Faith and reason are not entirely interrelated, as neither can be effectively derived from the other. With that said, I believe that the two complement each other; Aquinas believed that to grasp what one could of the divine, one had to develop their reasoning (“Saint Thomas Aquinas,” 2014). Reason without faith risks becoming cold and detached from humanity, and faith without reason can come to dangerous and harmful conclusions.
It is a common conception currently that public administration should be entirely secular and not involve religion. I agree with this idea, but I also believe that purely reason-oriented decisions tend to fail because of unforeseen factors. Sometimes, it is necessary to make decisions based on one’s sense of right and wrong, which will be explicitly or implicitly formed by their faith. Hence, as Krishna-Hensel (2016), the divide is fabricated in large part, and the two characteristics assist each other.
As the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated, purely scientific solutions to emergencies tend to cause as many problems as they solve; specifically, the lockdowns had limited infection-stopping utility but succeeded in ruining countless people’s lives. Parker (2019) believes that faith-based solutions can help communities find cohesion and provide assistance to members in need in difficult situations. I agree and believe that, while science is massively beneficial for resolving crises, it should be supplemented with a spiritual element.
References
Aquinas, T. (2006). Summa Theologica. The Gutenberg Project. Web.
Krishna-Hensel, S. F. (Ed.). (2016). Religion, education and governance in the Middle East: Between tradition and modernity. Taylor & Francis.
Parker, J. (2019). Emergency preparedness through community cohesion: An integral approach to resilience. Taylor & Francis.
Saint Thomas Aquinas. (2014). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Web.