Genetics and Faith: Religious Enchantment through Creative Engagement with Molecular Biology

In this article I develop heuristic types for understanding how the U.S. evangelical Christian subculture engages the newer science of molecular biology as it works to legitimate and enchant religious worldview: 1.) symbolic engagement, employing genes and DNA as sacred icon; 2.) disputatious engagement, debating genetic essentialism and scientific naturalism; and 3.) performative engagement, fortifying theism through scientific performance. These types contribute to recent theories of religious strength and identity by providing a framework for exploring the complexity and quality of creative engagement efforts in thriving religious subcultures. I argue that the power of these types to have an impact on audiences lies in sophisticated subcultural levels of discursive engagement through media employment as well as cursory lay knowledge of molecular biology and a pervasive cultural faith and doubt in scientific advancement.