Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) on the Harmony of Faith and Stem-Cell Research

Because I accept the Holy Bible as the inspired and interminable Word

of God, I consider myself to be a Christian fundamentalist.   I accept,
as an inseparable component of my faith, the omnipotence, omnipresence,
and omniscience of God. 

Therefore, I am baffled by my fellow fundamentalists who seem to be
utterly opposed to and terror-stricken by the advancement of science,
including stem-cell research. 

The propagation of knowledge and the dismantling of the boundless
awe-inspiring mysteries of God’s world are viewed by some in our faith
as a foreboding foray toward undermining and diminishing the glory of
the Creator.   However, the opposite is true.

Because I accept the Holy Bible as the inspired and interminable Word of God, I consider myself to be a Christian fundamentalist.   I accept, as an inseparable component of my faith, the omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience of God. 

Therefore, I am baffled by my fellow fundamentalists who seem to be utterly opposed to and terror-stricken by the advancement of science, including stem-cell research. 

The propagation of knowledge and the dismantling of the boundless awe-inspiring mysteries of God’s world are viewed by some in our faith as a foreboding foray toward undermining and diminishing the glory of the Creator.   However, the opposite is true.

When the human intellect makes strides that sets the world agog, it is God, from whom all knowledge stems, who is honored.  Let us keep in mind that scientific advancement is not an enemy of faith, but yet another way to praise God and His constantly evolving creation.

Shall we march across the battlefields of faith with open arms toward the magnificent revelations of God’s great truths, or, do we use our inherent power and influence to signal a retreat from the bright and simmering sunshine of expanding scientific scholarship? 

The potential life-saving issue of stem-cell research is before us.  The scepter is in the hands of the enlightened community of believers.  Our failure to speak out on the medical need for stem-cell research will allow earnest but erroneous or misguided souls who wish to constrain such study to force us back to a time when the faithful waged its fiery finger of scorn at the irreverence of scientific inquiry. 

I was honored to perform the funeral of the oldest known American with sickle cell anemia. Beth Cox Coleman was 54 when she died. A long time parishioner and friend, she had done nothing wrong but have the misfortune of being born with this horrible, deadly, hereditary disease. How do we explain to the 70,000 mostly African-American, like Ms. Coleman, who are destined to live shortened lives because of sickle cell anemia, that we saw the great potential to cure them and chose to turn away?

If there is a great possibility to uncover new cures for the beastly diseases which besiege the human body, the community of faith must implore the researchers to explore, seize, and use them to honor God.  After all, the One we claim as the Imminent Source and Guide of the Universe is befitting of our very best.

Like the majority of people of faith, I totally reject the notion that today’s community of believers are as troglodytic as our ancestors who refused to peer through the lens of Galileo’s telescope.  Nonetheless, this is a testing time.

Doctor Harry Emerson Fosdick, the legendary Baptist clergyman of the first half of the 20th century, profoundly addresses the issue of flowering faith in his wonderfully inspiring book, The Modern Use of the Bible: “If there are fresh things to learn concerning the physical universe, let us have them, that we may find deeper meaning when we say, ‘The heavens declare the glory of God.’”

Sure, the scientific research on stem cells must be moral.  The institutions of scientific research must understand that there are moral mandates that cannot be infringed or ignored with impunity.   When the sway of the intellect becomes extreme, the religious must repudiate and guide it back to equilibrium and reason.  Additionally, when the community of faith clings to the debilitating conventionalism of a petrified past, some among us must push against that as well. 

Should science succeed in fulfilling the much-vaunted optimism expressed by advocates of stem-cell therapy, much of the credit should go to the community of faith.  Every experiment that leads to greater medical breakthroughs is a discernible display of the earthly presence of God and of the presence of particles of His divinity in us. 

Emanuel Cleaver, II, represents the Fifth Congressional District of Missouri and is the senior pastor of the St. James United Methodist Church of Kansas City, Missouri. Rev. Cleaver is the only practicing minister in Congress.