Remembering the father of environmental ethics
Holmes Rolston III was a lifelong Presbyterian
Each year on April 22, Earth Day is celebrated across the world. Established in 1970, Earth Day reflects global concerns for the stewardship of the Earth and its resources. But did you know that Holmes Rolston III, a Presbyterian who became known as the “father of environmental ethics,” helped to shape the ethos of an environmental movement that began in the 1960s and continues to this day?
This Earth Day, the Presbyterian Historical Society celebrates the memory Holmes Rolston III. Rolston, born in Staunton, Virginia, on Nov. 19, 1932, who passed from this world on Feb. 12. The longest-serving University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University, Rolston was a philosopher, environmentalist and Presbyterian minister. Throughout his life, he studied, wrote, and lectured on what he saw as the religious imperative to respect nature. His work helped to establish “environmental ethics,” a field of thought he is often referred to as the “father” of.
In 2003, Rolston was awarded the Templeton Prize. Established in 1972, the annual award includes a tribute of 1 million British pounds from the John Templeton Foundation. Past awardees include Mother Theresa and the Rev. Billy Graham. Though “far less prominent than many previous Templeton laureates,” colleagues said Ralston “has been quietly influential over a long career at the often-contentious crossroads of science and religion.”
Not only was he quietly influential, but Rolston also often stirred controversy within the overlapping realms of religious faith and scientific fact by challenging the traditional human-centered value systems apparent in both. Throughout his life and with the help of his studies, he argued that the natural world around has its own inherent worth, independent of human needs and wants.
Rolston’s father and grandfather — Holmes Rolston I and Holmes Rolston II, not Junior — were both Presbyterian ministers. Holmes Rolston II (1900-1977), father of Holmes Rolston III, was rather active within the denomination. For 20vyears starting in 1949, he served as the editor in chief of the Presbyterian Church Board of Christian Education in the United States. He penned and published various Christian education curriculum materials. Another interesting parallel between his life and his son’s is that, in 1941, Holmes Rolston II gave the Sprunt Lectures at Union Presbyterian Seminary, the culmination of which was published by John Knox Press the following year as “The Social Message of the Apostle Paul.”
Rolston III followed in his forbears’ footsteps in 1956 when he was ordained into the Presbyterian Church after graduating from Union Presbyterian Seminary. On June 1 of that same year, he married Jane Irving Wilson, with whom he had a daughter and son. Two years later, in 1958, he earned his doctorate from the University of Edinburgh. He’d return to the campus in 1998 to serve a purpose similar to that of his father in 1941: as a Gifford Lecturer.
A decade later, Rolston was graduating once more, this time from the University of Pittsburgh with a master’s degree in science. A few months later, he began his career as an assistant professor of philosophy at Colorado State University. That was in 1968. By 1992, Rolston had been named a University Distinguished Professor. Just two years earlier, he’d been elected as the first president of the newly established International Society for Environmental Ethics.
With the publication of his article “Is There an Ecological Ethic?” in the 1975 edition of Ethics, Rolston laid the cornerstone for a new branch of philosophical inquiry, one that de-centered the human perspective from the study of the natural world. Through his almost relentless articulation of the presence of natural values in nature, Rolston became the father of the fresh new field of environmental ethics. Rolston’s contributions to the reconciliation of the natural world and theology are best expressed by his ability to apply religious teachings and ethics to environmental conservation.
Though debates continue to abound surrounding the conflict between science and religion, a discussion that began with the publication of “On the Origins of Species,” Rolston’s revolutionizing train of thought has opened avenues for discovery and understanding that were blocked before. In his own words, as cited by his biographer Christopher Preston in his work “Saving Creation: Nature and Faith in the Life of Holmes Rolston III,” Rolston says of his journey: “I had to fight both theology and science to love nature. My own personal agenda for half a century — figuring out nature — had during my lifetime turned out to be the world agenda, figuring out the human place on the planet.” Not nature’s place within the world of humanity, but humankind’s place within the larger scope of the Earth, this home that we share with so many other beings. “If anything at all on Earth is sacred,” Rolston said, “it must be its enthralling fruitfulness. If there is any holy ground, any land of promise, this promising Earth is it.”
Holmes Rolston III died at the age of 92. May we remember his life and work this Earth Day and continue to learn how best to love the planet we call home. After all, “if there is any land of promise, this promising Earth is it.”
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