{"id":17056,"date":"2015-02-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-02-23T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=1881"},"modified":"2015-02-23T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-02-23T00:00:00","slug":"presbyterian-environmentalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2015\/02\/presbyterian-environmentalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Presbyterian Environmentalism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<\/head>

As Mark Stoll pursued research on the history of American environmentalism, he discovered that \u201cA huge proportion of the leaders of environmentalism during its mid-twentieth-century heyday were raised Presbyterian.\u201d As late as the Progressive Era conservationism of \u00a01900-1920, \u201cProgressive conservationists were nearly all raised Presbyterian. The almost complete unanimity astonished me. Presbyterians dominated Federal conservation for several decades and then vanished as completely as Congregationalists, only to resurface in the environmental movement after World War II.\u201d The leaders were not practicing Presbyterians, and eventually the Presbyterian dominance broke up, but for a long time \u201cPresbyterians had given the movement a moral and political center that no one has replaced.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his forthcoming\u00a0Inherit the Holy Mountain<\/em><\/a>, Stoll\u00a0argues that the Presbyterian background is not accidental. Reformed theology, he suggests, developed its own moralistic aesthetic of the natural world that fed into American landscape painting, American conceptions of the wilderness as a place where God\u2019s grandeur is displayed, and a moral drive to care for the land. Stoll makes the striking claim that Calvinist aesthetics was more at home with natural beauty than cultural beauty, since the latter was considered so thoroughly tainted by human sin. Place this Calvinist aesthetic in an American context, and you have the makings of a uniquely American appreciation of rugged natural vistas.<\/p>\n

Stoll devotes a great deal of space to an analysis of Thomas Cole\u2019s Oxbow<\/em>, a painting that he claims is full of biblical allusions that express the American Calvinist aesthetic, with its strong moral overtones: \u201cthe Reformed themes of God\u2019s presence in nature, the desirability of godly use of nature\u2019s abundance, and the dangers of destructive avarice. Cole began the \u2018Essay\u2019 with a lament for those who could not see nature\u2019s beauty, since they were cut off from God: \u2018For those whose days are all consumed in the low pursuits of avarice, or the gaudy frivolities of fashion, unobservant of nature\u2019s loveliness, are unconscious of the harmony of creation. . . .\u2019 The blind destructiveness of his countrymen appalled Cole: \u2018. . . The beauty of such landscapes are quickly passing away\u2014the ravages of the axe are daily increasing\u2014the most noble scenes are made desolate, and oftentimes with a wantonness and barbarism scarcely credible in a civilized nation.\u2019 Cole fervently affirmed the world\u2019s purpose: \u2018It has not been in vain\u2014the good, the enlightened of all ages and nations, have found pleasure and consolation in the beauty of the rural earth. Prophets of old retired into the solitudes of nature to wait the inspiration of heaven. It was on Mount Horeb that Elijah witnessed the mighty wind, the earthquake, and the fire; and heard the \u2018still small voice\u2019\u2014that voice is yet heard among the mountains! St. John preached in the desert;\u2014the wilderness is yet a fitting place to speak of God.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Stoll also presents a neat genealogy of Milton\u2019s depiction of Eden, which also has an American echo: \u201cReformed fascination with Eden and the Fall began small in the sixteenth century and grew into something akin to an obsession in the seventeenth. In his Commentaries on Genesis, Calvin had betrayed an interest in the earthly Eden by inserting a map of its likely original location, which he placed in Mesopotamia. English editors included a version of Calvin\u2019s map in the Geneva Bible, the translation long favored by Puritans. The spell of Eden strengthened in the next generation of French Protestants, the Huguenots, when Guillaume de Saluste du Bartas reimagined Eden in verse. In answer to Calvin\u2019s calls to Christianize all aspects of life, including poetry and the arts, and to glorify God in all undertakings, Du Bartas wrote the first long poems in French on sacred subjects and popularized the adaptation of classical forms of poetry for Christian instead of pagan or secular themes. In 1578, he published La Sepmaine; ou, Creation du monde<\/em>, his poetic retelling of the six days of creation. This colossal international bestseller appeared in at least 42 editions and numerous translations and inspired commentaries and imitators. . . .\u00a0Joshua Sylvester\u2019s translation of La Sepmaine<\/em> and its sequel La Seconde Sepmaine<\/em>, published in 1605 as The Devine Weekes and Workes<\/em>. The Devine Weekes<\/em> had many fervent devotees among the Puritans, not least Anne Bradstreet, whom a dedicatory poem in The Tenth Muse<\/em> called \u2018a right Du Bartas Girl.\u2019 . . . Milton knew The Devine Weekes<\/em> from boyhood and may have had it at hand in the 1650s and 1660s while writing his own great epic of Genesis, Paradise Lost<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Mark Stoll pursued research on the history of American environmentalism, he discovered that \u201cA huge proportion of the leaders of environmentalism during its mid-twentieth-century heyday were raised Presbyterian.\u201d As late as the Progressive Era conservationism of \u00a01900-1920, \u201cProgressive conservationists were nearly all raised Presbyterian. The almost complete unanimity astonished me. Presbyterians dominated Federal conservation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[506,1051,1204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aesthetics","category-calvinism","category-environmentalism"],"yoast_head":"\nPresbyterian Environmentalism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As Mark Stoll pursued research on the history of American environmentalism, he discovered that “A huge proportion of the leaders of environmentalism\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2015\/02\/presbyterian-environmentalism\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" 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