Pope Benedict Lecture: Evolution and Faith: What Is at Stake?

Dr. John F. Haught of Georgetown University, author of The New Cosmic Story, which Forbes.com called the “book of the year,” will give the Pope Benedict XVI Lecture at Saint Vincent Seminary on Tuesday, September 25. The free lecture, to be held at 7:30 p.m. in the Fred Rogers Center on the Saint Vincent campus, is entitled “Evolution and Faith: What Is at Stake?”

Haught is Distinguished Research Professor at Georgetown specializing in systematic theology, with a particular interest in issues pertaining to science, cosmology, evolution, ecology and religion. In addition to The New Cosmic Story, he is the author of 17 other books, including Science and Faith: A New Introduction; Making Sense of Evolution: Darwin, God and the Drama of Life; God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens; Christianity and Science: Toward a Theology of Nature; Is Nature Enough? Meaning and Truth in the Age of Science.

 Other books include Purpose, Evolution and the Meaning of Life; Deeper than Darwin: the Prospects for Religion in the Age of Evolution; Responses to 101 Questions on God and Evolution; God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution; Science and Religion: From Conflict to Conversation; The Promise of Nature: Ecology and Cosmic Purpose; Mystery and Promise: A Theology of Revelation; What is Religion?; The Revelation of God in History; What is God?; The Cosmic Adventure: Science, Religion and the Quest for Purpose; Nature and Purpose; and Religion and Self-Acceptance; Science and Religion in. Quest of Cosmic Purpose (editor).

In 2002 Haught was the winner of the Owen Garrigan Award in Science and Religion; and in 2004 the Sophia Award for Theological Excellence. In 2008 he received a “Friend of Darwin Award” from the National Center for Science Education. In Fall 2008 he held the D’Angelo Chair in the Humanities at Saint John’s University in New York City. In April 2009 he received an honorary doctorate from Louvain University, Belgium.

Haught’s books have been translated into Chinese, Italian, Spanish, Vietnamese, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Indonesian, Slovak, Romanian, Persian, Urdu and Polish.

Haught was a Threshold Series speaker at Saint Vincent in 2007. He has a doctorate from Catholic University of America, and prior to his current position at Georgetown was professor (1970 to 2005) in the Department of Theology there, and chair (1990 to 1995). He and his wife Evelyn have two sons and live in Falls Church, Virginia.

The Pope Benedict XVI Lecture is an endowed chair of the Seminary; however, this particular lecture is being co-sponsored by Saint Vincent’s Herbert W. Boyer School of Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Computing and the School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

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