In her first book, science teacher Janet Kellogg Ray chronicles how she came to reconcile evangelical Christianity and evolutionary science. In her new book, Ray — a lifelong evangelical herself — says she understood the tensions (and subcultures) built around Christians and evolution, including potentially competing origin stories. But the pandemic world reintroduced her to antagonistic postures among some evangelicals toward scientific issues with no apparent link to evolution. Her question in The God of Monkey Science is why. She traces the religio-political landscapes that she suggests shape this posture. No doubt, many readers will run into disagreements throughout this book, but Ray’s lively, often funny, jaunt is worth a look.
Review by Aaron Cline Hanbury