Colorado Naturalist Wins Religion Prize - Seattle Post Intelligencer 2003

"Colorado Naturalist Wins Religion Prize," Seattle Post Intelligencer, Wednesday, March 19, 2003

By Richard N. Ostling, AP Religion writer

Online at: https://hdl.handle.net/10217/234641

Rev. Holmes Rolston III, left, Sir John Templeton and his son Dr. John M. Templeton Jr., right, pose after Rev. Rolston, was announced as the recipient of the roughly $1.2 million Templeton religion Prize Wednesday, March 18, 2003, in New York. Rolston, 70, is a native of Rockbridge Baths, Va., has taught philosophy since 1968 at Colorado State in Fort Collins, where he holds the title of University Distinguished Professor. (AP Photo/Ed Bailey)

A pioneer in environmental ethics who says humanity has treated nature "disgracefully'' was named Wednesday as this year's recipient of a religion prize that is billed as the world's richest annual award. The Rev. Holmes Rolston III was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. The prize is 725,000 British pounds, roughly $1.2 million.

Rolston said at a news conference that he would use all the prize money to endow a chair in religion and science at his alma mater, Davidson College in North Carolina. "I've spent my life in a lover's quarrel with the two disciplines I love: science and religion,'' Rolston said. "I had to fight - or maybe better, challenge - both theology and science to love nature.''

Rolston will receive the award at a private ceremony May 7 in London's Buckingham Palace. The religion prize has been awarded to a wide-ranging interreligious lineup of academics, philanthropists and activists, including Charles Colson, Billy Graham, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Mother Teresa.