Content by Rev. Dr. Ruth Shaver

Content by Rev. Dr. Ruth Shaver

The Reverend Doctor Ruth E. Shaver is the Interim Senior Pastor of First Church of Christ, Congregational, United Church of Christ, in North Conway, New Hampshire. In addition to her pastoral role, she is actively involved in ministerial education and formation as a course facilitator and secretary of the board of directors for PATHWAYS Theological Education, Inc., in Atlanta, Georgia. She previously served churches in central and eastern Massachusetts and in western Pennsylvania. Shaver completed her Doctor of Ministry at Lancaster Theological Seminary in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 2016 with a dissertation project titled, “I Wonder: Scientific Exploration and Experimentation as a Practice of Christian Faith.” She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Soviet and East European Studies from the College of Liberal Arts (now College of Arts and Sciences) and a Master of Divinity degree from the School of Theology at Boston University. Her love of science was fostered by her parents, who encouraged her to watch every episode of NOVA on PBS from its debut in 1976 until she went off to college, and by her grandfathers, who were both curious men with fascinations for dinosaurs, reptiles, space, and all things mechanical. Her first linkage of science and faith came at a very young age when she would pray for the safety of “her astronauts” on the Apollo moon missions. She is grateful for the opportunity to be a Sinai and Synapses Fellow and looks forward to the opportunities ahead to help people of all faiths become scientifically knowledgeable and curious.

Quantum Physics and Faith, Who Knew?

The rules that I believe God wrote to govern the universe are all about probabilities, which means that in theory, or perhaps, better, hypothetically, nothing is impossible, that everything has at least a scintilla of possibility.

The Quest for Perfect Vision

The quest for perfect vision—or any other repair or improvement in our physical bodies—often obscures bigger-picture things, like the moral and ethical implications of such research.
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