Years later I found liberation from those shackles by practicing the spiritual disciplines of the Anglican Church, especially the Eucharist.
Two things became key to my wanting to pursue theology in addition to science. One was a retreat I went on where, with the exception of the worship services, silence was the rule. I soon learned how positive the experience of silence was, and how genuinely related I became to the others sharing the silence with me.
The other was a neighborhood Bible study, where the leader showed how Scripture can actually expand one’s understanding rather than narrow it.
I didn’t have a Damascus Road experience that led me out of the physics world. I saw no handwriting on the wall. I simply prayed about it with my wife and close friends and sought counsel where I could.
When I told my church I wanted to become a priest, they did a very wise thing. They had me attend a retreat so that I could have my vocation tested by the church. These elders were not impressed with my degrees, my research or even my membership in the Royal Society. After a period devoted to discerning whether this move was ordained by God, I was able to move forward. As with any significant change, there are ups and downs where you wonder whether you did the right thing. At such times, it was encouraging to remember that careful thought had been given by others to the wisdom and appropriateness of the move I had made.
Within a few years I was given my own parish, in a village called Blean, which had about 3,000 people in it. Approximately 200 people attended the church. I knocked on a lot of doors, engaged just about everyone in the village in a conversation, conducted weddings, funerals and baptisms. While I was in Blean, I started writing books about science and religion and how the two could be friends, not foes. I thoroughly enjoyed writing about the relationship between the two because I think they have some significant things in common. Science involves an act of faith. We are taught skills and end up knowing more than we can tell. Religious belief isn’t shutting your eyes, gritting your teeth, believing six impossible things before breakfast because the Bible tells you that’s what you must do. It’s a search for a motivated belief—a difficult search—and different people will reach different conclusions about it. But you don’t have to commit intellectual suicide to be a religious believer; otherwise I wouldn’t be one.
At times I wonder if the Christian faith is too good to be true. When I ask that, then I say to myself, Then dismiss it and turn away from it. But I know that I can’t. It’s not because it’s all serenity, either, because it’s not. It’s more like Psalm 13, where we lament, yet we trust in God. People who have periods of doubt have a deeper commitment. I have never gone to the depths of disbelief, but I have had plenty of doubts. I quiver with the notion that I may be mistaken. But I choose to stand with Christ.
As told to Dean Nelson, founder and director of the journalism program at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. His book about Polkinghorne, Quantum Leap: How John Polkinghorne Found God in Science and Religion, was released in 2011.
