Close Window

November 5th, 2001 Craig Scott: "Thomas Starr Kings Writings on God and Nature" Thomas Starr King (1824-1864) was a big figure in California during the Civil War period. He died at the age of 39 from diphtheria and pneumonia. He arrived in California as the Civil War began in 1860; he was only in California for four years, but managed to make a name for himself during that time. Kings father was a Universalist preacher (at this time Unitarians and Universalists were two distinct entities). His goal had been to go to Harvard Divinity School (a school which, at the time was identified with the Universalists) but he never made it to college. He started his career in 1842 as a Universalist minister in Charleston. He then took an offer at a Unitarian Church in San Francisco, the only Unitarian pulpit west of St. Louis at the time. As soon as he moved to California, he leapt into the turmoil of the political scene. Amidst the debate about whether California should stay in the union, join the confederacy, or become an independent entity, Kings voice rang up and down the coast in favor of California staying with the union. He even campaigned for Lincoln. Pretty soon after he moved to the Bay Area, he began traveling about the land (to Yosemite and up and down the coast). His writings (mostly compiled by letters and sermonsCraig gathered much of this information from the GTU archives) evidenced the huge impact that the land made on him. King was in awe of the power of the natural world, and saw nature, and acts of nature as evidence of Gods power of creation / creating. He used a lot of nature metaphors to describe Gods presence in creation. Of the Sierra Mountains, King wrote, "All pure genius, brethren, is beneficent as the mountains. It invites up. God gives its capacity to very few." (in Christianity and Humanity: A Series of Sermons by Thomas Starr King, Boston: James R. Osgood, 1877, 299-300) Upon seeing the Mariposa grove in Yosemite, he wrote, "The Mariposa grove stands as the Creator has fashioned it, unprofaned except by fire, which, long before the advent of Saxon white men, had charred the base of the larger portion of the stalwart trees. Are you as old as Noah? Do you span the centuries as far as Moses? Can you remember the time of Solomon?" ("A Vacation Among the Sierras, No. 4," letter to the Boston Transcript, November 1860). There are even hints at a foundation for a hermeneutic that King writes about while visiting Lake Tahoe. He writes, "Is the Bible the word of God, or the words of men? It is neither. It is the word of God breathed through the words of men, inextricably intertwined with them as the tone of the wind with the quality of the tree. We must go to the bible as to a grove of evergreens, not asking for cold, clear truth, but for sacred influence, for revival to the devout sentiment" (Christianity and Humanity, 316-317). Though his writings indicate the sentiment that nature is for humanity (ie, for educating us, for pointing us toward God, etc.) there is also a sense in which his writings indicate a theo-centric understanding of nature. Nature is a place to contemplate Gods love, but nature would still have value even if no human being was around to see it, for it would bring pleasure to the Almighty. We must remember that the period during which King wrote was a time when people only saw the instrumental value of nature. In California, there was all kinds of mining going on as well as deforestation, whaling, etc. So, for King to write so beautifully about nature as Icon, or nature as sacrament, was at least a little out of the common understanding of the natural world. Though King was so popular during the short period in which he lived in California, little is really known about him today. At least now, though, folks will know better who the Starr King School is named after.

Close Window