Nancy Pearcey

Fellow, Center for Science and Culture

Nancy R. Pearcey is a fellow of Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture and a professor and scholar in residence at Houston Baptist University, where she is director of the Francis Schaeffer Center for Worldview and Culture. She also serves as editor at large of the Pearcey Report. Previous positions include visiting scholar at Biola University's Torrey Honors Institute, professor of worldview studies at Philadelphia Biblical University, and the Francis A. Schaeffer Scholar at the World Journalism Institute.

Pearcey is author of the 2005 ECPA Gold Medallion Award winner Total Truth. Her earlier books include The Soul of Science and the 2000 ECPA Gold Medallion Award winner How Now Shall We Live? (co-authored with novelist Harold Fickett and former White House operative Chuck Colson). Her most recent book is Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning.

Pearcey has contributed to several books including the Foreword to The Right Questions and Story Craft: Reflections on Faith, Culture, and Writing and chapters in Mere Creation, Genetic Ethics, Signs of Intelligence, Reading God's World, Uncommon Dissent, Evidence for God: 50 Arguments for Faith from the Bible, History, Philosophy, and Science, and a Phillip Johnson Festschrift titled Darwin's Nemesis.

Heralded as "America's pre-eminent evangelical Protestant female intellectual" (The Economist), Pearcey has addressed staffers on Capitol Hill and at the White House; actors and screenwriters in Hollywood; scientists at Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories; artists at the International Arts Movement; students and faculty at universities such as Princeton, Stanford, Dartmouth, USC, U of GA, and St. John's College; and educational and activist groups, including the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.

Pearcey has published 100+ articles in outlets such as The Washington Post, The Washington Times, First Things, American Thinker, Human Events, Christianity Today, Books & Culture, World, Human Life Review, American Enterprise, The Daily Caller, and Regent University Law Review. She has served as an editorial board member of Salem Communications and a commentator on Public Square Radio, and she appears frequently on radio and television, including Fox & Friends, NPR, and C-SPAN.

Formerly an agnostic, Pearcey studied in Heidelberg, Germany in the early 1970s, and in Switzerland at L'Abri Fellowship under Francis Schaeffer. She earned a BA from Iowa State University, an MA from Covenant Theological Seminary, and pursued graduate work in history of philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto.

From 1977-1990 Pearcey wrote articles for the Bible-Science Association on the intersection of science and worldview. From 1991-1999 she was founding editor of the daily radio program "BreakPoint" where she wrote 1000+ commentaries and headed up a team of writers. She was also policy director and senior fellow of the Wilberforce Forum, and for seven years coauthored a monthly column with Chuck Colson in Christianity Today.

Archives

Nancy Pearcey on Her New Book, The Toxic War on Masculinity

Today’s ID the Future spotlights the new book The Toxic War on Masculinity, by author and scholar Nancy Pearcey, professor and scholar in residence at Houston Christian University. In her conversation with host Andrew McDiarmid, Pearcey argues against the current fashion of seeing masculinity as inherently toxic. She traces the tendency back to Darwinism and explains how the industrial revolution, working hand in glove with secularism, fueled toxic masculinity at the expense of virtuous masculinity. Tune in for the stimulating discussion and to hear what Pearcey offers as an antidote to the war on virtuous masculinity.

Pearcey on Darwin and Huxley: Philosophy, Not Evidence, Drove Them to Their Conclusions

On this episode of ID the Future, Nancy Pearcey returns to explain what historians know, but few of the rest of us do: If anything, Charles Darwin’s science grew out of his naturalistic philosophy, not the other way around. One historian said Darwin’s naturalism came first, and “only later did he find a theory to validate his convictions.” His “bulldog”, T.H. Huxley, liked Darwinism more for its philosophy than its science. And even Darwin admitted the evidence wasn’t all it could or should be. Please consider donating to support the IDTF

Nancy Pearcey Answers the Charge: “You Guys Lost”

On this episode of ID the Future, author and Center for Science and Culture fellow Nancy Pearcey responds to the claim that the design-oriented view of biology “lost” to an overwhelming scientific revolution, Darwinism, and subsequent discoveries have only put more nails in the design argument’s coffin.

Nancy Pearcey Urges Inconsistent Materialists: Love Thy Body

On this episode of ID the Future, author and professor Nancy Pearcey draws on her new book Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality to explore two inconsistencies she sees with philosophical materialists. One inconsistency is their unlivable claim that “we have no free will.” The other is the materialist credo to take our cues from nature — except when it comes to the male or female sexual makeup of one’s

Nancy Pearcey: Love Your Designed Body, Made for a Purpose

On this episode of ID the Future, host Tod Butterfield talks with CSC Fellow and professor Nancy Pearcey about her new book Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality. Who — or what — determines what we are? Why does it matter? And how should we act in light of the answers to those questions? Pearcey explores these questions, and explains how just about everything in ethics — including sexuality — begins with what we think about whether life has a design and a purpose.Please consider donating to support the IDTF

Is Human Reason Reliable? Interview with Nancy Pearcey, pt. 2

On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin interviews Discovery Institute Center for Science and Culture Fellow Nancy Pearcey. Discussing her book, Finding Truth: Five Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes, Pearcey unpacks the spiritualized view of evolution, tracing it back to Hegel’s “soul of the world.” This concept birthed the postmodern view of the individual as a product of social forces. Read an excerpt from Pearcey’s book about this issue at Evolution News. Further IDTF discussions with Nancy Pearcey on her book, Finding Truth: Five Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes are available at: Is Human Reason Reliable? Pt. 1Are Humans Simply Robots? Nancy Pearcey on the “Free Will