Professor Ed Larson's Book Review of "Most Adaptable to Change" Published in Journal of Religious History

Professor Edward J. Larson's book review of Most Adaptable to Change: Evolution and Religion in Global Popular Media, is published in the Journal of Religious History. The book is a collection of case studies funded by the Templeton Religion Trust that explores the conflict framing of the science-religion interface within its cultural and political complexity.

Excerpt from Book Review: Alexander Hall and Will Mason-Wilkes, eds: Most Adaptable to Change: Evolution and Religion in Global Popular Media. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024; pp. 216.

Through individual case studies drawn from various countries and cultures of popular media accounts addressing the interface between evolutionary science and religious belief, Most Adaptable to Change shows why the conflict framing for that relationship persists even as those studies unpack the complexity underlying it. In their introduction, the editors of this multi-author work, Alexander Hall and Will Mason-Wilkes, conclude about the case studies, “We see how different evolutionary traditions and figures have been championed or discredited by different religious traditions, their spiritual leaders, and politicians using the cultural authority of religion as leverage” (p. 5). The effect of reading these studies gives substance to the public perception of an enduring conflict between science and religion. As noted in some of these chapters, the 350-year-old Galileo affair and the 100-year-old Scopes “Monkey” Trial still serve as evidence that conflict (or “warfare,” as Andrew Dickson White termed it in the title of his landmark 1896 book A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom) has characterised the relationship between science and religion. The chapters in this new book update that popular narrative with case studies suggesting its ongoing relevance.

The complete review may be found at Journal of Religious History