Religion and science, faith and medicine: A worldviews approach to English evangelical medics’ perspectives

This article examines how twenty-three English evangelical Christian medics experienced the interface between religion and medical science. Using qualitative autobiographical and interview data, it shows this interface was characterized by harmony and tension, dialogue and uncertainty, often in combination. These characterizations both echo and diverge from Ian Barbour’s fourfold model, likewise challenging religion and science’s presumed irreconcilability, and that of evangelical Christianity and medical science. The article also reinforces the importance of not homogenizing these categories when exploring their interface. The article argues that a “worldviews” approach guards against such homogenization, instead predisposing researchers to anticipate complexity. It presents both religion and science as diverse, multifaceted worldviews complexly appropriated by individuals, exploring how they interact in light of lived experience. This advances worldview studies’ renaissance by exploring and conceptualizing people’s engagements with two worldviews which are not straightforwardly compatible, a facility which has been gestured towards, but not yet widely utilized.