Times Book Critic, James McConnachie, reviews Nick Spencer’s new book Magisteria for The Sunday Times. 12/03/2023

If there is a story that captures the surprisingness of Nicholas Spencer’s new book, it’s the one about the lunar Eucharist. Buzz Aldrin, it seems, privately and secretly took Communion during the Apollo 11 moon landing; on the journey home he read from Psalm 8 — the passage about the heavens being the work of God’s fingers.

For Spencer, Aldrin stands in a long line of scientists and scientific icons whose thought and work have been inspired and shaped by their religious convictions. Through history the “magisteria”, or realms, of science and religion have not been antagonistic, he argues, still less non–overlapping, but rather “indistinct, sprawling, untidy, and endlessly and fascinatingly entangled”.

Read the full article here.

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