[balti]

Thoreau has been quite influential in environmentalist circles. His unwavering respect for the natural world and its processes is part of a lineage of ecological concern in the United States. Beyond his emphasis on the scientific and aesthetic sides of the natural world, however, Thoreau also honored the religious or spiritual dimensions of the environment. He did so with a pluralistic penchant that allowed him to remain open to religious insights across traditions, such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Native American teachings.

In contemporary academic parlance, Thoreau integrated these outlooks into a position classified as “nature religion” or “deep green religion” by Catherine L. Albanese and Bron Taylor, respectively. Taylor comments on Thoreau’s importance within this realm:

Henry David Thoreau is often regarded as a patron saint for such spirituality in America, casting a long shadow and influencing virtually all of the twentieth-century’s most important environmentalist thinkers, including John Muir, John Burroughs, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Wendell Berry, Edward Abbey, Gary Snyder, and James Lovelock. Indeed, both Thoreau and these progeny have assumed iconic status within the pantheon of saints favored among those who participate in contemporary nature religion. (“From the Ground Up” 91)

Nature religion is “a type of religion in which nature is the milieu of the sacred, and within which the idea of transcendence of nature is unimportant or irrelevant to religious practice” (Davy 1175), and Taylor asserts that dark green religion means “religion that considers nature to be sacred, imbued with intrinsic value, and worthy of reverent care” (Dark Green Religion ix). Thoreau’s naturalistic orientation, therefore, is actually highly religious in nature, and this aspect of his thought places religion beyond the constraints of an institution and places religion beyond the walls of human structures. In fact, Thoreau’s religious perspective perpetuates the motif of wildness, a becoming feral in matters of religion.

Thoreau’s unique religious outlook developed in opposition to New England’s Christian traditions. He found conservative and liberal Christianities to be irreligious; instead of honoring creation, they profaned it. New England’s Christianity was too doctrinaire, and in its rigidity, it established supposed truths that were anything but certain for Thoreau, and they also helped to create a boundary between people. In the end, he was uncomfortable with dogmatic certainty.

Most people with whom I talk, men and women even of some originality and genius, have their scheme of the universe all cut and dried,–very dry, I assure you, to hear, dry enough to burn, dry-rotted and powder-post, methinks,–which they set up between you and them in the shortest intercourse; an ancient and tottering frame with all its boards blown off . . . Some to me seemingly very unimportant and unsubstantial things and relations, are for them everlastingly settled,–as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and the like. These are like the everlasting hills to them. But in all my wanderings, I never came across that least vestige of authority for these things. They have not left so distinct a trace as the delicate flower of a remote geological period on the coal in my grate. The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens. It is clear sky. (A Week 69-70)

Here Thoreau offers disparaging comments against such religious doctrines as the Trinity; instead of turning to the Bible for the veracity of such doctrines, Thoreau turns to his experiences within the natural world. As he sauntered in the natural world in Massachusetts and beyond, Thoreau found nothing to justify the Trinity and other outlooks that others believed to be accurate understandings of Earth and the universe. Quite the contrary was true; instead of opening up the complexity of the universe and life, such doctrines actually exclude the richness of life and creation. Instead of allowing for intimate encounters, religious and nonreligious dogmas actually prevent more authentic relationships from growing.

One of the common ways of thinking about the natural world during Thoreau’s time was to depict it as God’s creation, and nature pointed back toward God as though the natural world were language with God as the author. This is found in Emerson’s first book, Nature (1836): “We can foresee God in the coarse, and, as it were, distant phenomena of matter . . . the noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the apparition of God. It is the organ through which the universal spirit speaks to the individual, and strives to lead back the individual to it” (Essays 40). In many of his writings, Emerson provides the reader with a reverential assessment of nature, but this reverence is not for nature itself; instead, his esteem is based on nature’s ability to lead humanity to the spirit behind and emanating through the natural world.

Thoreau finds this problematic, and he will proclaim that nature itself is divine: “May we not see God? . . . Is not Nature, rightly read, that of which she is commonly taken to be the symbol?” (382). It is incorrect to think of God as somewhere beyond the natural world; for Thoreau, when we interact with and experience the natural world properly, God is present. It is no longer the symbol pointing beyond to God; the natural world is divinity itself. Thoreau’s boldest statement, however, concerns his pagan worship of the natural world: “In my Pantheon, Pan still reigns in his pristine glory . . . Pan is not dead, as was rumored . . . . Perhaps of all the gods of New England and of ancient Greece, I am most constant at his shrine” (A Week 65). Instead of being in front of altars and preachers within churches, Thoreau turns to Pan: the god most comfortable in wild places, a god who dances and is supportive of shepherds and goatherds. Thoreau links immediacy, wildness, and playfulness to his religious orientation and worship.

In his examination and criticism of some of Hinduism’s shortcomings, Thoreau announces five qualities of the divine, which he calls the “Unnamed”: buoyancy, freedom, flexibility, variety, and possibility (A Week 136). In her analysis of Thoreau’s first book, Phyllida Anne Kent explains how Thoreau’s text is an elaboration of these qualities; each chapter variously emphasizes these qualities, and this guides the structure of the book: “In composing the Week Thoreau has constructed a myth of creation which embraces and transcends all other attempts to explain the universe in mythic form . . . The central figure of Thoreau’s myth seems to be a nameless spirit of the shore which represents creative power in man and in Nature” (14). The Unnamed plays an important role. First, all creation takes part in the divine processes of creation and recreation, and this implies that we need to honor these five qualities in the natural world, in ourselves, and in all human relationships. Second, the five qualities point to an ability to resist constraints, burdens, and rigidity. Instead of drowning in the difficulties of the world, we should rise above them. Instead of being constrained, we should maintain liberty. Instead of being inflexible, we should be more pliable. Instead of being comfortable with homogeneity, we should engage heterogeneity. Instead of focusing on those things that are unquestionably possible, we should move more toward unexpected and new potentials. These five qualities are best encountered in the natural world, and the natural world reminds us of their presence within every human being.

To many, this may seem an odd religious construct, and it may seem irrelevant and without much ability to shape or engage the world. The opposite is true, however, as this religious orientation has serious consequences for Thoreau’s outlook on ethics and politics. What takes shape in Thoreau’s writings is a concern for preserving these qualities in all he encounters. From friendships and his relationship with nature to his criticisms of society and slavery, it is clear that Thoreau’s guiding focus is on how to maintain the divine, wild qualities and how to resist those elements of society that try to constrain them or destroy them. It is from within this religious context that he develops an ethic of preservative care and a political outlook focused on a higher law, both trying to maintain the five qualities of the Unnamed. This religious perspective, therefore, is inseparable from his ethical and political concerns.