A series on: Living Out our Faith

Outside church, members of our congregation try to live out their faith in all sorts of ways depending on their individual gifts, strengths and interests. We have invited some church members to summarise their particular ministries: how they witness to others in their every day lives.

No. 1 - Elizabeth Cole, St. Mary’s Church Warden

Science and faith for children

As a Christian and a scientist – working in the analytical instrument business for over 40 years – it’s been my experience that most church-going Christians share the view that our faith is fully compatible with modern science. *

I’ve certainly been confident in this position for as long as I can remember, but a few years ago, God started bugging me about the potential for this issue to become a bit of a stumbling block to young people. I was hearing more and more about youngsters being challenged along the lines ‘they couldn’t be proper Christians if they didn’t accept Genesis 1 as the ‘literal’ account of creation…’ i.e. believe creation happened about 4,000 BC following a strict 6-day time line and that the theory of evolution is wrong.

As an adult this is frustrating and it’s hard to know where to start when there are so many holes in the argument (you only have to think of germs like covid for example, mutating in real time) but it struck me then that, as a church, we perhaps don’t do enough to make the opposite case. I was particularly concerned by how little we help children understand how scripture and science are pointing at two different but complementary aspects of the truth…  In a nutshell, the problem is that children are often given Bible stories in a church context and science text books in school and nothing in between… Whether you are aged 5, 9 or 16, it’s hard not to start thinking that Bible stories are just myths when you learn about the Big Bang, dinosaurs and evolution in school!

When God put this on my heart, it started me on an 8-year journey, meeting 2 or 3 other individuals along the way, who, amazingly, had pretty much been given the same mission at the same time. The good news is that now, ten years later, there are many more resources available for Christian parents, grandparents, youth group leaders and teachers to explain how faith and modern science sit alongside each other without contradiction. The new materials include books for different age groups (including my own: God’s Cosmic Cookbook), a small number of curriculum support modules, organisations running school workshops and others providing relevant courses for parents, teachers etc. These are all designed to help children understand that whereas science seeks to understand the universe – what’s there, how it works, when it came to be – scripture addresses different but equally important questions like who God is, the character of God and our relationship with God.

Follow this link here for a list of some of the great science and faith resources and materials available for kids.

Other curriculum support materials are available at this link here (UK materials from ‘Science & faith for kids’) and at this link here (US materials from ‘BioLogos’ ).

My own book for 8-13 year-olds, God’s Cosmic Cookbook, (Hodder & Stoughton, 2023) ** has God ‘the chef’ guiding children step-by-step through how to make their own universe at home, starting with a Big Bang and continuing all the way to the evolution of intelligent life 13.8 billion years later. It’s filled with great up-to-date scientific information (in large part courtesy of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, Cambridge) and is all presented in accessible language with humour and funny illustrations.

Elizabeth Cole, 2nd August 2025

 Footnotes

* This is a strong and readily-defended position so I haven’t taken up time with it here, but if you want to hear more, let me know and I’ll cover it in another blog in a few weeks’ time.

 ** No proceeds from any sales of the book are retained by me as author. Royalties are shared between the wonderful illustrator Patrick at the Faraday Institute and the excellent mainstream UK charity organization Christians in Science.