About Dr. Larry Rasmussen

 

Reinhold Niebuhr Professor Emeritus of Social Ethics

Union Theological Seminary

New York City

 

Larry Rasmussen was Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York from 1986-2004.  Prior to that he was Professor of Christian Ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, DC, and Assistant Professor of Religion at St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota.  For the Spring Semester, 2006, he served as St. John Visiting Professor at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia.  For the January Interim, 2008, he was Visiting Professor of Environmental Studies at St. Olaf College. In May/June of 2013 he taught a Summer Session course at Union Theological Seminary, as he did in June of 2014.

 

Rasmussen is a past president of the Society of Christian Ethics and a past editor of The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics.  He served as co-moderator of Unit III (Justice, Peace, Creation) of the World Council of Churches and as a member of the Core Faculty of Auburn Theological Seminary, New York (Continuing Education).  He was a member of the Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion of the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) and is currently a member of the Board of Regents of St. Olaf College and the Board of the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago.  He is the recipient of the Joseph Sittler Award for Outstanding Leadership in Theological Education and the Burnice Fjellman Award for Distinguished Christian Ministries in Higher Education.  A session of the 2004 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) was dedicated to assessing his work in Religious Ethics.  A joint session of the 2007 Annual Meeting of the AAR/SBL honored John Cobb, Sallie McFague, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Norman Habel, Calvin DeWitt, and Rasmussen for their leadership in theological education on ecological issues.  A joint session of the Society of Christian Ethics (SCE) and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) celebrated the 25th anniversary of his co-authored work (with Bruce Birch), Bible and Ethics in the Christian Life. The Union Seminary Quarterly Review, Vol. 58, Nos. 1-2, 2004, honors his work in a collection of essays.  An issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education included an article that featured his innovative teaching in New York City.  In February and March, 2008, he gave the Geering Lectures in Wellington, New Zealand, with additional lectures in Auckland, Dunedin, and Christchurch.  He gave one of the plenary addresses, on “Just Water,” at the 2009 Nobel Science Conference, Gustavus Adolphus College, and was one of the panelists for the other plenary addresses.  

 

His books include Earth-honoring Faith: Religious Ethics in a New Key (Oxford U. Press, 2013 and Gold and Grand Prize winner of the 2014 Nautilus Book Awards); Earth Community, Earth Ethics (Orbis Books and the World Council of Churches, 1996) and winner of the 1997 Grawemeyer Award; Moral Fragments and Moral Community (Fortress, 1993); Dietrich Bonhoeffer: His Significance for North Americans (Fortress, 1990); Reinhold Niebuhr: Theologian of Public Life (Fortress, 1991; HarperCollins, 1989); Bible and Ethics in the Christian Life (co-authored with Bruce Birch) (Augsburg-Fortress, Second Edition, 1989; Third Edition in process; German language edition, 1993).  He edited Vol. 10, Berlin 1932-33, in the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (Fortress, 2009). He is co-editor, with Dieter Hessel, of Earth Habitat: Eco-Injustice and the Church’s Response (Fortress, 2001) and co-author, with Daniel C. Maguire of Ethics for a Small Planet: New Horizons on Population, Consumption, and Ecology (SUNY Press, 1998).  He has contributed chapters to numerous volumes, among them Christianity and Ecology, Dieter T. Hessel and Rosemary Radford Ruether, eds. (Cambridge, 2000);  Ecotheology: Voices from South and North, David G. Hallman, ed. (Orbis and WCC, 1994).  In addition, he has published widely in journals and magazines.

 

            The 2006 CBS Religion Special, Sacred Earth, Sacred Peoples, includes an interview with Rasmussen. The 2009 DVD resource, Earthbound, includes excerpts from Rasmussen.

 

            He is director of the Ghost Ranch decade project on Earth-honoring Faith: A Song of Songs.  The June 21-27, 2010, seminar was “Water and a Baptismal Life”; June 20-26, 2011, “Envisioning Paradise: Beauty and Biological Restoration;” June 19-25, 2011  “Food, Glorious Food: the Eucharist and Your Foodshed;” June 24-30, 2013 “A Desert Faith for a Desert Time;” June 23-30, 2014, Listening to Earth, Opening to God: Four Women’s Wisdom Traditions; June 22-28, 2015, In the Midst of New Dimensions: Native Wisdom in Dialogue. Ghost Ranch, Abiquiu, NM, is a national Retreat and Conference Center.

 

He and his wife, Nyla, live in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Hobbies include hiking, skiing, gardening, and choral music.

About the Reverend Doctor H. Paul Santmire

 

The culminating book of H. Paul Santmire’s scholarly and pastoral career, Before Nature: A Christian Spirituality was published in 2014. Dr. Santmire has been a leader in the field of ecological theology since his first, groundbreaking 1970 book, Brother Earth: Nature, God, and Ecology in a Time of Crisis.

 

Dr. Santmire’s historical study of Christian theologies of nature, The Travail of Nature: the Ambiguous Ecological Promise of Christian Theology (1985), was praised by critics and leaders in the field such as Lynn White, Jr. and John B. Cobb, Jr. He outlined his own theology of nature in Nature Reborn: the Ecological and Cosmic Promise of Christian Theology (2000). His next book, Ritualizing Nature: Renewing Christian Liturgy in a Time of Crisis (2008), celebrated by the eminent liturgical scholar, Gordon Lathrop and by the widely respected ethicist, Larry Rasmussen, explores the ecological meanings of Christian worship practices.

 

A Harvard-educated teacher and practitioner, Dr. Santmire served as Chaplain and Lecturer in Religion and Biblical Studies at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, as the Pastor of an inner-city congregation in Hartford, Connecticut, and as the Senior Pastor of a historic metropolitan church in downtown Akron, Ohio. Ordained in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, he is now retired, and lives and writes in the Boston area.