Land as Lover

Nova Religio
of religion. It might be argued that Utah in fact has an established religion in that its state
government is dominated by LDS, and it is clear that LDS religious beliefs are reflected
in state laws. It is arguable that, with the elimination of polygamy as a tenet of mainstream
Mormonism, the church brought itself within the boundaries of mainstream Protestantism, which forms the hegemonic religious discourse in the United States. Thus "establishment"became acceptable as long as the established church fell within the parameters
of mainstream Protestantism.
Land as Lover
Mormon Eco-Eroticism and Planetary
Plural Marriage in the Work
of Terry Tempest Williams
Honsard, 3175.
Sarah McFarland Taylor
ABSTRACT: Steven T. Katz and James Spickard have argued that even
though mystical and ecstatic experiences are often self-defined as
unmediated experiences of the divine, fundamentally these experiences are always mediated to some degree through the mystic's own
cultural milieu and religious language. The filtration of Mormon
naturalist Terry Tempest Williams' mystical encounters with nature
through a Mormon cultural lens, which is tied to a historic and mythic
topophilia, lends Williams' writing a creative organicism that deftly
combines diverse and contradictory elements. O n one hand, Williams
points to the irony of her chosen subject in light of the problematic
relation Mormon culture has had with environmentalism and eroticism. On the other hand, a distinctly Mormon sensibility shapes
Williams' love for the sacred geography of Utah and her attunement
to the spiritual dimensions of the American landscape. In Williams'
"greening" of Mormonism, we see the work of religio-cultural production in action, as she creates a unique fusion of nature mysticism
and Latter-day sensibilities.
It's time for us to take off our masks, to step out from behind o u r
personas-whatever they might be: educators, activists, biologists, geologists, writers, farmers, ranchers, and bureaucrats-and admit that we
are lovers, engaged in an erotics of place. Loving the land. Honoring
its mysteries.. . . There is nothing intellectual about it. We love t h e
land. It is a primal atfair.
- T q Tmpest Williams, "The Erotics ofPlace7"
Nma Religzo: TheJournal ofAltaative and Emergent Religions, Volume 8, Issue 1,pages
39-56, ISSN 10926690 (print), 1541-8480 (electronic). O 2004 by The Regents of the
University of ~alifornia.Al1rights reserved. Send requests for permission to reprint
to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press, Journals Division, 2000
Center Street, Suite 303, Berkeley, CA 947041223.
T
erry Tempest Williarns is the PvIornlon Anai's Nin of the American
West. T4Thile French-born novelist and eroticist Nin's steamy love
affairs lvere with both men and wornen (most notably Henry and
June Miller), Williams' steamy love affairs are with canyons, mesas, rocks,
arroyos and other sensual features of her native landscape. Her e a r t b
encounters are hot, intensely erotic, and pulse rvith pleasure: "Steam
rising. Water boiling. Geysers surging. Mud pots gurgliiig. Herds breathing. Woo\-es stampeding. Wings flocking. Sky darkening. Clouds gathering. Rain falling. Rivers raging. Lakes rising. 1,ightning striking. Trees
burning. T l ~ ~ ~ nclapping.
der
Smoke clearing. Eyes staring. . . ."' WTilliams
erlgages the Earth's "bod!;" hrirlging loven~akingand landscape into a
nlystical "supreme union." She writes: "In the severity of the salt desert,
I am brought to 1n7 knees by its beauty. My imagination is fired.
heart
opens and my skin burns in the passion of these momelits. I will have n o
other gods before me. Wilderness courts our s o ~ l s . "In~ forging this
sacred union of Earth and m s , M'illiams conjures the spirit of another
erotic ~vriterseduced by the arid beauty of the American West.%iting
D. H. Lawrence's clairn, that "[tlliere exist two great modes of life-the
religious and the sexual," M'illiams adds, "[elroticism is the bridge.""
And it is chat bridge, that conl7rction, that is key for Williams. She makes
1ol:e to the land, and the land makes lore back in a giving and receiving
exchange that obliterates illusory boundaries between body and landscape."~illiams speaks about the primal human ache for this kind of
communion rvith the land as "an unspoken hunger," observing that we
fear that which we desire most-and what we desire most is intimacy.'
Through her erotic experiences with nature, Williams' connection to
land as mystical lover contrasts sharply with the sexual taboos of her
Mormon upbringing. But, like Nin, who \<asmarried to more than one
man at the same time, Williams casts herself as one engaged in multiple
simultaneous "marriagesn-to landscape, community, cultlira1 heritage,
and to the truth and value of her o ~ v nexperience. Finding ways to
"marry" and remain faithful to nvo lo^-es in particular-her connection
to the Mormori community and to the larger "community of lifenpresents her defining challenge. 111taking ~ i this
p challenge, she refers
to herself as an "edge-walker," determirled to find the narrow path
benveen the strength, comfort, and familiarity of he^- Mormon heritage
and her own artist's heart that resists conformity and is fired by an
y . ~ her "edge-walking." Williams chooses ideal
earthy s e n s ~ ~ a l i t For
terrain-the desert.
Historian and ethicist Belden Lane writes about deserts, mountains,
and other ~vildplaces as "places on the edge," liminal landscapes that
"provoke the identification and reordering of boundaries."M:ild terrain,
says L.ane, tantalizes the human inlagination and "confronts people
with their own edges.''y Both culturally and topographically, M'illiams is
strategically positioned "behvixt and between,"1° a position that affords
her unique opportunities to shape the complex overlapping ecologies
of religion, sexuality, and culture.
EROS IN ACTION: A TWO-WAY LOVE
U71en composing Desert Quor.tel: A77 Erotic Landscnpr (1995), CZ'iliiams
says that the questioil b~u-ninginside her was a J.ery private one: "Ho~v
might we make l o ~ to
~ ethe land?"" She also explains that her reasons for
choosing the topic \\.ere complex:
I am intrrested irr the notion of love and why we are so fearful of intirnac);
with each other and with the laud. I wanted to explore thr idea of the
erotic, not as defined by my ~~~~~~~e as pornographic and exploitatire but
rather what i t might meall to engage in a relationship of recip~.ocit)-."
Williams' culture is Mormon, a culture the fifth-generation hlormon
both honors and critiques. "If I am honest, one reason the erotic is so
intriguing to me is because in the culture I was raised i r ~eroticism is the
ultimate taboo."13 Then is Williams' innovation of a t'Mormou ecoerotica" simply a case of her playing the Mormon "bad girln?]"o; as her
exploration of the erotic landscape unfolds, a serious and uniquely textured religio-cultural critique emerges. Williarns wants to know why
Mormon culture in particular (and American culture generally) finds the
body, intimacy, and sensuality so very frightening. She suspects that the
answer has something to d o with our alienation from the very Iand that
supporls us. The word "erotic," for Williams, means being "in relation."
She finds erotic connectioll to be "life-engaged, making love to the
world," something that comes very naturally.'"
What distinguishes the erotic from the pornographic is that t h e erotic
is about a "hvo-way lore," a giving and receiving.'' It is about vulnerability, surrender, and an engagement of soul. This model is demonstrated
throughout llesert Quartet, but two of her images prove particularly powerfi~l.In the first; after seducing her readers into deep, red, labial canyons,
Williams finally arrives at a place that is wet, gushing with water. H e r communion with the water is total and climactic: "I dissolve. I am water. Only
my face is exposed like an apparition over ripples. Playing with \vaten Do
I dare? h4y legs open. The rushing \vater turns my body and touches me
a fast finger that does not tire. I receive without apoloR-.'""
In yet another erotic encounter with a canyon, Williams reciprocates and responds to the needs of her landscape lover, attending to the
desert's own pleasures. "A maidenhair fern harigs from the slickrock;
water drips, drips, drips, until I catch it in my mouth. Drink deeply, the
desert sighs."'"
In her collections of essays, Red: Passio~za n d Potieizcr i n t h e De.rr1.t
(2001),Williams engages in further acts of sensual reciprocity, climbing
Tnslor L n l ~ das Lover
fol- ir~stanceillto the arms of a,juniper tree, where she spends much of
~ l day
~ est!-addling the branches and nestling her body deep into the
bod>-of the tree.'" ''I had forgotten what it felt like to really be held.""'
I-Iours pass before St7illiamsfinally unfolds herself from this embrace
and climbs do~vn.1j\;hen she does, she stops for a moment and gives back
to the body that has held her so intimately: "Feet on Earth. I took out
my rt.ater bottle and saturated the roots. Piilk sand t ~ ~ r n ered.
d 1 left the
desert in a state of ~velness.""Once again, roi-M7illialns,the erotic is all
a b o ~reciprocal
~t
relalionship-passionate, ecstatic, mutual connection.
1,Villiainscontrasts the kind of balanced and intimate reciprocity she
models in her own terrestrial/human relations to a very different scenario. She M-arns:"12'hen lore is only one-way, eventually it becomes
pornographic. a bod!- that is used, rather than a body that is shared."'"
Unlike the erotic I-elationship.the pol-nographic encounter, as M'illiams
defines it, is soulless, exploitative. and extractive. And fhis, she argues,
is what oul- dominant relationship as humans to the land has become.
As we mine, as we clefol-est,as we dam rivers, as we pump gallon after gallon of water out of the aquifers beneath the desert, draining its very life
force, \Villiams finds we cultivate a po,.nogr@lzic relationship in which
humans take from the land but do not give back." The land itself
becomes an object exploited. rather than a body shared. Similar arguments, of course, rvere made in the movement in the 1970s and 1980s
toward a feminist "herotica." in which women wi.iters made a conscious
effort to generate erotic narratives that shifted Tvomen froin the role of
exploited "object" to engaged s~~bject."Williams' own approach is
somewhat different in that her ecstatic narratives of sacred lovemaking
exude an intense mystical union that seeks to erase subject-object
distinctions altogether.
For Williams, it is the illusion of separation of the human body froin
the larger Earth body that leads to the sins of exploitation.'"he
finds
that pornography, like our abuse of the land, is PI-edicated on numbing the senses, a hardening and disengaging fro111emotion that enables
us to "annihilate what is beautiful and tender."'Vn the pornographic
context, she argues, "[tlhe erotic ulorld is silenced, reduced to a collection of objects we can curate and control, be i t a vase, a woman, or
wilderness. Our lives become a piece in the puzzle of' pornography as
we 'go through the motions' of daily i n t e r c o ~ ~ r~s et i t h o u any
t
engagement of the ~ o u l . ' ' ? ~
Popular Amel-ican ecospiritual icon Father Thomas Berry (who
calls himself a "geologian") has identified this inability to engage the
soul as a kind of "Earth autism," arguing that in modernity we have lost
the ability to comn~unicatewith and truly relate to the more than
human I+-orld-crippled bv our alienation, ernotional unavailabilih,
and distant vacant gaze.2"6\'illiarns is similarly deeply disturbed that we
have become a nation of detached voyeurs who look but do not "see."
Safely ensconced behind the windows of our automobiles or behind our
Here,
camera lenses. we consume the landscape from a safe distai~ce.'~
M'illiains' perspectke is evocative of Evelyn Underhill's classical treatise
on ~rlysticalesperience, that one only truly kno\rs something (God, the
beloved, one's own country, etc.) through "an interpenetration of i t
and ourselves. It gi1-es itself to us, .just in so far as we give ourselves to
it. . . .""I
Cultural llistorians such as Roderick Nash and Catherine Albanese
have written in detail about the phenomenon of Anlericans "loving our
National Parks to death," but in a twist, Williams' lament over \vilder~less
spectators brings to mind seediel- images-the voyeur in the Natioi~al
Park peepshow who "gets off' on the pay-per-\ie\\-sfrom the ~cindo~vs
of
his air-conditioned recreational vehicle but never dares, as s h e says, to
"touch flesh, rock, body, Earth."?' Environ~nentalhistorian Jennifer
Price explores further the kind of wilderness voyeurism a n d virtual
intercourse Williams describes, as she looks at the packaging and marketing of flattened "nature" images and sanitized "nature entertaiument" for mall consulners at such chain stores as the Nature Company
and Natural S + ~ n d e r s . Coinpai.ed
~'
to the alienated experiences of
nature consumption described by Price, the automobile-ensconced
voyeur's brand of disengagement from the landscape actually begins to
look somewhat sensual.
SVilliams provides her own very specific illustration of the distinction
between the "erotic" and the "pornographic" in Lmp (2000), her book
dedicated to her obsession with painter Hieronymus Bosch's medie\-al
triptych, "The Garden of Delights," described by Williams as "a h)-mn to
the sensual pleasures of the earth."3"n her discussions of' art, censorship, and the erotic, Williams recounts a 1990s contra\-ersy involving
Brigham Young University's Museum of k t . The controversy was 01-er
whether to display four of sculptor Francois Auguste Rodin's well-known
works, including one of his most sensual and famous pieces, "The KISS."
Ultimately, the rrluseum decided not to display Rodin's n u d e statues
because the works of art might preoccupy students \+id1the wrong kinds
of t h o u g h t s . " ~ o M7illiams.
r
embodied in the museum's decision to censor the nudes was a fundamental confusion, mistaking the erotic for the
pornographic. The curators misrecognized the "blessedness o f soulful
connection," and the kind of sensual communion that Williarns sees as
so integral to the sacred, as something antithetical to or undern~ining
of religious val~es.~"t is this same inisrecognition of the sacramental
landscape as dead. empty, and profane matter that Williams challenges
with graphic accounts of her earthy sensual unions. Comparative religionist Ninian Smart points out that for a number of religious traditions
sexual union is the "best earthly analogue" for the union of individual
and "God," and Williams' sacralization of her planetary unions is no
exception.36
M'illiams further d r a m parallels betwee11 fear of eros and intimacy
within Nlormon cult~u-e
and the narro~v,\:unimaginativevaluing of nature
solely for its practical llunlan utilit): "I see my co~nmunity'sfear of l ~ o m o sexuality, even wilder~~ess,
as a failure of love and imagii~atiol~.
Sex is like
land. It must be ztsvtl for s ~ m e t h i n g . " ~Her
' 1.er).personal and intimate
experiences with the land and her rn!~stical desert visions tell her other~iise." '4s IVilliams slo~vlysqtleezes her body through the narrow passagelcay betneen Utah's sheer sandstone ~valls,she say:
The palms of n~!-hands search for a pulse in tlre ~rocks.I continue walking. In some places ~nyhips can bai-el:, fit through. I turn sideways. m!chest and back in a ~ i s eof geologic time. I stop. The silence that li~esin
these sacrrd hallrvays presses agaiust me. I relax. I surrerider. I close my
e:-es. The aroi~salof illy bl-eath rises in me like rnlrsic, like lo\-e,as the possessive muscles behveen in! legs tighten and release. I come to the 1-ock
in a moment of stillness, gil-ingand receiving, where there is no partition
behveerl my body and the bod!. of the ~ a r t h . "
In many ways, Terry Tempest Williams does find he]-self in a "vise,"
and not just o n e of geological ancestry and heritage. It is a vise of
religious tradition and cultut-a1heritage on one side, and on the other
the truth of personal a n d t~.ailsformativeexperiences with n a t ~ r e . ~ "
Paradoxically, it is a \-ise t l ~ a tbrings pleasure and pain, bondage and
sweet release. In a scene from Laal~,she stands in Brigham Young
Cougar Stadium wit11 sixty thousand other Mormo~usto celebrate the
150th anniversary of the pioneers' pilgrimage to the Great Basin. As she
~vatcllesthe reenactment of her people's sacred heritage, she observes:
Inside m!. ~.rins.
I feel the pulse of my people, those dead are those stancling beside Ine, a pulse I \<illalways be driven hy, a pulse that registers ill
rnl heart. Icannot escape my history iior car1 1 ignore the lineage that is
mine. More in~portantly.I don't want to. . . . Tears stream do\t-n 111s
cheeks. I am home. I reirlenlber who 1 an1 aiud rvhere I come fr0111.~'
However, there are also things about her culture that she must reject.
She speaks about her struggle with this internal contradictior~.saying: "I
am a Mormon woman, I am not orthodox. It is tlie lens through which
I see the world. I hear the Tabernacle Choir and it still makes me weep.
There are other things in the culture that absolutely enrage me, and for
me it is sacred rage.""' As artist, activist, and natui-alist, what she cannot
give conscience to is the conformity a n d obedience mandated by
blormon cultural norms.'" In her writings; Williams repeatedly champions diversill of life expression (both cultural and biotic). She recalls
that it was her grandmotl~er,Mimi, who first gave her a copy of a
Peterson field guide to birds. cataloguing the incredible variety of
winged species in North Arnerica. "[That] was the most subversive text
she could have handed
To Williams, raised in a community that
instilled a n d valued conformit?- and obedience, the slreer variety of
birds seemed radical, defiant, and suggestive. "Ultimatel~;"slle explains,
' ' L I I culture
~
values control, a control which suppresses c r e a t i ~expres.~
sion. This is iiecessary because creative expressiorl threatens t o undermine the status quo."4"
Nevertheless, Utah is where M'illiams chooses to make her home and
where she has made a conscious cominitnient to stay engaged in the c o n m1111ityof her religious and cultural ancestry; vowing to "stand her gi-ound"
in the place that she loves."M'illiams defines her tradition as both a "blessing and a burden," noting that these are the tensions and coilflicts she
coinmits to carry." She \ielus her marriage of Mormonism and, as she calls
it, "Earthism" as a teaching for her about the creatixe strengths of paradox.
In approaching this lesson, she takes her cue frotn the Great Salt Lakean enormous body ofw-ater,in the middle of a desert, from which you cannot drink." She reflects, "I live now in a landscape called Paradox Basin
where salt domes have collapsed under the weight of time."4"
TOPOPHILLA AND THE SACRAMENTAL LANDSCAPE
.Journeying through this landscape of paradox, Williams struggles to
reclaim embedded aspects of blormon culture that have traditionally
stressed things such as the values of "sustainable living," small communal village life, community self-s~~fficiency,
re~~elation
received in the
wilderness, and a prophetic connection to a sacred land. T h a t is, her
mystical love affair with and ecstatic wonderment at the Utah landscape
stems not simply from her background as a naturalist and environnlentalist but is also f~~ndamentally
connected to a polvel-fill cult~u-alrnythos
of Utah as "Zion."50Historically, a classic illustration of this rnj-thos can
be seen in a map published in William Smythe's C O I I ~ Uofiirid
P S ~ A~~ze~icn
(1900) that depicts Utah quite literally as the Holy Land. [See illustration.] The inap outlines the Rlormon-identified morphologically identical features of both the "promised land" of Canaan and "Deseret," the
new American Zion." In these parallel sacred geographies, the Iocation
of the holy city ofJerusalem is occupied in the New World by Salt Lake
City home of the Latter-day Temple (headquarters of the LDS Church).
Thus, prophetic coi~nectionsbetween the landscape of Utah (particularly the Great Salt Lake Basin) and a sacred destiny for Morrnons are
deeply ernbedded ill the cultural history of a people who place great
stock in the importance of roots and
Geographer N-Fu Tuan has spoken about the particular borlding to
place often associated with an actual o r mythic hoineland as
"topophilian-literally "the human love of place."3 Between t h e sacred
narratives of the Mormon jo~u-neyto the Great Basin, the ancient connections to North America stressed in Mormon scripture, a n d the
~VorlnReligio
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. ~ \ S I l ,L.Ll.'l' l,.Il<E X-.\T,l.E\-, L"r.\H
(By rn!lrlei!-
c,C tlre R i n i:t,~llde I V e - l v r n R R )
utopian visions of community-building o n which the settlements in Utah
were foimded, a strong case can be made for a kind of topophilia
embedded in Mormon culture. As Nati1.e American scholar Vine
Deloria,Jr. poit~tsout, for every other religious group in North America,
the "holy land" is somewhere else, off in a faraway place. "Only for
Native Americans and h'lormolls is the holy land right here."" T h e
great iron),, of course, is lliat, whereas Natiw American spiritualities
are often identified with a benevolent and Earth-concerned land ethic,
hIormons have gained a reputatioll for precisely the opposite.55Williams
points out (with n o small amount of frustration) that according to a
1991 surrey of Christian congregations in the United States, in which
the thirly largest denominations were sorted according to their degree
of response to enviro~lmentalconcertis-a) programs underway; b)
beginning a response; c) poised o n the brink of I-esponse;d ) n o action;
and e ) formally committed to policies of inaction-the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints ranked dead last: formally committed to
ious
Richard Foltz points to further
policies of i n a ~ t i o i ~ . ~ ~ e l i ghistorian
evidence of poor hlorrnoi~/environme~~tal
relations and enumerates
organizations such as l_Ttahlsow11 Anti-It'ilderness Society
Citizens
Against Light Rail. Foltz documents the clear anti-eii~~iro~lmentalist
voting records of Utah's hlormon United States legislators a n d d r a ~ r ~ s
his readers' attention to a 1998 pamphlet co-authored by hIormon
Republican Senator Orin Hatch that ~varnsCtali parents that "preoccupation uith en~.irontiientalissues'' may be a sign that their- children
are abusing drugs5'
Nonetheless, it is the legacy of "h/Iormon topophilia" and connection
to "sacred geography" that IVilliams chooses to carr)-forth through her
writing and acti~ism.Steven T. Iiatz and James Spickard have argued that
even though mystical a r ~ decstatic experiences are often self-defined as
unrnediated experiences of the divine, fulldalneritally these experiences
are always mediated to some degree through the mystic's o ~ i ncultural
milieu and religious language.5RT h e filtration of Williams' own rilystically unifying ericowlters with the land throtrgli a h l o r n l o ~cultural
~
lens, \\-hich is tied to a historic and mythic topophilia, lends h e r writing
a kind of creative organicisni which gracefully unites di1-erse a n d contradictory elements. She points to the ironies of her chosen subject, in
light of the fact that within Morrnori culture eroticism is the "ultimate
taboo."5g Still, a distinctly hlormon sensibility shapes both her love for
the sacred geography of Utah and her passionate appreciation of the
legacy of her biotic ancestors, the generations of Earth's cycles, and the
miracle and fecundity of lice. Williams deftly strategizes lo marry elenients and thelnes of h~lormonct~lturewith a n engaged topophilia. "I
know in Utah, if you say the word '~\;ilderness,'it's a combustible log. It
ignites. So we talk about ' h o n ~ e and
'
it's a more incllrsi~etopic, rather
than o n e that separates."""
Williams invokes values traditionally embedded in Morrrio11 culture
such as the importance of marriage and family genealogy, t h e constancy of community, and [he importance of prophecy ~ v h i l etransforming and expanding their meanings in \\:a)-sthat are in keeping with
her naturalist's concerns. In h'pul G P I Z ~AS ~iifo~azon
S:
Rpnder on Lnltd atzd
Conl,~lccuity(1998) : Williams arid her co-editors plrrposefully tie notions
of sustainability and reverence for nature to sources of scriptural authority citing passages from the Bible. the Book of Mormon, and ?'lreDort~il~e
a n d Cotlen,nnts. Each author in the book co-edited b! tYilliains relates a
different theme to his 01- her own personal story and then provides a
kind of "green" scriptural exegesis. In this context. \~Villiamsargues that
ecological concern and h l o r ~ n o nethics are indeed a good match. "R,lany
people would say 'RIormon environn~entalists'is an oxymoron,'' she
says, "but that is only because of the stereotype arid veneer that is
attached to the religion. . . . If you go back and look at the teachings of
BI-ighain Young, his journals and sermons, they are filled with very
Taylor: Land as Lover
Nova Religro
strong s~stainability."~'
This includes issuing admonitions against overgrazing and wasting water, and promoting the utopian ideal of the selfsufficient communal Mormon village.62
Williams reminds her readers that the LDS Church began with a mystical vision received by Joseph Smith, who was visited by the angel Moroni
in a sacred grove of trees (no less) in upstate New York. Williams identifies Smith in positive terms as having been a "mystic . . . a diviner. . .
a restorer, a man of signs, a student of the occult, a practitioner of
magic." And yet, she laments, "[tlhere is little mystical about us now, we
" ~ ~repeatedly juxtaposes the
have abandoned the vision of J ~ s e p h . She
story of the prophet Joseph receiving his vision in the sacred grove and
the story of Jesus reclaiming his.spiritua1 resolve in the wilderness. In
light of these two figures who have so powerfully shaped her cultural patrimony, Williams declares, "I believed their sojourns into nature were
sacred." Then she asks, "[alre ours any less?"64Williams is critical and
questioning of the calcification of religious tradition by closing itself off
to ongoing prophetic experience or to what others might terrn aspects
of "living" and "lived religion."'"he
asserts that the "origin of my religion, any religion, is a true impulse, one I want to keep pure in my
blood. . . . How can I open the traditions of religion to my own religion?'@' Instead of abandoning one's religious heritage and walking west
to colonize new ground, she suggests solutions such as staying with the
religious landscape and working toward its "restoration." Community,
after all, is about "the commitment to stay with something-to go the
duration. You can't walk away. It's like a marriage. . . ."67
PLANETARY PLURAL MARRIAGE
Williams has been married to her husband, Brooke, for more than
25 years. She writes that his body, so known to her, so familiar after all
these years, still takes her breath away. It is to him that she dedicates her
most erotic work, Desert Quartet, "To Brooke, For the Duration." In the
contexts of landscape and human relations, Williams repeatedly casts
marriage as a commitment to "stay with" for the "duration," a commitment she characterizes as not stagnant or dull but dynamic, "moving as
the river moves."" Williams points to the strength of her marriage to
Brooke, but she also calls the names of her other loves to which she
is wed, places with names such as Moon-Eyed Horse Canyon, Red
Mountain, and North Fork Virgin River." She is on a "personal basis"
with the landscape and calls it by its many names. She begins one of her
essays in Red by reciting a list of more than 150 place names in her
region, the names themselves simultaneously functioning as introduction, invocation, and i n c a t ~ t a t i o n . ~ ~
Anthropologist Keith Basso recounts that when he began his field
research on the Western Apache, his Apache informants told him that
before they could teach him anything of their ways or their stories,
impart any kind of rudimentary understanding of their worldviews and
philosophies, he would have to learn the names of all their places. It is
through the stories embedded in these place names and inscribed into
the very features of the land that the universe is made meaningful.71
Later in Basso's research, he came across an Apache who recited these
place names out loud to himself over and over again as he strung fence.
When asked why he was doing this, the man responded that t h e names
"are good to say," and Basso little by little unpacked the full meaning of
this-that these places are alive, that they are infused with a caring spirit
and protective energy, that the land "looks after" the Apache, and that
simply reciting the names of this inspirited land works much like a
mantra in which the sound itself heals and balances the body even as it
is spoken. Basso learned that there is a bond between the people and
these places that is so strong that the Apache say that when they go away
from the land, they become sick and forget "how to be strong."72
Williams' own relationship to the land in all its mutuality bears
some similarities to the phenomenon Basso describes. She speaks of
the powerful value of Earth literacy and of the sacred commitment "to
stay home, to learn the names of things, to realize who we live
among . . . plants, animals, rocks, rivers and human beings. . . . I think
our lack of intimacy with the land has initiated a lack of intimacy with
each other. . . community is extremely intimate."73As she talks about
reclaiming what she calls "fugitive faith" (a terrn she borrows from
Eduardo Galleano), she again says that this all begins with "learning
the names of things, at the age of two or five or whatever. Great Blue
Heron. Long-Billed Curlew. Sage. Cedar. Spruce. It creates an intimacy of engagement."74In some ways, it is an intimacy not unlike that
described by contemporary Mormon polygamist and writer Elizabeth
Joseph, who speaks of the intimate relationships among herself and
the other seven women in her family: Margaret, Bo, Joanna, Diana,
Leslie, Dawn, and Delinda. Joseph writes: "You don't share two decades
of experience, and a man, without those friendships becoming very
~~ecial."~"nlike Joseph's polygamous arrangement, however, in
which her husband has multiple wives but she only one husband,
Williams makes binding vows to multiple loves, entering into a kind of
planetary plural marriage.
In committing to "stay with" for the "duration," to remain simultaneously committed to both human and non-human biotic communities,
Williams shares the fact that her grandmother's family was part of the socalled "Mormon underground" that continued to practice polygamy
even after it was no longer sanctioned. Williams admires her ancestors
for their capacity to engage in and faithfully maintain simultaneous
multiple sacred commitment^.^^ There is something valuable to be
learned from polygamy, she suggests, about moving beyond exclusivity
Taylor: Land as Lover
Nova Religio
and about learning to share oneself in a variety of ways-not just with
humans butwith the whole community of life. "Every time we make love
to a human being, fully," she contends, "we are making love to everything that lives and breathes. In that sense it becomes communion. It is
a sacrament."?? In this multiple extension of love, relationship, commitment, and ecstasy, she asks:
Why don't we talk about what it means to be married? What it means to
be married to our self? What it means to be married to a lover, a partner?
What it means to be married to the earth, to our dreams, to our cornmunity? What it means to br married to a politics of place that can both
inform and inspire
The critical tension found throughout Williams' work is, of course,
whether she can indeed serve multiple loves, marrying the Earth in all
its creative, sensual lustiness while not divorcing the Mormon culture
that she credits for having first helped to nurture and create her soul.7g
Challenging and questioning the borders and boundaries of the religious landscape, she asks:
What is Christian? What's a pagan? Recently I was in Costa Rica, where I
had the privilege of meeting a tribal medicine man. . . . He turned and
said, "I am Christian, cosmologist, scientist, Earthist. . . ."And I thought,
that's what I am too! You know whether it's Christian, whether it's pagan,
whether it's a writer, a lover of language, a lover of landscapes, can't we
just say that our spirituality resides in our love? If that rriakes us pagan,
perhaps. If it makes us Christian, perhaps. But I love the notion that it is
not this or that, but this, that, and all of it. And, in a way, this is how I see
s p i r i t u a l i ~emerging o n the planet.R0
CONCLUSION
In Williams' strong affirmation of the ability to embrace an expansive multiplicity of loves, commitments, truths, and experiences, despite
conflicts and tensions, she resists easy dualisms and defies a narrowing
down of life's pluraform expressions. The relationship between language and landscape is itself "a marriage of sound and form, an oral
geography, a sensual topography, what draws us to a place and keeps us
there."81 Her life is not only filled with paradox and contradiction
(desert and wetness) but also is populated by the complex marriages of
unlikely participants: Mormonism, environmentalism, eroticism, mysticism, artistic freedom, community responsibility, and personal revelation. Many of these are not easy marriages, but MJilliamssuggests that
there is a deepening that occurs in the process of negotiation and faithfulness required to make and sustain such sacramental bonds, and that
the nature of that deepening is itself redemptive.
The last three words Williams' grandmother uttered before she died
were, "Dance! Dance! Dance!"s2 And dance Williams does, although
that dance takes a variety of forms throughout her work. At some points
it is a delicate dance, as when she substitutes the word "home" for
"wilderness," depending on her audience. At other times it is a bold,
unself-conscious, erotic dance in which she seduces her leaders into sensual earthy encounters. In leading us in this dance, Williams skillfully
draws upon what she calls the "magnetic pull of our bodies toward
something stronger," a magnetic pull in which she says "arousal becomes
a dance with longing," and through which "we form a secret partnership
with possibility."83In essence, Williams also invites us to her own dramatic desert wedding dance of unlikely partners.84Describing herself as
she engages her whole body in a proa woman "wedded to wilderne~s,"~~
found union of place, paradox, patrimony, passion, and personal conviction. Once again, it is connectionabove all that is important, the bridge
between the things we would otherwise hold and conceive of as being
separate. And there is clearly a meaningful and internal sense to her
joining together of these diverse elements. "In trying to wrap my arms
around my own religious beliefs," explains Williams, "I am aware that I
pick and choose what feels right to me. . . . I accept the Organic Trinity
of Mineral, Vegetable, and Animal with as much authority as I accept the
Holy Trinity. Both are sacred."86Ultimately, through her mystical experiences of the landscape, Williams dares her readers to risk true intimacy
and to play (even erotically) with the form and content of religion and
culture. In doing so, she composes a kind of latter-day terrestrial canticle, infused with a passionate planetary polyfidelity that simultaneously
affirms and challenges the inherited blessings and burdens of her religious tradition.
As environmental values gain broader acceptance in American culture, faith-based environmental consciousness and activism in the
United States continues to gain greater notice and legitimacy. From
sport utility vehicle-protesting church groups carrying signs asking,
'What would Jesus drive?" to the growing number of those who now
attend Gaian masses, St. Francis Day animal blessings, and environmental seders, notions of "creation care" and the "greening of religion"
are making their way into the mainstream of American public discourse.*? A 1995 anthropological study of environmental values in
American culture found that environmentalism had already become
integrated with core American values such as parental responsibility
and obligation to descendants. Of those surveyed, 78 percent agreed
with the statement, "I am an envir~nmentalist."~~
At the same time,
however, tensions have arisen over issues of orthodoxy, environrne~ltal
consciousness, and a widening variety of nature-inspired spiritual pract i c e ~Looking
.~~
more closely at a new generation of "nature mystics"
such as Williams, and their struggles to "edge-walk" between tradition
Nova Religio
Taylor: Lnnd as Lover
and change, provides a rare and intimate view into the organic and
intertwined processes of religion and culture as they shape and reshape
the American landscape.
IY
20
2'
22
ENDNOTES
23
Williams, L)esert Quartet, 11.
This collection also includes a reprint of Desert Quartet. first published ill 1995
Williams, Red, 107
UTilliams,Rrd, 108
Jensen, "Intervie~v,"312
Williams. Cinspoken Ifunger, 70-72.
See Kathy Myers, "Towards a Feminist Erotica" in Visibly Fernale: F~rnii~isnl
a n d Art: An
Ant/iolog?., ed. Hilary Robinson (New York: Universe Books, 1988); and Susie Bright's
introduction to Herotira: A Collartion of M70iserr's Erotic Firtion (Burlinganle, Cal.: Down
There Press, 1988).
24
Terry Tempest Williams, "The Erotics of Place," Whok Earth (M'inter 1997): 53.
M'illiatns, ' T h e Erotics of Place," 53. For more biograpl~icaldetails of Nin's life, see Noel
Riley Fitch, Anais: The Emtic' .I ofAnais Nin (New York: Littlr Brown Publishers, 2001);
and Deirdre Blair, Anai's Nirr: A Biography (New h r k : Putnaln, 1995).
Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An C'nnattrral Hisfory ofFomily and Place (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), 148.
Lois Rudnick. Utopian Vistas: T ~ Mabk
P Dodge Luhan House and the Anlelican Countm1l6
ture (Alblrquerque: University of New Mexico, 1996); and Eliot Fay, Lor~nzoin Smrrll of the
~
.Touthruert (New York: Bookman AssoSun: D. H. Lnzvrenrr in Italy, Mexico, and t h Amm'can
ciates, 1953).
'
"erry
Ternpest Willianls, RPd: Pas.rion and Patienc~in the Despt-t (New York: Pantheon
Books, 2001), 109.
This dynamic is most clearly demollstrated in Williams' Desert Quartet: An Emtic Land~rcrpe
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1995). See her comments in Derrick Jensen, "Interview
Nature, Culture,
With Terry Tempest M'illiams," in Listening to the Lnnd: Conurnsations a/?o~rt
andEros (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1995), 313; also, her interview with Benja~ni~l
Webb in F ~ t g i t i uFaith:
~
Conopt-sations on Spiritual, Enuironmenfnl, and Community Ren~ruol
(New York: Orbis Books, 1998), 160. In the Webb text, Williams speaks of how "our body
is the earth and the earth is our body." Comparisons can also be drawn behveen Williams'
mystical union of Earth, body, and the divine and ecotheologian Sallie McFague's irnage
of the Earth itself as "the body of God." See Sally McFague, The Body of God: An Ecological
TheoloLg(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993).
Terry Tempest Williams, An Unspokeil Hunger: Storiec Aonr theFieM (New York: Vintage
Books, 1994), 79; and Jellsen, "Interview," 31 7.
Webb, filgitioe Faith, 163.
"elden
Lane, TIIPSolace of Fzerce Landsrapes (New York: Oxford University Press,
1998), 37.
''
Victor Turner. TheForest of Symbolr (lthaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967), especially Turner's chapter on the "liminal" period.
" Scott London, 'The Politics of Place: An Interview with Terry Ternpest Willia~ns,"[radio
broadcast transcript], Insight @ Or~tlooh,Santa Bal-bara, California, 22 May 1995.
l 2 Tom Lyr~ch,"Talking to Terry Tempest Williams About Writing, the Environment, and
Being a Mormon," Southiil~steinLiteratnw Uanuary 2000), <http://web.nmsu.edu/-tomlynch/swlit.ttwintervie~v.htmI>.
I3 lensen, "Interview," 312.
l4 1 first preserlted this notion of fusion "Mormon eco-erotica" in the "Landscape, Literature and 1,ust" session of the American Academy of Religion, De~lver,November 2001,
and 1 am grateful to the session participants who offered comments and reflections.
l5
Jensen. "Interview," 310.
'"ensen,
l7
"Interview," 312.
M'illiams, Desert Quartet, 23.
25 This is an interesting twist on the Christian definition of "sin" as separation from God.
2"ensen, "Interview," 312.
[ensen, "Inter~iew,"312.Here, Willian~sechoes the work of ecofen~ir~ist
Susan Griffin,
who has argued that pornography is not an expression of erotic feeling and desire but a
fear of bodily knowledge and a desire to silence Eros. See Susan Griffin, Pornogmplzy and
Sflence: Cult~rre% Reuenge Agnz~stNature (New York: Harper and Row. 1981).
Thomas Berry, The Dream of theEarth (San Fra~~cisco:
Sierra C l l ~ bBooks, 1988). viewed
through this autistically impaired lens, says Berry, the Earth and cosnlos appear as a "collection of objects," rather than a "community of subjects."
29 Williams, Rrd, 106. O n voyeurism and the "look" a n d the "gaze," see also Mary Ann
Doane. Femmes Fatnles: Feminism, Film Theory, Psyrhoano$sis (New York: Routledge Press,
1991); and Laura Mulvey, Visual ond Other Pleasures (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1989).
Evelyn Underhill, Prartiral Mysticism (New York: E. P. Hutton and Company, 1915), 4.
3' Williams, Red, 111. For a discussion of "loving national parks to death," see Roderick
Nash, WiMernes.r and the Ametican Mind (New Haven: Yale, 1967), 263-73; Catherine
Alhanese, Nature Religion in Ammira: Fmm theA1gonkinn.r to theNeru Age (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1990), 105-10; and Edward Abbey, Lksm! Solitaire: A sea so,^ in the Wildnness (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968).
32 See Jennifer Price, "1,ooking for Nature at the Mall: A Field Guide to the Nature Company," in Unrommoir G,ound: Rethinking the Efuman Place in Nature, ed. William Cronon
(New k r k : W. W. Norton and Company, 1996), 186203; and Price's Flightmaps: Aduerrtures
with Nature in Modern. Ampn'rn (New York: Basic Books, 1999).
?'
"
" Terry Tempest Williams, Leap (New York: Pantheon Books, 2000), 195.
5'
Williams, Leap, 185.
" Williams, Leap, 185-87
" See Ninian
Smart, Dincensions of the Sacred (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1996), 103; the chapter o n "Eroticism" in Dorothee Soelle's The Silmt Cly: Mystirism and
Resistance (Minneapolis: Fortress Press), 113-32; and Stephen T.-Katz, ed.. iMy.rtirism and
Language (Nnv York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
" Williams, Leap, 184 (italics mine).
3R For a discussion of the mystic in the desert and the potency 01desert mysticism, see
especially Lane, Solace of Fierce Landsrapes; and Phillip Sheldrake, Spaces of the Sacred
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 91.
5"illiams.
Desert Quartet, 9-10.
Literature on mysticism and nature experience makes frequent reference to the connection between ecstatic faith states or blissful states of supreme union and experiences
with the natural world. In The Vanetirs of Religiozts Experi~nre,for instance, WilIiam James
identifies the trar~sformativereligious experience as being the " s a ~ r organic
~e
thrill which
40
we feel in tlre f o r e s ~at n\-iliglrt, or ill a n ~ o u ~ ~gorge;
~ a i non]!- this time it comes over us at
the thought o f o c ~ supernatr~ral
r
relations." See I\-illiamJames, 7 % I'o~icties
~
ojRcligioii~Expr-~
I-ience(New York: hlacn~illanPublishing Co~npanv,1961 ). 40.
Mtbb. F r ~ g i t i i ~ e F n ~162.
ll~.
Jensen, "Inter\-ietv."318.
IVebb, l 7 u , ~ > / i r ~ ~ F c161.
rith.
'"
Lynch, "Talking to Terry Tempest Ifilliams." 2.
Tliu ,\lorr~in~i T'illnge: .l Pnlter~iaiid T,.rh~liqriro f L o n d
.%tt/ciri,-lit (Salt Lake C i h ~ Cniversity
:
of Vtah Press, 195'2)
"'n
adopting this stanre, Milliau~smight Ile said to he embracing \\'hat ethicist Linda
Holler has termed "erotic ~norality."Holler- ar-gurs that "[.j]us~.as dualistic. disembodied
pi~ilosophyi~~evitably
gave rise to a n ethic based on logos-on rules, authorities. a n d
d~~ties-so embodied XI\-a]-elless
is giving ]rise to an ethic hased on ero.r. a somatic, i n t r ~ i t i ~ e
form of agent!. in ~vhichempathy. compassion, and care are the centl-al 111ol-alqualities."
See Linda Holln-,Emtic ,\lo!-nli!,: 7%eHolr of7ourh i ~ i\lo,r;l
i
iZgc~rq(New Bru~lsnick:Rutgers
Uni~ersitvPress, 2002). 1
"
"I
" See, for exan~ple.LOT\-r)-Nelson's
'' London. "The Politics of Place," 4
"
" Jensen, "Inter\-ielv." 312.
":\\5lliams. Lenp. 145.
"'I\.illia~ns,Rrjugr. 148.
";For
theorization of 'li~.edreligion" as a concepr. see D a ~ i dHall, ed., Lir~r(1Iirli&+o~:
(Princeton, NJ.: P r i ~ ~ c e t Vnivel~sin
o~l
Press, 1999), especiall\-theintl-oductor! c l ~ a p t e r bs!
Robert Orsi (3-21) and Daniele Hel-rieu-l.tp,el- (2'1-40). Fol- ,t discussion of \vhat does o~~
does r ~ o constitute
t
"living rrligiorl," see Mary Pat Fisher. Lii,!irp H,.lj@o~ir( U p p e r Saddle
R i x r . NJ.: Prrntice-Hall, 1999). 1-6.
" L.ondon. "The politic^ of Place," 3. He]-e.Ffilliams eclloes bioregiorralisnl's pl~ilosoph-
'"filliams,
CStxJ~nkoiHlrlifi?.r; 140. Elsewhere, I ha\e argued that this conscious decisiol~
to "stay at home" n-ithin one's r e l i g i o ~ ~tradition.
s
while creating innoxatire ways lo live
"more snstainably" witl~iilthat tradition, r a n be charactei-ized in terms of "religious reirlhabitation." See Sarah McFarland Tailor, "Reinhabiting Religion: Green Sisters, Ecologiral Renewal, and the Biogeography of Religioirs Landscape," l\'o~-ld~'i<-;l'i
6, no. 3 (December
2002) : 227-52.
'' FVebb: Fugitive Foith, 163.
ical enlphasis on "sta!~ing at home" or "standing ill place." See, for example, Gal-? Snyder,
"Re-inhabitatiou." in Tlze OM I l f l n (Sau Francisco: Cih Light Rooks, 1977): Debol-ah Tall.
From Tl,+cre TI? Stonrl: Rcroi'oiiign Svnsr ~ j P l n c e(Baltirnol-e:J o l ~ n sHopkirls L'nilersity Press.
1993). \ h n Andruss, Chrisropher Plant, Judith Plant, and Eleanor I \ t i g h ~ eds.,
,
Horrie!.4
B i o ~ ~ ~ i o ~ i n l R m!Philadelphia:
dr~rNew Socieh Pr~hlishel-s,1990): and Peter Be]-g, ed.. Rr11rhnhiti~lga S(f?nr.nlrCouilti;~(San Fmr~cisco:Plauet D r u ~ nFoundatiou, 19%).
' V M h h , Fi~~gifii~rl;nith.
164.
' ~ V i l l i a ~ n sLent,
.
266.
\Villiams. Red, 61-68
O
'
'' Zion is [he hill in Jerusalem
" Keith Basso, IFtrtloi~rSits i ~ Places:
i
I.n!ldsmj,c n ~ r dL n ~ i g ~ i n qAr~ ~ r o i tthe
g 11Frtr1-IL,.Lpnche
"' See \\'illiarn S~nythe,Co1171ir~t
c~f.-Irid;I~iteiico
(New York: Harper a n d ~ r o s . 1900);
,
and
j2
upon which the sacred Temple was twice huilt a n d
destroyed. Even after the Tenlple's destruction; Zion continued to be the symbolic center
of Je\\.isl~national life.
~~!r
(Belmont, Cal.: 11Bdncorth Publishing,
Catherine Alhar~ese,A i ~ ; r i ~ r n . R e I i g it17idRrligio1r
19Y2), 227.
'' Jan Shipps, I\lon;in~~irr~~:
The Sto~? o f n
A'pnr
Rr1igio11.rT , n d i / ~ n ~(Chicago:
i
University of
Illinois Press. 1985), 122-29.
X-FIITuan, Tnl~oJ~hil~n:
.4 Stnn') o / E l ~ i ~ i ~ n ~ , r ~P~~o) r~t-nrlp / iilttittld~i,
o~!.
mid VOIUYT
(Englewood
Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall, 1974).
"
"'See Christopher McLeud, director. I n the Light of Rn~plel~cp:Pmtrrti11gAnzericn5Snned
Lands (Olev. Penn: Bullfi-og Films, 2001), video casette; and Vine Deloria. Jr., God Is Red:
.-I Sative lincl ofRcligion (New York: Grossett and Dunlap, 1973).
" For a docrrmentation of h l o r ~ n o nhostilih toward ernironmental concerns, see Richard
F o l t ~"hlormon
,
Values and the Utah Envil-onment." Il'orldr'inoi4 (Spring 2000): 1-19. For
an interesting counterpoint. see Glen I\Brchol, "LDS Church Is Already Green, Says
P:~nel."Snlt Lnlir % I ~ I I , I26
P ,April 2000.
(;Uhuqi~erqne:Unirel-sit!. of Kew Mexico, 1996), 41-43.
" London. "The Politics of Place." 2-3.
"
-.
-" Foltz, "hlormon \Blues and the L'tah En~ironmenr."2
'' See. in particrrlar. the discussion of mystical experience, culture, a n d interpretation in
Stex-en T. Katr, "Language, Epistemology, a n d hlysticism" in 111?.rlirism and Pl~ilosnphirol
.lnnlj.ii.~.ed. Stever1T. Katz (New York: Oxford University, 1978); 22-74: and Peter Moore's
chapter in the same T-olume,''Mystical Experience, Mystical Doctrine, and hiystical Technique," 101-31. See also James Spirkard, "For a Sociolop-of Experience," in A F U l i 1 1 ~ f w
Religion: .\$(I! Pnratligriisfor Sorinl Aiinljsir, ed. Ffilliam Sv.aLos (Ne~vburyPark, Cal.: Sage
Publications, 1993). I I. 7.
I\'ebb, Ft~gitir~cFni111,
165.
" Elizaheth Joseph,
"Polygamy No?\.!"Harpers (February 1993). 27.
L ~ n c h"Talking
,
to Terryl'empest Williams," 4. For further historical ~ ~ l ~ d e r s t a n dof
ing
the dimensions of plural marriage and h101-monsin America. see Sarah Rarrillger Gordon,
Tlzu A \ f o ~ . ~ ~Q~ ~o (~e7t t i o ~Poljgn~iij
r:
and C(~?~.ctitntin~inl
Ci11zJ~2rr.t1 1 1 Si~ietv~iith-crntrr?i l ~ n n i c n
(Chapel Hill: Urlivel-si? of North C:arolina, 2002).
76
-" Jensen, "l~lteniew."313
'' Jensen, "Intel-view,"313
" Julie Wortman. "Erosional Spirituality: An Tn~e~viewwith T e l - r Tempest
~
M'illialns?" Tlie
IVitness (April 2001), <http://~w~.thervitness.org/archi\-e/april2001/williarr1sinten~iew.
h tmb.
"'
Terry Tempest Ifilliarns. L\'illiarn B. Smart, and Gibbs Sf. S~nitli.eds., .Vnu G~zeszs:A i\.Iwmo11 Rendrr 071 Land and Cr~~ii~~irriiih
(Salt Lake Ci h Gibbs Smith, 19981, ix.
Keith Basso. I.li'sdo~liS11r 211 Plnre.7, 39.
."
Williams, Red, 136.
RS
Jensen, "Intemiew," 321
R"ensen,
"Interview," 310
For a discussion of "women wedded to wilderness," see \\'illiams' essay on "The U'ild
Card" in A n L>l~pnkei~
H i i ~ i g o ;140.
R4
'"Villia~ns,
Rt'
A n L'i~~pol:r~i
Hir~ige,; 140.
Willianls, Leap, 147.
See, [or instance, Jim hfotavalli, "Ste~vardsof the Earth: The Cro-.\.ing Religious M i s s i o ~ ~
to Protect the Envir-onment," E/Tltet11r~i1n1i1~iortnl.1l~i,no~i~1~
(Novemher/December 2002):
13'
Soka Gakkai in Australia
2-11; TI-ehbeJohnson. "Religion a ~ i dthe Environment: The Second Creation Story,"
Sic?-rn(NOT-emher./Decemher
1'398):50-65; and 'Earth in Crisis: Religion's Ne~vTect of
Faith," Il71olrEoith (N'intei- 1997): 4-31.
LVillett Kemptoii, Ja~nesS. Bostri. a n d Jennifer A. tlartle!, En;,i,nili~ioitnlI21iusr i n
:L17ienmiz Clrltlrm (Cambridge, Alas<: hI1T Press, 1093), 216.
$9 See, foi- instalice, Toll\; (;ampolo's IJo7t1 to Rcqcite /lie En!-th Il'itho7ll ITi~i:ihil,l,il:~
.\-orfin
(Nash~ille:Thonias Nelsc?n. 1992). in which Campolo addresses anxieties about antiChristian "pa~an"nature I\-orshipnithin the environmelltal movrn~ent,hlichael Coffnlan'c
Sni'inrv gf Ihr E n t f h P TIIPI'oiitics and Rr/i;in;m,~ 13f t/w El1i~11~1iiliriit/1/
.I 1oio11~11f
(Chicago: Northfield Publishi~ig.1904) n1r11-eexplicitl!- seeks to expose what ile seer as the conspil-atorial
"pagan agenda" of the en~.iroi~mrntal
movenirnt and the threat that "eco-caviol-s"pose to
Christianih. Man\- of the most hostile ci-itiques directed tomar-d environinentalism come
from Chi-istian fundarnentalist soul-ces, altho~lgh,Jeffrr\;
ICaplan has also ~ ~ S C I I S Ssen~iP ~
ti! ities ~vithinsorne Je~cishcircle$ of tlirlse \tho f e u the specter of l i ~ ~ I~envern
ks
erir ironmentalism and pagan Nazism. See Jeffrev Laplan. "'The 1hi-k Sidr of Iiature Religion,"
papel- pi-esented to the American Academ!- ol Religion. O~lalldo,Floiida, 23 November1998. Persons ~vorking~\rithinconservative C~I-istian
a~id,le~\-isli
religious institutions to
"green" sensibilities and to make en\-ironmentally conscio~lsrefol-ms fi-orn within face a
particularl) delicate and challenging job of boun~lai-\;negotiation.
Daniel A. hletraux
ABSTRACT: J a p a n ' s Soka Gakkai Internatioi~alI SGI) has establislled
a small but gi-owing chapter in Australia that in 'LO02 h a d a b o u t 2,500
m e m b e r s nation~\.ide.Since its f o u n d i ~ i gin t h e n1id-I960s, SC;I
Australia (SGLA) has evolved i n t o a highly heterogeneous movernent
d o m i n a t e d by etllnic Asians, of which a large n u m b e r a r e C h i n e s e
f r o m Southeast Asia. SC;W's appeal is b o t h social a n d religious. X key
factor f o r SGIA's growth is its emphasis o n t h e concept of connnlrl~ity.
T h e fast pace of life, constant movenlent of people. a n d a sizeable
among many
growth of immigrants have created a sense of rootless~~ess
Australians. SGW's tradition of fornlirlg small chapters whose m e m b e r s
often m e e t i n each other's h o m e s o r conim~unitycenters c r e a t e s a
tightly b o n d e d g r o u p . SGIA members find their n ~ o ~ . e m e n tfor111
's
of
Buddhism appealing because it is said to give t h e m a gl-eater sense of
c o n f i d e ~ ~ ac n
e d self-empowermerlt, permitting t h e m to manage t h e i r
own lives in a m o r e creative manner.
T
o d a y A u s t r a l i a is e x p e r i e n c i n g a s i g n i f i c a n t B u d d h i s t
boom w i t h
n e a r l y t w o p e r c e n t of t h e p o p u l a t i o n d e c l a r i n g some adherence
t o t h i s v e r y t r a d i t i o n a l A s i a n r e l i g i o n . A vast m a j o r i t y of t h e
a d h e r e n t s are e t h n i c A s i a n s who h a v e been i m m i g r a t i n g t o A u s t r a l i a
s i n c e t h e e a r l y 1 9 7 0 s , b u t t h e r e is a g r o w i n g i n t e r e s t a m o l l g s o m e
C a u c a s i a n A u s t r a l i a n s as well. One of t h e more successful B u d d h i s t
o r g a n i z a t i o n s is t h e A u s t r a l i a n c h a p t e r of S o k a G a k k a i , an o r g a ~ l i z a t i o n
that originated in Japan.
Soka G a k k a i is one of t h e s t r o n g e s t ofJapan's n e w r e l i g i o u s m o v e m e n t s ' w i t h e i g h t t o t e n m i l l i o n members. S o k a G a k k a i h a s a l s o
nur-
t u r e d a highly successful international m o v e m e n t (Soka G a k k a i
I n t e r n a t i o n a l o r S G I ) t h a t , a c c o r d i n g t o S o k a G a k k a i e s t i m a t e s , has
some t w o m i l l i o n f o l l o w e r s i n 187 foreign c o u n t r i e s and t e r r i t o r i e s .
Soka G a k k a i and SGI c h a p t e r s a b r o a d share t h e s a m e r e l i g i o u s
M'hile
h'oua Religio: Thr,Jou~nalojAlternntiwe and E177ngt111
Rrli@o?~.c,
I h l u n ~ e8, Issue 1 , pages
57-72, ISSN 1092-6690 (print). 1541-8480 (electronic). O 2004 by The Regents of the
Utliversity of California. All rights reserved. Send requests for perniission to reprint
,
to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Prass, Journals D i ~ i s i o n 2000
Center Street. Suite 303, Berkeley, CA 947041223.