The following list is of persons who self-define as Religious Naturalists, though some of them are quick to say that is not the main component of their self-understanding. The order of the list is somewhat arbitrary, meant to give the casual browser some sense of who these people are that call themselves Religious Naturalists. Likewise, the titles and accomplishments listed are not meant as boasting about ourselves or our associates; on the contrary we consider it deeply important that Religious Naturalism appeal to people with and without such titles or accomplishments, and we look forward to the list getting longer and longer, until we have to either discontinue listing everyone who wants to be listed, or buy more space on our server.
If you self-identify as a Religious Naturalist and would like to be included on this page, send to the webmaster a short blurb on yourself, and please give your geographical location so we can show the breadth of RN. If you want to be on the list as ‘anonymous’, that is OK, but again tell us your geographical location.
- Charley Earp, who founded the on-line discussion list for Religious Naturalists mentioned on our home page, is an agnostic practicing Quaker and ex-Pentecostal. He currently works in the travel industry but his avocation is religious, political, and philosophical writing. He is raising two teenagers with his wife of 21 years in Chicago, IL. His personal website, which hasn't been updated in a while but still mostly relevant, is community-2.webtv.net/Charley63/.
- Ursula Goodenough is a biologist at Washington University in St. Louis, a philosopher, an engaging public speaker, and the mother of five children. She is author of a genetics textbook that has been translated into 5 languages, a past president of both the American Society of Cell Biologists and the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science, and (perhaps most currently germane to Religious Naturalism) author of the popular book The Sacred Depths of Nature, published by Oxford University Press. Her summer home is Martha's Vineyard in New England.
- Michael Cavanaugh is a lawyer, current president of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (www.IRAS.org), and author of Biotheology: A New Synthesis of Science and Religion.
- Jerome A. Stone is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at William Rainey Harper College and on the adjunct faculty at Meadville Lombard Theological School (Unitarian Universalist), where he teaches 20th Century American Liberal Theology and a world religions survey. He also served as a United Church of Christ pastor for 18 years. The author of The Minimalist Vision of Transcendence and co-editor of The Chicago School of Theology, he has written articles in the American Journal of Theology and Philosophy, Zygon, the Journal of Liberal Religion and elsewhere. He is a member of IRAS, the Highlands Institute for American Religious and Philosophical Thought, and the editorial boards of the American Journal of Theology and Philosophy and The Trumpeter: A Journal of Ecosophy. Currently working on a history of religious naturalism, he is also an environmental educator and writer. He and his wife of fifty plus years live in a Chicago suburb. They are both amateur birders.
- Connie Barlow, science writer, has authored two books on religious naturalism: Green Space, Green Time: The Way of Science (1997, Copernicus Books), and Evolution Extended: Biological Debates on the Meaning of Life (1994, MIT Press). She is a corresponding writer for Wild Earth magazine ("Because It Is My Religion" is an essay of environmental advocacy grounded in religious naturalism). A Unitarian Universalist, her article "The Epic of Evolution" was the theme of the Nov. 1998 issue of the Unitarian membership magazine, UU World. She nows lives a fully itinerant lifestyle with her husband, Michael Dowd, as "evolutionary evangelists," delivering sermons at church services, and promoting a sacred understanding of the grand evolutionary story at religious, educational, and other institutions throughout the week. Her website (which includes access to her published articles) is: www.TheGreatStory.org.
- Robert Francis Murphy is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister serving a congregation on Cape Cod. He has been involved in human rights work and environmental justice work for over thirty years. Rev. Murphy is active in the Sierra Club's Cape Cod Group. He received a master's degree in public health from the Boston University School of Public Health in 1982.
- Donald H. Fielding ("Don") is a Texas/Oklahoma boy who attended the University of Missouri-Rolla and grew up to become an exploration geologist from 1969 to 1985. Following the "oil crisis" in the mid-1980s he attended Meadville/Lombard Theological School (the Unitarian Universalist seminary in Chicago) from 1988 to 1990, where he completed a D.Min (Philip Hefner was one of his graduate advisors). From 1990 until 2003 he served two UU churches in the North Texas area (Denton and Oak Cliff). In 2003 he retired from the active ministry and now enjoys grandfathering very much. He is also active in the Texas Master Naturalist Program.