Smith book on Christianity covers its beliefs, prospects

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NEW YORK -- At age 86, Huston Smith is returning home again -- to Christianity.

Mr. Smith is the dean of American scholars on world religions and his best-selling textbook about them is known to legions of college students. Personally, he has explored many faiths -- though he's also a minister in the United Methodist Church, the denomination in which he was raised in China as the son of missionaries.

Now, in the new "The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition" (HarperSanFrancisco), he ruminates about the beliefs, contributions and prospects of the world's largest faith.

In the end, what he advocates is essentially a modernized and tolerant interpretation of the shared faith of Christianity's first thousand years, before it broke into Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant branches.

But that's the end point. The start lies elsewhere, with Mr. Smith's premise that the future of Christianity and the other great faiths hinges on keeping proper limits on science -- meaning religious people should not concede that scientific knowledge is the only kind.

The outspoken senior statesman acknowledged in an interview with the Associated Press that he's no expert, but said notable scientists who are friends of long standing have taught him about the oft-baffling aspects of nature and our limited knowledge of the physical universe.

Over the past several centuries, empirical observation and laboratory experiments have produced huge benefits for health and removal of drudgery, Mr. Smith said. The problem is, as a result "we gave science a blank check, by which I mean we turned all truth over to them."

"Science is not omnicompetent," he insisted. "Our physical senses are not the only senses we have."

As his book puts it: "No one has ever seen a thought. No one has ever seen a feeling. Yet our thoughts and feelings are where we primarily live our lives."

His book says "discounting invisible realities" is the "modern mistake" promoted by an intolerant secularism that says only empirical, scientific knowledge is valid.