|
'Tree hugger' named as winner of million-dollar religion prize
Episcopal News Service
Issue:
Section:
2003-062-1
Posted: Wednesday, March 19, 2003
|
Holmes Rolston III, an environmentalist and ordained Presbyterian minister, has been named winner of this year's Templeton Prize, one of the world's most prestigious awards in the field of religion--and worth over $1 million, making it the world's largest monetary award given to an individual.
A self-described 'tree-hugger' who teaches philosophy at Colorado State University, Rolston has been a leader in the burgeoning field of environmental ethics. He is different from many other ethicists in that human beings are not at the center of his studies. He argues that ecosystems--systems of plants and animals as well as human beings--should be at the heart of theological and scientific inquiry.
'I'm trying to keep humans within a bigger picture,' Rolston told ENI. 'It's a mistake for humans to think they are at the center, the focus of creation.'
The prize was founded in 1972 by Sir John Templeton, a US-born investor who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1987. Templeton created the award because he thought the annual Nobel Prizes overlooked the field of religion. Previous winners include the late Mother Teresa, the evangelist Billy Graham and Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
'I had to fight both theology and science to love nature,' said Rolston in remarks prepared for a March 19 news conference. 'Science thought nature to be value-free. Monotheism thought nature fallen owing to human sin,' he noted. 'They [both] agreed that humans were the center of value on Earth.'
Rolston, who grew up in Virginia and received his formal theological education at Union Seminary in Richmond, a Presbyterian school, said that only recently had Protestant theologians and ethicists begun taking environmental concerns seriously.
'Rolston, more than any other living person, has been the seminal thinker who makes possible a new rapprochement between biology and religion, joining theologians and biologists in their common respect and reverence for nature,' said Perry Biddle of the Middle Tennessee Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in nominating Rolston for the prize.
|
|
|
|
| © 2004, The Episcopal Church, USA. Episcopal News Service content may be reprinted without permission as long as credit is given to ENS. |
|
|
|
