When Jimmy Davis joined the Union faculty in 1978 as an assistant professor of chemistry, he began looking for ways in which to dialogue about the relationship of science and faith.

As the years passed, Davis progressed through the ranks to professor of chemistry as he also climbed to the position of associate provost and director of institutional research. Response to his interest in science and faith during that time was varied.

�Some were more interested than others,� he said about his fellow faculty members. �But when Hal [Poe] came, he liked the idea.�

Harry [Hal] Lee Poe came to Union in 1996 as vice president for academic resources and information services, as well as professor of Christian studies. He now serves as the Charles Colson Professor of Faith and Culture.

The two began their dialogue and enjoyed it so much that the time spread into lunchtime discussions.

�Our conversations continued at Subway,� Poe said.

Davis added: �We mean, of course, the restaurant. There is a joke about a review that came out about our first book. The reviewer commented that it all started while we were riding on a subway in Jackson, Tenn.� The Jackson metropolitan area, of course, has a population of 92,000 and has no subway.

At a conference on the status of research at Christian schools, Poe and Davis heard a representative from the Templeton Foundation mention a seed grant available to develop courses that investigated the relationship between science and faith. They decided to apply.

�As part of the requirements for the grant, we had to go to two conferences that discussed the relationship between science and faith,� Davis said. �We went to one in Oxford, England in January of 1998.�

The conference included leading scholars in the area of science and faith. The dialogue there took them in a different direction for their course than they had planned.

�It was very stimulating,� Poe said. �The conference gave us an opportunity to consider directions we hadn�t considered before.�

The next conference was in Toronto, Canada and was designed for those faculty members who would teach the course.

�It, too, had great interaction,� Davis said.

�Here was an incubator setting that allowed us to reflect,� Poe added. �We began to realize that our course would be different than what was being discussed, because it emphasized the evangelical Christian approach.�

Poe and Davis taught the resulting course as a team.

�It was one of the greatest classroom experiences of my life,� Poe said. �I am a theologian, not a scientist. He is a scientist and not a theologian. We were constantly engaging each other in the course of the discussion.�

Davis says the students were fascinating with their exchanges.

�Our students later said they never realized you could discuss these issues in the context of your faith,� he said.

Designing the course resulted in the duo�s first book, Science and Faith: An Evangelical Dialogue, published by Broadman and Holman in 2000.

�Teaching informs our scholarship, and our scholarship informs our teaching,� Poe said. �If you�re going to the trouble to design a course, you know you�re not just throwing together ideas, you�re also digesting them.�

Further dialogue resulted in a second book, Designer Universe: Intelligent Design and the Existence of God, which was released in 2002. That publication won the Christianity Today Book of the Year Merit Award in June 2003.

�The two books have different emphases,� Davis said. �The first book was more of a textbook covering the breadth of science and theology. The second book was geared toward the popular audience and gears in on narrow issues of science and theology.�

Now the two are working on a third book, which investigates the questions �where is God� and �what is His involvement?� It grew out of Davis� own thoughts as he dealt with chemistry experiments.

�Our contention is that either God is involved at all levels or He is not involved at all,� Poe said.

�We are dealing with the questions in definite ways,� Davis said. �In some cases, we are asking Union faculty to help us define the answers.�

For example, Lee Benson, associate professor of art, is examining human involvement in art, including the question of why we create. James Huggins, department chair and professor of biology, is investigating the uniqueness of the human body compared to other life forms. A round table discussion will look at artificial intelligence in movies and the future of humanity in film and will include film studies faculty.

�We don�t always recognize that issues we face are faith issues,� Poe said.

�It�s one of the ways we investigate integrated faith in the classroom.�