Where Faith and Science Diverge
August 12th, 2007
As an homage to Robert Putnam, we went on a family bowling outing Friday night. A good way to spend a rainy summer Friday, and a good reminder of the limits of social sciences. Last Sunday the Boston Globe reported on Putnam’s latest study in which he finds that diverse urban communities have higher rates of anxiety and lower rates of civic participation than their more homogeneous counterparts. The Globe article details how agonizing it was for Putnam to present data that diverged from his own philosophical bias that diversity was a good thing. And that raises all kinds of important questions for academic integrity and ethics. It also lifts up what we know is the minefield of presenting carefully collected data in a scholarly article and then having only the skimmed “talking points” ever read by most people. I’ve ordered a copy of the journal with his study presented, but in the mean time, I’m grateful for once to work in the realm of faith rather than science.
My faith, based on my experience and my reason, tells me that living in diverse community is the most soul-growing, life-building, just plain right thing we can do. And it tells me that the challenge and the reward of it will not necessarily be visible in any quantifiable study, especially one that asks if life is easier or communication better or our financial success more guaranteed as a result. Without knowing the questions Putnam raised, I can say this much: the challenges of being in diverse community are more than worth their cost.
In my community, which has been struggling in recent years with the anxiety that has been proven to be a corollary of increase racial and ethnic diversity, Putnam’s surface facts do bear out. But there is also the very real fact that everyone is more anxious in general, more worried in the upper middle class (is there such a thing? I think we need another study) about keeping the financial plates spinning long enough to finish the next remodel or get the youngest through college, and more anxious about any number of things: unpredictable illness and its costs; loss of a job because of moving into late mid-life; having the stock market tank and lose that retirement nest-egg. People in the lower economic brackets are worried about the same things they ever were: getting the kids through school, keeping a roof over the family’s head, paying medical bills, and so on. People are not engaged in civic life in general because there’s no space for it if you’re busy living the economic life that has become the be-all, end-all of American existence. Why in the world would we go out and join clubs, much less vote, when there is nothing in either of those activities that can be proven to get us into the swimming-pool class, or even the small condo in a bad neighborhood class?
Conservatives are jumping on Putnam’s findings as proof that it’s a good idea for people to “keep with their own.” My faith tells me that the god who made sure we were made with difference, and made a world in which the combination of different types bred offspring that were stronger, smarter, and better equipped for survival — I think that god wants us to get to know our neighbors, and to make ourselves neighbors with more and more people in this world. The god who knit each of us together in our mothers’ wombs doesn’t want a bit of that precious effort to go unnoticed. And the god who offers us the wonder of discovering who we are by knowing others more fully, that god too says look at this magnificent creation that is so much greater than the sum of its parts. Know its parts. Look at it in awe, look at it in praise. Don’t do it because it will be easy, or it will make you sleep better. Faith doesn’t really promise that, ever. Do it because it will make your heart quicken and your blood pump and it will make you feel alive. Do it because our fear is our greatest teacher: we need to move toward it. Do it because your horizons shouldn’t be contained by arrogance, or fear, or greed, or hatred. Every scripture says it’s so, human history says it’s so. It doesn’t need to be proven by any study beyond the wisdom of religious tradition, our prayerful hearts, and our open minds.
August 13th, 2007 at 7:45 am
This study raised similar concerns in me and a similar reaction. Good for you for digging into the details of the source material, I’ll be eagerly awaiting your analysis.
My hunch is that although the study describes comfort levels of people in homogeneous and diverse settings that it still is only descriptive not prescriptive. In other words, who says that a little discomfort caused by the friction of rubbing up against someone who is a little different is a bad thing? In the natural world, diversity works like a giant jigsaw puzzle making the whole richer for the varied parts.
I’m also curious to hear about the scope of diversity studied. Which differences mattered most? Where is the tipping point (can a racially diverse group feel comfortable if they share the same religion or is religious diversity more tolerable as long as we are all the same race? etc.)?
BTW, it was brave of you to show the picture of the bowling shoes knowing PeaceBang may see it! LOL
August 13th, 2007 at 9:17 am
Diversity is challenging, which is not the same thing as saying it’s bad or needs to be avoided.
I think that this particular issue is not whether faith or science gives us a more accurate picture of the world, but that the use of soundbites is a form of rhetoric. When we slice research data to give simplistic results, we potentially distort their broader meaning, just as when we do that to religious wisdom. I gave up TV 16 years ago partly for this reason — I wasn’t getting any information that hadn’t already been processed to the consistency of Velveeta. The world I was being shown bore practically no resemblance to the real world.
Diversity challenges us… any of us who live in the midst of variety already know that. Some people will fear that challenge and flee diversity, and others of us will seek it out, knowing that the compassionate heart can be exercised like a muscle, and be strong and resilient in the face of things that stretch us.
Humans have the remarkable ability to see what we want to see, whether it’s in scientific results or in scriptures. It is the spiritual discipline of discernment that helps us to decide whether what we’re seeing is a prophetic vision or a cowardly one.
August 13th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Culture Dove: yes, those questions and more rise to the surface. Also, there’s the big question of what qualifies as meaningful civic participation. I’m sure Putnam had some criteria that was based on some clear research. But defining that, and defining the source and nature of anxiety, are both pretty tricky things. I’ll let you know what I find out.
Scott: exactly. Thanks for magnifying the point about the way we get information.
In this faith that prides itself on its coherence with science, and after preaching many sermons to that effect, it took me by surprise to feel the vehemence of my faith — based on the discernment you described, but also on a knowledge deeper than words — and my gut-level allegiance to it, whatever the “science” may tell us. It will be interesting to get the fuller scoop and see how divergent they really are in this case.