From Religion to Ethics: Andrew D. White and the Dilemma of a Christian Rationalist

Abstract

In 1896 Andrew D. White publishedA History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, a work which had consumed his scholarly passion for twenty years. His original interest in the subject stemmed from his difficulties, while President of Cornell, with Protestant sectarian critics. During those years, he answered opponents somewhat guardedly in lectures and letters to religious publications, but at the same time he began research on what he hoped would he hismagnum opus, a work to demonstrate the futility of attempts by religious advocates to prohibit scientific inquiry and to defend essential Christian truths. “I wish the clergy to read it,” he told historian George Lincoln Burr, “and if they like to attack it, and no university on my shoulders.”