A lot of ink has been spilled in the past few days and weeks in response to the outcome of the 2024 Presidential election which has been unusually divisive. I’ve been doing my own share of reading, but in the past couple of days I’ve discovered a real gem of a book. It came to me via a recommendation of the Dean of Washington Cathedral in DC; I take such recommendations seriously because I have such respect for the Cathedral and its mission (I became a regular online worshipper during the pandemic because of the beauty and seriousness of the liturgy they offer). Randy Hollerith is the Dean, and the work he recommends to friends of the Cathedral is Francis S. Collins, The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith and Trust, Little, Brown & Co., NY, 2024 which is now widely available from a variety of online book retailers. What intrigued me about the book is two-fold: (a) the title which speaks to so many vital components of national life no matter which country is in question today and (b) the background which Collins brings to the table. He is not only a person of faith but also a distinguished scientist and public spokesperson — a physician and geneticist and director of the International Genome Project (which has led to the discovery of the cause of cystic fibrosis and other diseases) and head of the National Institutes of Health under three Presidents. The experience with the Genome project and the NIH would, of course, appeal to many readers, but I was particularly struck by the fact that Collins combines this extraordinary experience with a genuine and strongly-held personal faith which is not something that many people are willing to admit in print these days for complex reasons.
I can’t hope to cover all of the ground which Collins does so masterfully in this book, but I want to at least suggest the kind of content you will be exposed to in reading his most recent work, because it is all so beautifully suited to the important task of healing the many political chasms that currently separate us and make this time so wrenching and hurtful for so many people. Collins is interested in addressing not just our “hyper-partisan society but (one which is) also a deeply cynical one, distrustful of knowledge and wisdom.” He calls truth, science, faith, and trust the four essential sources of judgment and clear thinking and defends them with passion. He makes the case for each of the four attributes of judgment and clarity of thought he regards as so vital to the health of a democratic society. Fundamentally, he sees no conflict among the four; he simply wants to re-think them for our benefit. Given the problems we currently face (“distrust of public health, partisanship, racism, climate change, and threats to our democracy”), this is a tall order but one which merits the kind of expertise Collins brings to the task. He holds that “cursing the darkness doesn’t help.” One way of beginning to find common ground is to admit the missteps which marked the response of scientists to, for example, the Covid-19 crisis. Mistakes were made on all sides, but if scientists don’t do their part to share the blame, little good can come about for society as a whole.
Additionally, to the extent that we tend to surround ourselves with like-minded people, “retreating into ‘bubbles’ where we can be confident in our own positions,” we exacerbate an existing breakdown in communication and empathy. Though the problems which characterize our current dialogue with one another are serious, he refuses to accept the inevitability of an “escalating set of increasingly venomous conflicts.” He wants to turn “the focus away from hyper-partisan politics and bring it back to the most important sources of wisdom built on a “foundation of humility, knowledge, morality, and good judgment.” He sees hope in what he terms the “exhausted middle” of the political spectrum which is uninterested in (and suspicious of the merits of) taking sides and in continuing to emphasize conflicts that obscure the extent to which Americans have more in common than what separates them.
Though his message is more complex than this, let me point to some of the principles that guide Collins in examining our serious social problems: “seeing that science is a powerful method for separating truth from falsehood…considering how faith can illuminate certain vital and transcendent truths, and by understanding that trust must be earned by showing that you recognize both the value of truth and the limits of your own expertise.” As a good friend said to him at one point, don’t worry about not having philosophical or theological training, because with “the rise of people with no affiliation, and the parallel dominance of the view that there is no such thing as absolute truth, (your) experience as both a scientist and a believer in God (would) stand as a needed counterpoint to cynicism and relativism.” I find particularly helpful Collins’ admission that prayer was part of his process of examining these issues. What he prayed is this: “Please, God, be generous and help me find the wisdom (I am seeking). With humility and in full awareness of my own weaknesses, I will lean on your strength to try to describe my own halting steps on that road to wisdom — and in a way that might be helpful to others.”
I am pleased to recommend The Road to Wisdom to people of faith seeking answers to their current concerns about the dilemmas we confront as Americans at this time.
Greg+