Panel #2: Ecological Interconnection and Sociality

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Moderator: Sean Dempsey (University of Arkansas)
Max Hohner (Eastern Washington University), “Birds of a Feather” – Dickens, Darwin, and the Mutual Aid of Our Mutual Friend”
Molly Lewis (Baylor University), “Ruskin and the Myth of Mechanical Progress”
Paul Martens (Baylor University), “Kierkegaard’s ‘Birds of the Air’: Learning to Live with the Grain of the Universe”
Elizabeth Travers Parker (Baylor University), “John Ruskin’s Birds and the Beatitude of Creation”
Matthew Whelan (Baylor University), “John Clare’s Ecotheological Critique of Enclosure”

2 thoughts on “Panel #2: Ecological Interconnection and Sociality”

  1. From Christopher Adamson via Twitter:

    If there’s time I have a question for Elizabeth. I love the idea of creation care rather than consumption, and how you relate that to doxology as a ritual form. Could you talk more how doxology enables that mindset?

  2. Hi, Chris. Thanks for your question. Doxology is an outward directed action that requires body and soul to harmonize with one another for a particular end: an overflow of love. As a ritual FORM (thanks for drawing that out), doxology functions like the banks of a river, directing the course of love toward its object and strengthening its flow. Ruskin famously stated that “all great art is praise” because art — “making” of any kind, be it poetry, architecture, stone masonry, etc. — above all delights in the making, the materials of the making, and the exercise of the will in response to God’s first gesture of love in creation. Doxology demands a selfless, outward-directed response because of its very nature and structure, meaning that consumption or violence are impossible responses to the sight of God in nature. As Ruskin writes at the very end of his Epilogue to Modern Painters, “…the knowledge of what is beautiful leads on, and is the first step, to the knowledge of the things which are lovely and of good report; and that the laws, the life, and the joy of beauty in the material world of God, are as eternal and sacred parts of His creation as, in the world of spirits, virtue; and in the world of angels, praise.” (Sidenote: virtue=praise! Beauty is moral!)

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