b'science and religion, he could not afford toCornell University) prosecuted the war of have soldiers fighting loyally for both sides.rhetoric against religion in the United States. To further the cause of secularizing theFrom these authors come two books that have scientific establishment and help spread thebeen in print for more than a century and message of the war between science andare still among the most widely read books religion, Huxley also founded the X-Clubain the history of science and Christianity. group of like-minded,Drapers book, The History of the Conflict between Religion and Science agnostically oriented, andRecent(1874), tells of ferocious scientifically influential friends, whose keyscholarship hastheologians hounding the aim was to reform thepioneers of science with foremost British scientificshown the warfarea Bible in one hand and a flaming torch in the other.organization, knownmetaphor to beHis book is primarily a tirade as the Royal Society. (Draper and White wereneither usefulagainst the Roman Catholic distinguished members.)Church, which he blames for The explicit mission ofnor tenable inalmost everything he views Huxley and his colleaguesas wrong in Western history in the X-Club was todescribing the(including encouraging ridwith an evangelicalthe evolutionarily unfit fervorthe discipline ofrelationshipto breed). Draper was the natural sciences ofbetween sciencereacting to the new wave women, amateurs, andof Catholic immigrants Christian clergy, and toand religion. 13 in America, to the first place secular science intoVatican Council, and, in the center of culturalparticular, to the doctrine of life in Victorian England. 10Between thepapal infallibility. On top of this, he was time of its inception in 1864 and the end ofangry that his own sister had become a nun.the nineteenth century, the X-Club and itsWhites book, A History of the Warfare members gained much prominence within theof Science with Theology in Christendom scientific community, exerting considerable(1896), similarly speaks of the struggle influence over scientific thought. Thebetween religion and science as a war waged enduring legacy of this group, explainslonger, with battles fiercer, with sieges more historian of science Peter Harrison, has beenpersistent, with strategy more shrewd than in the perpetuation of the myth of a perennial warfare between science and religion. 11 any of the comparatively transient warfares of Caesar or Napoleon. Indeed, he tells the Draper (a prominent chemist, founder andreader, The coming of Christianity arrested first president of the American Chemicalthe normal development of the physical Society) and White (the first president ofsciences for over fifteen hundred yearsARTICLE 33'