APPLETON, WIS. — One of the country’s leading scholars on the history of environmentalism examines the movement’s “development as a secular faith” in an address at Lawrence University.
Thomas Dunlap, professor of history at Texas A & M University, presents, “Environmentalism as Reform and Religion” Tuesday, April 24 at 4:30 p.m. in Lawrence’s Science Hall, Room 102. The event is free and open to the public.
Providing a historical context to the rise in environmental awareness 40 years ago, Dunlap will discuss how environmentalism went beyond mere reform, seeking to change people’s hearts as well as society. According to Dunlap, as environmentalism attempted to provide answers to ultimate questions of human existence — what are humans, what is this world around us and how are we related to it — it ventured into religious territory, not in terms of churches, denominations and creeds but as humans’ attempts to find their right relation to the universe.
Dunlap has written widely on environmental issues and is the author of four books, including 2004’s “Faith in Nature,” in which he makes the argument that environmentalism is a form of religion. Among his other works are “Saving America’s Wildlife” and “Nature and the English Diaspora.” He’s been a three-time recipient of the Forest History Society’s annual Theodore Blegen Award for the best article in forest and conservation history.
A 1965 graduate of Lawrence, where he earned a degree in chemistry, Dunlap joined the faculty of Texas A & M in 1975 after completing his Ph.D. in history at the University of Wisconsin.
