Presentation and PowerPoint - Murdo Macdonald - Religious Engagement: The SRT
Presentation and PowerPoint - Murdo Macdonald - Religious Engagement: The SRT
Religious Engagement: The SRT
Since its inception in the late 1960’s, an explicit intention of the Society, Religion and
Technology (SRT) Project of the Church of Scotland has included a real engagement
with the scientific community. This has been to the great advantage of the SRT, and
has helped maintain the respect of the SRT within the community.
The major modus operandus of the Project has been around “short life working
groups”. These groups of 8- 10 people are convened around a specific topic for a
defined length of time- usually 1-2 years, though on occasions this has been longer.
Most working groups will have a clearly defined primary outcome: to produce a
report for the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, held each year in May.
The composition of this group varies, but will always intentionally include at least some
professional scientists from the area of interest, and also at least one professional
theologian with, if possible, an interest in the area. Although most members of the
group will be based in Scotland, it has sometimes been necessary to cast the net
somewhat wider in order to find suitable people.
The Church of Scotland being a body which acts largely by consensus, many of the
reports produced by the SRT have not given the kind of clear “black and white”
outcome which the media prefer, but rather a more nuanced response to controversial
issues.
Invitations to partner in interdisciplinary fora, the opportunity to publish in
mainstream scientific publications, and the fact that the views of the SRT are actively
sought by some media outlets are testaments to the success of the SRT model.
This model may not travel well. Scotland is a relatively small country, with its main
foci of scientific expertise within an hours travel of each other, so cross- fertilisation
between and across areas of interest is fairly straight forward. In addition, the
Christian community is fairly large and interconnected across denominations.