St Ternan’s & Christ Church
Exploring Science and Theology
Summary
Faith deepens through meaningful conversation with others on the journey, and young people grow in their faith through engagement with adults who they see are continuing to learn.
The Exploring Science and Theology project for Deeside aims to create the conditions for this conversation through encouraging continuing local development of the Deeside Pilgrimage Trail as a living and changing container in which to encounter science and faith issues linked to creation and God, and to help guide that conversation through potentially contentious topics by construction of a “DEMOCS” type game to populate supporting information for the pilgrimage action.
The work will be anchored by key conferences to model respectful dialog, and sustained by the creation of a website and related applications. Much of the professional time the grant will fund includes thoughtful training and involvement of young people from the community both through their participation in the conferences and pilgrimage activities, and by encouraging their leadership in the website, application, and DEMOCs game development itself.
In addition to these opportunities to integrate scientific and theological perspectives, we aim to establish ways for people of varying ages and belief systems to engage with each other.
Key Questions
- Does the idea of Pilgrimage still engage the wider (especially non-churched) population?
- Does the DEMOCs games approach, which we know works for secular issues, also provide a vehicle for theological debate?
- Does the combination of Pilgrimage and DEMOCs games provide a way for people to connect across generations and differing ideologies?
- Does science help us to understand the role of God in creation?