Sr. Ilia Delio, OSF, executive director of the World Institute for Science, Religion and Culture, is forming an online graduate program to integrate theology and science in the 21st century. Neumann University will serve as the program's academic home.
The World Institute for Science, Religion and Culture is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, founded in 2016 as The Omega Center to bring the theological vision of Jesuit scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin into public awareness. The mission of the Institute, Delio explains, is to integrate science and religion into a thoughtful integrative paradigm for the ongoing formation of human personhood today, and to develop a better sense of self, world, and God in a world of change.
“Science needs religion and religion needs science to adequately give us a sense of the whole world that we, as dynamic persons, seek to live in,” she says. “Science asks the big questions, but so does religion. For instance, we know that artificial intelligence is a key player in human evolution today, affecting every aspect of our lives, but we cannot make sense of it unless we understand how technology fits within the wider development of evolution and the emergence of human life. AI must be seen within evolution — and at the same time, we have to ask why life seeks more life. This question cannot be addressed by science alone. Religion provides meaning beyond causal explanations.”
For ten years, the Institute has offered webinars, podcasts, workshops, conferences, and books to broaden understanding of its core ideas. With Neumann's help, it is now expanding into academic credentials.
On August 27, Delio and Dr. Chris Domes, Neumann’s president, signed an agreement to collaborate on graduate-level online programs created by the institute and credentialed by Neumann. Preliminary plans include a graduate certificate in science and religion, a master's degree in science and religion, and a doctoral degree in science and religion, with concentrations in Technology and Religion, Teilhard studies and process thought, Ecotheology, and Science, Religion and Culture.
Neumann will be the academic home for courses taught by the Institute's faculty, whom the university will hire as adjunct professors.
Delio and an advisory council of scholars are developing the courses, a process she estimates will take a full year. Neumann will grant the credit, and students will receive a diploma from the World Institute for Science, Religion and Culture at Neumann University.
Sister Ilia is a Franciscan Sister of Washington, D.C., and a retired professor at Villanova University. The author of more than twenty-six books, she holds a BS in biology from DeSales University, a master's in biology from Seton Hall University, a doctorate in pharmacology from Rutgers University–New Jersey Medical School, and a doctorate in historical theology from Fordham University.
Her research focuses on systematic-constructive theology, particularly religion and evolution, following the vision of Teilhard de Chardin — a 20th-century Jesuit scientist and religious thinker whose prophetic insights, born of an acute scientific mind and a deeply Ignatian spirit, led him to place religion within a cosmic evolutionary framework and to engage the world's religions on those terms.