ENVIRONMENTALIST WINS PRIZE

The Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities has been awarded to Rev. Holmes Rolston, Ill. He established the field of environmental ethics. He focused beyond humans to show how plants, animals, and ecosystems have established goodness and needed to be considered in the total equation of creation. He demonstrated that ethics need to be based on a broader foundation than merely human concerns.

In a news conference following the announcement of the prize, Rev. Rolston said, "Our planetary crisis is one of spiritual information; not so much sustainable development, certainly not escalating consumption, but using the Earth with justice and charity. Science cannot take us there, religion perhaps can. After we learn altruism for each other, we need to become altruists toward our fellow creatures. We must encounter nature with grace, with an Earth ethics, because our ultimate Environment is God - in whom we live, move, and have our being."

The Templeton prize, worth l.2 million dollars, is the largest prize offered to an individual, more than the Nobel prize, because he believed that spiritual discoveries would be the most important and wanted to highlight their significance. Rev. Rolston is donating the prize money to his alma mater, Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina, to endow a chair in religion and science.