wfn.org | Rolston, Chisholm Receive Writing Awards

[PCUSA NEWS <pcusa.news@ecunet.org>]

GA99089 
25-June-1999 
 
             Rolston, Chisholm Receive Writing Awards 
 
FORT WORTH-Introduced as "the father of environmental ethics," Presbyterian 
minister and philosophy professor Holmes Rolston III received the 1999 
Distinguished Writer Award and a check for $1,000 from the Presbyterian 
Writers Guild at a luncheon Thursday, June 24. 
     The James W. Angell Award was presented by the Guild to Cathy Cummings 
Chisholm for her book of poems and photos, "Landscapes of the Heart," 
published by Bridge Resources. The $500 Angell award honors new writers and 
is given annually to the Presbyterian author with the best first book. 
     Chisholm is pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Vandalia, Ill., and 
former chair of the General Assembly Council.  A representative of Bridge 
Resources also presented her with the Independent Publishers Book Award for 
authoring one of the three best books on spirituality in 1998. 
     Rolston began his address to the Writers Guild by recalling his 
Presbyterian upbringing in the South. His father was a Presbyterian pastor 
and the young Rolston attended Davidson College and Union Theological 
Seminary in Virginia.  He spent 10 years as a pastor in rural southwest 
Virginia. 
     "I tried to be a good Presbyterian the problem was I had a wild streak 
in me," Rolston said. 
     His growing fascination with science and religion, as he described it, 
soon made him "a Presbyterian going wild."  He went on to study the 
philosophy of science.  But most theologians and philosophy professors he 
talked with tried to discourage his interest in biology. 
 
     "When I became interested in the natural world," he said, "I found I 
had to fight theology to love nature."  Yet he found in the Bible constant 
reminders of the natural universe. 
     In 1997 Ralston became the first American Presbyterian to  deliver the 
Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.  His lectures 
were published in book form this year under the title "Genes, Genesis and 
God." 
      
Eva Stimson 

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