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ABSTRACT God's Wildness: the Christian Roots of Ecological Ethics in American Literature Jeffrey L. Bilbro, Ph.D. Mentor

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ABSTRACT God's Wildness: the Christian Roots of Ecological Ethics in American Literature Jeffrey L. Bilbro, Ph.D. Mentor ABSTRACT God’s Wildness: The Christian Roots of Ecological Ethics in American Literature Jeffrey L. Bilbro, Ph.D. Mentor: Joe B. Fulton, Ph.D. Early Puritan colonists expressed conflicting views regarding the religious significance of the New World’s natural environment. On the one hand, it was “the Devil’s Territories” that God would transform into “a Mart” to enrich his church. On the other hand, it was “God’s temple” in which humans should act as priests. While the first view justifies, even demands, America’s voracious extractive economy, many literary artists have developed the latter view to imagine ways that humans might fulfill more caring, priestly roles within America’s ecological communities. Instead of reordering the Devil’s territories to suit human ends, these authors challenge readers to reorder their own lives in order to participate in God’s wild ecology. This study examines the work of four American writers—Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Willa Cather, and Wendell Berry—to understand the different means they propose to enable humans to participate in the ongoing redemptive work that God desires to accomplish in his creation. Thoreau draws explicitly on Puritan forms of history and natural philosophy as he calls his neighbors to glorify and enjoy God “in his works.” Muir’s writings in support of the National Parks transfer the central tenets of Disciples of Christ theology to his own “gospel of glaciers,” so he preached that humans could experience God’s presence most powerfully in primitive wilderness. In Death Comes for the Archbishop, Cather models her priests’ reconciliatory work in their mission and gardens on the active submission to God’s will that enabled the Virgin Mary to participate in the Incarnation and Jesus to participate in his Father’s redemptive plan. In Berry’s essays and fiction, he articulates a “way of love” that humans can follow to honor and participate in God’s redemptive love for all creation. Each of these authors imagines practical ways by which humans can fulfill their role as priests in God’s wild temple, and their insights may help Americans reinterpret their religious traditions in order to find wisdom regarding how to care for the damaged ecological systems within which they live. God's Wildness: The Christian Roots of Ecological Ethics in American Literature by Jeffrey L. Bilbro, B.A. A Dissertation Approved by the Department of English ___________________________________ Dianna M. Vitanza, Ph.D., Chairperson Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Baylor University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved by the Dissertation Committee ___________________________________ Joe B. Fulton, Ph.D., Chairperson ___________________________________ Luke Ferretter, Ph.D. ___________________________________ Sarah K. Ford, Ph.D. ___________________________________ David Lyle Jeffrey, Ph.D. ___________________________________ Emily Setina, Ph.D. Accepted by the Graduate School May 2012 ___________________________________ J. Larry Lyon, Ph.D., Dean Page bearing signatures is kept on file in the Graduate School. Copyright © 2012 by Jeffrey L. Bilbro All rights reserved TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS viii CHAPTER ONE 1 Rediscovering the Roots: Learning to be Priests in God’s Wild Temple 1 CHAPTER TWO 29 “Watching for the Glory of God”: Thoreau’s Adaptations of Puritan History and Natural Philosophy 29 The Religious Contexts of Transcendentalism 32 Thoreau’s Conflicted Attitude toward New England’s Past 37 Re-Settling Walden for Spiritual Ends 45 Natural Philosophy for the Glory of God 65 Enjoying Creation in the Economy of God’s Glory 78 CHAPTER THREE 89 Preserving “God’s Wildness” for Redemptive Baptism: Muir and Disciples of Christ Theology 89 Growing Up in the Disciples Community 94 Developing a Religious Cosmology on his Thousand-Mile Walk 103 Understanding the Glacier-Baptized Sierra 111 Preaching Mountain Baptism 120 Preserving Wild Places in the Garden of Eden 139 CHAPTER FOUR 150 “Lost and Saved in a Garden”: Cather’s Marian Restoration of Ecological Community 150 Cather’s Catholic Vision of Community 153 v Bearing Christ in the Garden of Agony 174 Rejecting the Serpent’s Temptation 187 Welcoming all into the “Holy Family” 195 CHAPTER FIVE 214 “The Way of Love”: Berry’s Vision of Work in the Kingdom of God 214 Caring for God’s Abundant Life 219 Following the Way of Love with Jayber Crow 239 Faithfully Working out Love 264 Living on Heaven’s Bottom Rung 278 CHAPTER SIX 280 Untangling the Roots 280 WORKS CITED 285 vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS DCA Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather HMJ The Journal of Henry D. Thoreau (Houghton Mifflin Co.) by Henry David Thoreau JC Jayber Crow: The Life Story of Jayber Crow, Barber, of the Port William Membership, as Written by Himself by Wendell Berry JMP John Muir Papers by John Muir MOJ The Memory of Old Jack by Wendell Berry PJ Journal (Princeton) by Henry David Thoreau RP Reform Papers by Henry David Thoreau WA Walden by Henry David Thoreau vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am deeply grateful for those who have walked ahead and alongside me on this rather overwhelming project. Without their gifts of wisdom, humor, and love I would never have finished. I am grateful for the authors whose works were the inspiration and subject of this study. They addressed themselves thoughtfully and creatively to the tradition they inherited, and so handed down a better place than they received. I am grateful for the scholars and teachers whose writings and conversations shaped my readings of these authors. My bibliography records many of these debts, but in addition I’d like to thank Bill Jolliff for introducing me to Wendell Berry’s novels, Corey Beals for teaching a course on Berry’s environmental philosophy, and Nancy Chinn for sharing her love of Willa Cather. My director, Joe Fulton, and each of the members of my dissertation committee supported and encouraged me through this project, and their hard questions helped me avoid many pitfalls. Most importantly, they taught me that rigorous scholars can be genuinely kind people. I am grateful for my fellow graduate students Josh Boyd, Christina Iluzada, and John Pierce who read portions of my work and offered me invaluable feedback. Bethany Bear and Steven Petersheim read drafts of my entire dissertation, and their honest critiques greatly improved my argument. Their friendship and support throughout this process helped me retain a modicum of sanity. I am grateful for my friends and family who kept me from floating away into the academic ether. The wonderful people who live in Stehekin allowed my family and me viii to experience the joys and challenges of an embodied community that actually cares for all its members. My extended and immediate family read drafts of my work, and their thoughtful questions humored my fantasy that normal people might be interested in the conclusions of my research. Most of all, I am grateful for my wonderful wife, Melissa. I'm thankful for her patience and grace, for her keen editorial eye, and for her wisdom in making me set aside my dissertation to take walks, cook good meals, and spend time with friends. ix CHAPTER ONE Rediscovering the Roots: Learning to be Priests in God’s Wild Temple He discharges also the Office of a Priest for the Creation, under the Influences of an admirable Saviour, and therein asserts and assures his Title unto that Priesthood, which the Blessedness of the future State will very much consist in being advanced to. The whole World is indeed a Temple of GOD. —Mather, Christian Philosopher 7 American wilderness confronted the Puritan colonists when they arrived in the New World to carry out their divine errand. They immediately had to set about determining what their efforts to plant a pure church should look like in this natural environment. Was this vast continent “the Devil’s Territories” that needed to be conquered and cultivated for God’s Kingdom? Or was it “a temple of God” in which to glorify and serve its Creator? The fact that both these appellations come from the same author, Cotton Mather, indicates the deep confusion the Puritans had regarding the character of this land and their proper relation to it. This confusion has had an enduring and profound legacy. This dissertation explores the effects of this legacy in some of the nation’s foremost works of nineteenth- and twentieth-century environmental literature. Before turning to these literary successors, though, a clearer idea is needed regarding what the Massachusetts Bay colonists thought about how they should understand and use the vast natural landscape, so different from what they had left behind in England, to which their errand had brought them. Reading through Puritan histories and sermons, it soon becomes apparent that while they spoke often about the divine end that brought them to the New World, they did not think as carefully about the physical 1 means by which they should fulfill this end. For instance, in his mammoth work of American history, Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), Cotton Mather criticizes the later European colonists who came to America not to found a pure church, but to gain greater economic opportunities. Mather describes a congregation of such individuals who mocked a visiting Puritan preacher: “one of our Ministers . urged them to approve themselves a Religious People from this Consideration, That otherwise they would contradict the main end of Planting this Wilderness; whereupon a well-known Person, then in the Assembly, cry’d out, Sir, You are mistaken, you think you are Preaching to the People at the Bay; our main End was to catch Fish” (Magnalia 147). Ironically, Mather follows this incident by reporting that God judged these sacrilegious fishermen through the financial failure of their colony.
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