The
Spiritual Lives of Great Environmentalists:
Gifford,
Les Sponsel
William Ted Johnson
Prescott Valley
Public Library, Arizona, USA
.............................
Gifford Pinchot,
First Chief of the US Forest Service
Environmental Legacy
Gifford
Pinchot, better than anyone of his generation, understood the interrelatedness
of natural resources as an avenue to world peace. He saw natural resources as a
national heritage, which if not conserved, would be exhausted far sooner than
others thought possible. He established scientific principles to manage
resources and made effective use of politics to stir the American public to
action on behalf of conservation goals. However, he was not without controversy
and conflict, finding himself with enemies among preservationists, developers,
and those resistant to federal control of local lands.
Born
on August 11, 1865 into a wealthy class of merchants in Connecticut, Pinchot
was encouraged by his father to pursue a course of study in forestry. His
mother sought to develop his character and faith. He was able to satisfy both
parents as a student of science at Yale, actively developing his spiritual
growth as a deacon and Sunday School teacher. Believing that forests in America
differed markedly from those in Europe, he returned home after only one
additional year of study abroad in France to become America's first forester
and founder of the American conservation movement (Miller, 2001).
Pinchot
was appointed Chief Forester in 1899 by President McKinley, but dismissed by
President Taft in 1910 after the Ballinger-Pinchot controversy. At that time
Pinchot publicly spoke out against Secretary of the Interior Ballinger who
moved forward with President Taft's plans to develop Alaska's coal fields. His
outspoken stand for natural resource conservation cost him his job, making him
a martyr and hero in the press and with the American people. With his insight
into democratic action and concern for the ethical and spiritual basis of American
life, Gifford Pinchot provided the initial national leadership in applied
conservation. He is sometimes called the apostle of conservation, placing it in
the context of a moral crusade for social reform (Naylor, 2005). Pinchot's
conservation approach to managing natural resources occasionally sided with
development interests however, as in the well known controversy with John Muir
over the Hetch Hetchy water
development project in Yosemite National Park, designed to supply water to San
Francisco.
Pinchot
popularized the term "conservation of natural resources" and focused
on a utilitarian approach to managing natural resources. His progressive
efforts to manage resources for the greatest good for the greatest number for
the longest time constituted his unique blend of applied science and religion,
which became the trademark of the Progressive Era (Naylor, 2005). Pinchot did
not view proper forestry management in a vacuum. His holistic view saw forestry
in the context of related issues such as irrigation, land reclamation,
wildlife, recreation, and soil conservation. He developed "conservation of
natural resources" as Theodore Roosevelt's primary domestic policy and
masterminded the 1908 White House Conference of Governors on conservation and the
sustained use of natural resources. This led to historic policies, a national
inventory of natural resources, and paved the way for later conservation
agreements with Mexico and Canada.
Pinchot
believed that humanity was a natural resource for whose material, moral, and
spiritual welfare the conservation doctrine was founded and directed. He
affirmed in spiritual and ethical terms the principle of human rights,
considering humans as children of God (Pinchot, 1949). He is also regarded as
the Father of American Conservation, having founded the Society of American
Foresters and the National Conservation Association.
Gifford
Pinchot was far ahead of his time with a national vision of forest reserves.
This stood in contrast to regional plans or privatization interests as
championed by others of his time. He made it a high priority to professionalize
the Forest Service and believed that a good forester was a good citizen:
engaged, involved, knowledgeable, and committed to public service.
Spirituality
Family
Influence and Foundation
As
a youth, Pinchot was immersed in the evangelical Protestant movement, so
widespread at the time. He read religious classics and attended Presbyterian
services. His mother believed that his spiritual growth would determine the course
and quality of his life over any other pursuit. She often reminded him of the
importance of relying upon God and encouraged him to emulate the lives of godly
men such as St. Paul (Miller, 2001).
As
an adult Pinchot was active in the Episcopal Church. He was exposed to and
involved in many social reforms through the work of the church and as Governor
of Pennsylvania during turbulent economic times. He was quite comfortable with
the spiritual aspect of environmental work which went hand-in-hand with its
socially beneficial impact. He worked alongside several religious organizations
with a forestry office in New York's United Charities Building where mission
and tract societies were located.
Academic
Mentor
His
mother encouraged correspondence with an acquaintance of hers, scientist A.H.
Gesner, due to their common interest in nature. While Gifford was yet 18 years
old and a second year student in New Hampshire's Phillips Exeter Academy,
Gesner wrote to Gifford that he was dumbstruck by the number of men who failed
to see God in nature. Gesner felt that the study of God's works never implied
doubt about their Creator. Moral and scientific progress went together.
According to historian Charles Rosenberg, this view was mainstream among
nineteenth century Americans. Gesner and his peers moved seamlessly between
works of religion (the Bible) and works devoted to scientific research (Miller,
2001).
As
Pinchot neared the end of his academic term at Yale, he was torn between
full-time work in the church, specifically the Young Men's Christian
Association (YMCA), and forestry. He had served as a leader in regular
religious services at Yale and was elected deacon of the class of 1889. He
conducted regular religious activities for the class such as prayer services
and Bible studies (Naylor, 2005). However, he was eventually persuaded to
promote a social gospel of bettering the lives of individuals through natural
resource conservation rather than direct service as a missionary.
Private
Faith
Mysteriously,
Gifford Pinchot carried on a secret spiritual love affair with a dead woman,
Laura Houghteling, for twenty years after her death
due to tuberculosis. He experienced an unusual sense of the divine through his
spiritual marriage to Laura Houghteling. After her
death, he believed Laura was with God and that he was with them both in holy
unity. Laura and Gifford shared the belief that her physical death would only
result in a temporary separation here on earth, being reunited later for
eternity (Bradley, 1999).
Pinchot's
faith in God was never shaken by Laura's death, stating that things didn't
always turn out as we wished but that since God allowed Laura to die, it was
right. Defying earthly reason, Pinchot recorded in his diary that Laura had
come back to be with him just as they expected. Pinchot's diary entries some
thirty days and following after Laura's death state that "My lady is very
near" (March 18, 1894) and "My darling is with me and I know it
already" (April 3, 1894). His diary entries never mentioned Laura's death
but only her closeness to him. He wrote that he could hardly help expecting to
see her (May 16, 1895) and that she was beautifully near him (June 16, 1899).
Throughout his secret inner life with Laura, he rejoiced in his relationship
with God. For example, in the latter diary entry above, he wrote, "I can
not thank our Father in Heaven enough."
Pinchot
studied the Bible, often sharing this time with Laura. On April 22, 1894 he wrote
that she spoke to him as he read St. John. God also spoke to him during this
reading. Later Pinchot wrote that "In God's sight my Lady and I are
husband and wife" (April 22, 1896). Throughout this period Pinchot studied
many other books about God, Heaven, and the afterlife in an effort to lift his
spiritual awareness to that of Laura's (Bradley, 1999).
Application
Like
the ancients, Gifford Pinchot did not compartmentalize his relationship with
God. Instead, his spirituality, professional work in conservation and politics,
education, and efforts to positively impact the world through socially relevant
conservation programs were all woven together into a seamless fabric called
life. Consequently, he sought to partner with the church in conservation work.
He co-authored two books on the country church published by the Federal Council
of Churches. These remarkable works demonstrated how progressive churches could
restore the value and care of the land. Pinchot believed that the country
church was one of the greatest roots from which spring national integrity,
vitality, and intelligence. He went on to say that its life and power was of
national concern and that the permanent strength of any civilization was best
measured by the soundness of life on the land by its people of faith. Pinchot
felt that the tenacious spiritual ideals of the open country constituted our
most resisting barrier against the growing laxity and luxury of our society. It
is the country church rather than the city church which is in fact our best
defense against the advance of the evils of our time, he wrote (Naylor, 2005).
Pinchot's ideas are no less progressive today. The most effective means of
establishing peace, he would claim, would be through sound conservation
practices. His basis for such practices rested upon a biblical foundation of
Christian faith.
............................................
Dr. Les Sponsel
Professor of
Anthropology and Director of the Ecological Anthropology Program
University of Hawaii,
Honolulu
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/Sponsel
1.
Please describe briefly your most important environmental contribution to local
or global preservation/conservation efforts. In short, what is your
environmental legacy?
At
the personal level, I pursue voluntary simplicity in my lifestyle as well as
conservation, recycling, and the like in order to reduce my ecological
footprint. However, my main environmental legacy is through professional work
encompassing research, publications, and teaching on human ecology and
environmentalism. My graduate students contribute further to the environmental
information, awareness, and responsibility of others in their subsequent
careers in universities or environmental organizations. As one specific example
among my own initiatives, each Earth Day I organize a special public event,
most recently a showing of Al Gore's documentary film "An Inconvenient Truth"
with guest speakers as discussants.
2.
Please summarize your spiritual beliefs.
For
more than two decades my spiritual beliefs have encompassed a mixture of
Theravada Buddhism and a personal generic nature spirituality. The core
principles of Buddhism, such as mindfulness, nonviolence, compassion, right
livelihood, right action, and moderation, are readily applicable to
environmental concerns and practices in everyday life. For instance, when I
discover that an insect has entered my residence I place the mouth of a clear
plastic cup over it against a surface like a wall, slide a piece of cardboard
underneath the mouth of the cup to contain the insect, and then take it to the
door to release it outside by removing the cardboard from the cup of liberation.
This may seem quite trivial if not even silly to many persons, but actually if
one can practice such reverence for the life of even a miniature organism like
an insect, then one has far greater respect for other beings as well. This
treatment of an insect involves a very different attitude in contrast to trying
to kill it with a fly swatter or insecticide spray. It has been decades since I
engaged in hunting and fishing, I view such activity as only appropriate if
there is no alternative for survival or subsistence. Causing the suffering and
death of other beings for personal enjoyment is one of the more perverse acts
in my view.
3.
How did your beliefs develop? What person, text, or event most influenced the
formation of your spiritual beliefs?
My
German American parents appear to have been fairly typical middle class
Christians in the Midwest. Moreover, they exhibited a profound appreciation and
reverence for the wonders of nature that extended beyond mere topophilia and biophilia, an
affinity for landscapes and biota, respectively. In addition, as a child I was
fortunate to readily have access to islands of remaining forest and to streams
in a neighborhood of suburban Indianapolis, and also to travel on vacations to
large forest and lake areas in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota. Extensive
travels as an adult through "wilderness" areas from the Rocky
Mountains in Canada to the rivers and forests of the Amazon and elsewhere
cultivated my personal ecospirituality as well.
Through marriage to a Thai woman, I developed an interest in studying and
eventually also practicing Buddhism, now for more than two decades. Buddhism
genuinely complements my ecospirituality. Extensive
readings as well as summer field research in Thailand on Buddhist ecology and
environmentalism, and on diverse aspects of spiritual ecology including sacred
places in nature in relation to biodiversity conservation, have all reinforced
my personal experiences in nature. The profound thoughts about the environment
in the writings of Charles Darwin, Henry David Thoreau, Albert Schweitzer,
Robert Frost, Rabindranath Tagore, and others have
been seminal influences since high school.
4.
How does your faith equip you to be environmentally aware, involved, and
active?
Beyond
all of the above, however, there is simply no doubt that ineffable
extraordinary experiences in nature are the ultimate force motivating my
personal and professional involvement in ecology and environmentalism, as
appears to be the case with many if not most biologists and environmentalists.
Sitting and walking meditation in nature can be among the most meaningful ways
of connecting with it ecologically as well as spiritually. There are limits to
intellectualizing environmental observations and concerns. Emotion can transcend
reason in experiencing nature. Ecologists and other scientists, if candid,
would have to acknowledge that they operate with emotion as well as reason, and
that neither reason nor emotion alone or in some combination is sufficient to
comprehend everything experienced in nature.
Recommended Reading
Anderson, E. N.
(1996). Ecologies of the heart: Emotion, belief, and the environment.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Crosby, D. A. (2002).
A religion of nature. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Dunlap, T. R. (2004).
Faith in nature: Environmentalism as religious quest. Seattle:
University of Washington Press.
Gottlieb, R. S.
(2006). A greener faith: Religious environmentalism and our planet's future.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Harvey, G. (2006). Animism:
Respecting the living world. New York: Columbia University Press.
Haught, J. F. (2006). Is
nature enough? Meaning and truth in the age of science. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Kinsley, D. R.
(1995). Ecology and religion: Ecological spirituality in cross-cultural
perspective. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.
McGrath, A. E.
(2003). The reenchantment of nature: The denial of
religion and the ecological crisis. New York: Doubleday/Galilee.
Milton, K. (2002). Loving
nature: Towards an ecology of emotion. New York: Routledge.
Palmer, J. A.
(Ed.).(2001). Fifty key thinkers on the environment. New York: Routledge.
Sponsel, L. E. (2007).
Religion, nature, and environmentalism. In In C.J.
Cleveland (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Earth. Retrieved July 2, 2007, from http://www.eoearth.org/article/Religion,_nature_and_environmentalism
Spring, C., & Manousos, A. (2007). EarthLight:
Spiritual wisdom for an ecological age. Torrance, CA: Friends Bulletin.
Taylor, B. R.,
Kaplan, J., Hobgood-Oster, L., Ivakhiv,
A. J., & York, M. (Eds.). (2005). The encyclopedia of religion and
nature. London: Thoemmes Continuum.
Tucker, M. E. (2003).
Worldly wonder: religions enter their ecological phase. Chicago, Ill:
Open Court.
Also
see: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/Sponsel
Bibliography: Gifford
Pinchot
Bradley, J. G.
(1999). The mystery of Gifford Pinchot and Laura Houghteling.
Pennsylvania History, 66, 199-214. Retrieved February 27, 2007, from http://cip.cornell.edu/Dienst/UI/1.0/Summarize/psu.ph/1134144076
Forest History
Society. (n.d.) Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946).
Retrieved February 26, 2007, from http://www.foresthistory.org/Research/usfscoll/people/Pinchot/Pinchot.html
Gifford Pinchot. (n.d.). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
Retrieved February 26, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gifford_Pinchot
Pinchot, C. B.
(1949). Address of Mrs. Gifford Pinchot at the dedication of Gifford Pinchot
National Forest, October 15, 1949. Forest History Today, Spring 1999.
Retrieved April 30, 2007, from
http://www.foresthistory.org/Publications/FHT/FHTSpring1999/cbp.html
Miller, C. (2001). Gifford
Pinchot and the making of modern environmentalism. Washington, DC: Island
Press.
Naylor, D. K. (2005).
Pinchot, Gifford (1865-1946). In B.R. Taylor (Ed.), The encyclopedia of
religion and nature. NY: Thoemmes Continuum.
...................................
William
Ted Johnson <
TJohnson@pvlib.net>, Assistant Director, Prescott
Valley Public Library, 7501 E. Civic Circle, Prescott Valley, AZ 86314 USA. TEL: 928-759-3036.
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Electronic Green Journal,
Issue 25, 2007
ISSN: 1076-7975