Science and religion are often presented as opposites, and despite decades of scholarship presenting more nuanced accounts of that relationship, it seems like the spectre of conflict haunts the way that scientific ideas are communicated to religious communities. Questions that have served as the titles of well regarded books, like “Can a Darwinian Be a Christian?” or “Can You Believe in God and Evolution?” speak as if the friendliest possible relationship between religion is that of merely logical non-contradiction. Metaphors of science and religion as distinct territories or domains can coexist peacefully with a sufficiently guarded DMZ. Against the strident militarism of the conflictarians – whether fundamentalist religious or atheist, we are offered the milquetoast mewling of mere compatibility. As forms of religious antiscience have become increasingly incorporated into the political pandemonium of religious nationalism, these militant metaphors become ever more wedded to a conflict between facts and fascism.

Against all of this, I propose to examine the potential for new narratives of science and religion that aren’t limited to a range between sanguinary pseudscience and phlegmatic feats of logic. Drawing on the history of natural theology and what we might consider its modern heirs, we ask: What if religion and science are able to strengthen one another? How then might we be able to communicate science more effectively?