.”
Trump last week called for governors to allow in-person worship, vowing that “faith leaders will make sure that their congregations are safe as they gather and pray.” The president spoke as the CDC released recommendations for safe reopening of physical religious services, and faith gatherings that occurred this week largely operated with safeguards in place to help prevent the virus’ spread.
National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr Anthony Fauci speaks as President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence listen during a briefing about the coronavirus in the press briefing room at the White House in Washington on 29th February. At right is Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fauci has said he isn’t active in organised religion but credited his Jesuit schooling with burnishing the values that drive his public service. PICTURE: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster.
Fauci’s faith has shifted from the path of his Catholic upbringing to what he has described as a humanist belief system. The 36-year veteran chief of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told C-SPAN in 2015 that “I’m less enamored of organized religion than I am with the principles of humanity and goodness to mankind and doing the best that you can.”
While Fauci distanced himself from organised religion in that 2015 interview, he has described himself as Catholic and told C-SPAN his Jesuit education had helped develop the “principles that I run my life by.” Those principles came into sharper view this month when Fauci recorded a video for graduates of high schools affiliated with the Jesuits, a Catholic order that focuses on service.
After citing “precision of thought and economy of expression” as two watchwords, he invoked “social justice” as another value instilled by his Jesuit education. Fauci graduated in 1958 from New York’s Regis High School, a Jesuit institution.
“And now is the time, if ever there was one, for us to care selflessly about one another,” Fauci said.
Rev Daniel Lahart, president of Regis, hosted Fauci during a visit to his alma mater last year. He hailed the 79-year-old scientist as a worthy example of a Jesuit education’s call for students to dedicate themselves to helping the common good, becoming “men and women for others.”
“It is part of who we are, that we take community service, public service, as something essential to what our faith’s about,” Lahart said.
