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You can find previous episodes of “The Stone Chapel Podcast” at Lanier Theological Library.
“The Stone Chapel Podcast” is part of the ChurchLeaders Podcast Network.
This episode has been edited for clarity and space.
Janet Siefert
Hi. I’m Janet Seifert, and I am the Communications Director and the Senior Research Fellow at the Lanier Theological Library.
David Capes
Dr. Janet Siefert, Janet, good to see you. Welcome. It’s your first time on “The Stone Chapel Podcast.” We’re glad that you’re here to be a part of this.
Janet Siefert
It sure is. Thank you for asking me
David Capes
You’re the Senior Research Fellow here and you are our communications person. Before you got here, you had a whole life. Tell us a little bit about that life. Who is Janet Siefert?
Janet Siefert
Well, in my professional life, I was an origin of life scientist. I got my degree after I’d had my three children. So I got my PhD at the University of Houston, and then I went to Rice University as research professor. I was there for almost 20 years, working with NASA on whether we’re going to find life on Mars. In my personal life, I was a committed Christian. I went to a Baptist church but maybe was not such a good Baptist. I’m from Arkansas. I have three sons. I am a widow of five years. My mother lived with me the whole time I was going to graduate school. So I’ve had a lot of blessings in pursuing a life outside of my personal life, but also a rich personal life.
David Capes
Well, so many good things along the way, and also as life happens, so many hard things too. Okay, so you run a program at the Lanier Theological Library in Houston called Hall of Reason. What is Hall of Reason?
Janet Siefert
I think that my interest as a scientist at the Lanier Theological Library is in trying to mix what I know to be true and factual in science but doesn’t always get translated into the public arena. And then how my faith helped to inform how I thought about science. I have always been very interested in people being able to have a dialog about things that were important to them. Faith and science, I think, is often seen as being at opposite ends. You can’t have both of them. And so Hall of Reason was actually created so that there would be science content, framed in how a faithful person might actually use that science information.
David Capes
And when you say that, does that mean use it in their work, or does that mean use it or think about it in their own personal life? Or is it both?
Janet Siefert
That’s actually a good question. I never thought about them using it in their work. I guess I did think about them using it in their personal life. I think a lot of times in today’s world, people use science as the reason why they don’t really need to believe in God.
David Capes
There are scientists that back that up as well. There are scientists that say that, and they challenge us very often, but not all scientists.
Janet Siefert
Those that do hold that position are very vocal. But there’s been some interesting work done at Rice University by Elaine Ecklund that says that’s probably a misconception that most scientists eschew religious or spiritual thinking. There’s a larger percentage that do not. They would acknowledge that there’s a spiritual dimension that science doesn’t have any tools it can use to access.
David Capes
There are limits to what science can do. Any sort of discipline has limits. So where did the name Hall of Reason come from? Did you think it up one day? Did you hear about that in some other situation?
Janet Siefert
I think I was trying to look for something clever, and that was as clever as I could get, which turns out not to be that clever!
David Capes
Well, as things happen in real life, you started meeting in the dining hall at the Library. So you got the context of a dining hall. That’s where I started teaching Greek at the Library too. Now we have these new facilities that we can work in. But Hall of Reason, I like that. First of all, because I think of antiquity when I think of a hall. I think of people gathering in a hall and having a debate or having a discussion about something. So, I think it’s apropos. Let’s talk a little bit about its mission and its past, and then we’ll talk about the future coming up. And also, what you have done in the last five years. Let me start by asking how often you meet?
Janet Siefert
We meet during the academic year, so fall and spring, six to eight times, depending on what the topics are that I decide on and what culturally is going on. So, six to eight times, about once a month. I generally give a 40 or 45 minute lecture on whatever the science topic is and then try to allow 20 to 25 minutes of discussion. But I’ve amended that a little bit, where I try to increase dialog during my talk. I think it gets people thinking about things a little bit better and opens the conversation.
David Capes
Instead of listening to you for 45 minutes and then having an opportunity to ask questions, they can now ask them during your presentation. They can raise their hand and say, Dr Seifert, and just pose the question. Sometimes it’s hard to get back to where you were on your lecture, when you have these interruptions, it’s a little harder to keep your train of thought.
Janet Siefert
That’s right. David, you asked some interesting and good questions. I hope I do it with graciousness, but I definitely do it with strong intent. I have a set of rules that we go over every single time during the beginning of a Hall of Reason. They basically are, you’re going to be intellectually hospitable, you’re going to be intellectually curious, and you’re going to be a good listener. Which means that you listen if other people talk, not just so that you can jump in and say what you think. But you’re to be an active listener. And I think it’s gotten a reputation.
I’ve done that now for five years at the beginning of every class, and we go over it every single time. And there’s always the person who’s interested in maybe talking a little bit more. I stop the conversation and I redirect. I don’t let one person dominate the conversation. And what I do generally is, rather than just give opinions, I try to put them in the place of being the science investigator. If I give you these facts, tell me how you would explain those facts. I don’t allow politics because that can derail really fast.
David Capes
Well, these days and times, almost everything could be interpreted as political. Let’s talk about some of the topics you’ve discussed in the past few years. Give us a few examples.
Janet Siefert
The ones that people like the most, as it turns out, are anything about aliens and space. If I say we’re going to talk about life on Mars, I’ll have a big crew there. That does bring out some unusual ideas that people have. But that’s also part of being human, of being creative. During the pandemic, we had two that were on COVID, because that was a time when science was progressing really, really fast in the form of vaccines and what they understood about COVID.
A lot of times when you would hear sound bites on the news it, I think it was confusing to people. You hear that a virus is mutated, you don’t really understand what that means. It’s a very scary thing. I try to make sure that any of the science I give is not interpretation as much as factual information, where we are at that moment in the science community. And so, it was an effort to try to really educate people about what was going on, what was happening. If you do make a vaccine, what is it actually looking at? How is the virus mutating? We did that twice. The one that I probably had the least amount of participation in was trying to look at sin, or the concept of sin from a science standpoint and from a
theological standpoint. And I had a pastor friend said, nobody wants to come to hear anybody talk about sin. It’s very unpopular!
