The Spiritual Lives of Great Environmentalist

Abstract

The Spiritual Lives of Great Environmentalists William Ted Johnson Scottsdale Public Library, Arizona, USA Spirituality and the environment are ever in the news and are frequent topics of scholarly research, especially when it comes to how they influence one another. From ancient civilizations to contemporary culture, people have viewed the intersection of the environment with their personal lives in spiritual terms. Environmentally inclined individuals certainly do not have the spiritual market cornered, however. From musicians to machines, the spiritual side of each has been presented (Kavanaugh, 1992; Kurzweil, 1999). Admittedly, both terms, “spiritual” and “environmentalist” are ambiguous. The context in which they are used is quite important. Purpose, like context, is a critical consideration in the use of these terms. Faith, like fact, has been used to find truth. Science and religion both claim distinct advantages in their respective searches for truth. They have been allied as well as pitted against each other with varying levels of intensity and passion on their truth quests. Friend as well as foe, each frequently calls upon the other to validate their own worth in the search. Since Lynn White’s 1967 article in Science, which called upon religion to solve environmental problems, scholars have debated the positive and negative impacts of religious views on the environment. Evan Berry (2003) has made a significant contribution to this discussion. His holistic approach strikes a much-needed balance in the debate and he points out the futility of finding fault rather than fostering mutual understanding. It is hoped that the novel approach taken here to establish a relationship between spirituality and the environment, will make a significant contribution to the literature on the subject. History and opinion surveys, like those used by White (1967) and Berry (2003), respectively, have offered much food for thought on this complex issue. I propose a biographical approach, examining the spiritual underpinnings of those who have made significant contributions to conservation, preservation, or some sort of environmental issue (e.g. air or water quality improvement). The basis for this approach is that religious training, especially in one’s youth, plays a vital role in the development of an individual’s worldview, including one’s attitude toward nature. Books and articles abound on the relationship between science and religion, but very few focus on the specialized matter of environmental issues or environmentalists. Interestingly, White nominated a Christian historical figure, Saint Francis, as the patron saint of ecologists, in spite of the fact that he blamed historical