Religious Naturalism
Taking Nature to HeartVoices of Religious Naturalism
The writers highlighted in these Religious Naturalist Voices postings may or may not self-identify as religious naturalists. They’re included because their writings speak in various ways to the religious naturalist orientation as I understand it. A beautiful complementary compendium, called The Earth Speaks, was published in 1983 by Steve Van Matre and Bill Weiler.
Ursula Goodenough
Ursula Goodenough
Ursula Goodenough is a retired Professor of Biology at Washington University and currently serves as president of the non-profit Religious Naturalist Association. She authored a book, The Sacred Depths of Nature, in 1998; a second edition is to be published in 2023....
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022) is understandably best known as the catalyst for the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but this quote also indicates that he was a religious naturalist. I believe in the cosmos. All of us are linked to the cosmos. So nature is my...
Michael Hogue
Michael Hogue has an impressive title: Professor of Theology, Ethics, and Philosophy of Religion. He teaches at the Meadville Lombard Theological School, the premier seminary in the Unitarian Universalist tradition. His course list speaks to his breadth: Community...
Robin Kimmerer
If you’ve not yet read Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, you have a wonderful experience in store. It was given to me by an RN friend soon after it was published in 2013, and I cherished it, little knowing that...
Aldo Leopold
We began this series of Religious Naturalist Voices with Rachel Carson (1907-1964), the inspiration and embodiment of environmental activism. Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) whose 1949 collection of essays, A Sand County Almanac, has sold millions of copies, is considered by...
Victoria Loorz
Victoria Loorz, MDiv, has a fascinating life history steeped in RN and DTN sensibilities. She is a spiritual director and the founding pastor of the first Church of the Wild, in Ojai, California and Echoes Wild Church in Bellingham, Washington. She co-founded and...
Barry Lopez
Barry Lopez, educated in the Roman Catholic tradition, spent his life exploring, photographing, and writing lucidly about the wonders of natural world, from the Arctic to the Amazon. A full collection of Lopez wisdom is here; some wonderful examples below. To...
Katie Mack
Katie Mack is an astrophysicist and theoretical cosmologist at the Perimeter Institute in Ontario Canada, and a gifted translator/communicator of science-based understandings. Her website takes you to her deeply praised book, The End of Everything (Astrophysically...
Jennifer Morgan
Jennifer Morgan, a member of the Board of Advisors of RNA, began her immersion in eco-minded pursuits as director of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Jersey. She next wrote three wonderful children’s books on the Universe Story, which led to her...
John Muir
John MuirThe inclusion of John Muir (1838-1914) presented a difficult choice given that he offered racist remarks in his early years, but after reading the commentary offered here, I’ve come to understand that he changed these perspectives as he matured, and his...
Mary Oliver
If I were asked to nominate an RN Poet Laureate I would for sure nominate Mary Oliver. In the forthcoming second edition of The Sacred Depths of Nature I include four of her vibrant poems, and post them below in their book-embedded context. 1. In many religious...
Pope Francis
Pope FrancisPope Francis is unlikely to call himself a religious naturalist, but to my mind his magnificent encyclical Laudato Si’, proclaimed in 2015, carries the essence of the RN orientation framed in Roman Catholic language. Francis was trained as a chemist, and...