Mother Nature and 'Nature's God'

Last week, this writer heard Sally Jewell, former secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, speak at an event.

Jewell's remarks kept me rooted in my seat for an hour as she spoke passionately about getting children -- in particular -- to look up from their cell phones and to experience with their own eyes America's public parks

An outdoor enthusiast, Jewell talked of childhood memories exploring Mount Rainier in Washington state, where she and her family put down roots after relocating in childhood from Great Britain.

She reminded the audience how the wild Dakota Territory functioned as a healing balm for Theodore Roosevelt, many years before he would occupy the White House, when the Republican lost his mother and his first wife on the very same day in 1884.

The British-born Jewell was President Obama's Interior secretary during the 44th president's second term, from 2013 to 2017.

Terms

Perhaps you do this too, dear reader, but when I listen to people speak, their word choices speak volumes.

Such was the case in Jewell's remarks, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

She made no reference to God in her prepared speech.

Instead, she made multiple references to Mother Nature.

"The best classroom, in my view, is the one with no walls. Mother Nature is an incredible teacher," Jewell told attendees at Chautauqua Institution in western New York state.

"Mother Nature," as a term, is sometimes employed when a person does not cleave to a particular religious faith -- or, as I suspect is the case with Jewell -- when there is no desire to offend the listener.

Thomas Jefferson, whose own religious views have been a source of historian inquiry for more than two centuries, used a slightly different term, a close cousin of Mother Nature, when acting as principal writer of the historic Declaration of Independence -- the founding document of this nation.

"When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation," Jefferson wrote in 1776.

Deism

Historians generally agree Jefferson was a deist -- a person acknowledging a Creator who is not personally involved in the lives of the created.

While I'm personally uncomfortable with deism as a belief system, perhaps America needed a man at that moment in history who had a more general (e.g., "Nature's God") attitude toward the Almighty.

There was a desire for religious liberty, not simply political liberty, in America's founding.

As a result, it is believed, Jefferson desired to touch lightly on the notion of Providence, fearing any reader of his words might seize on any particular religious emphasis to foment the kind of sectarianism so common in 18th century western Europe.

There would be no theocracy, no merger of church and government, in this new land.

Jefferson's carefully crafted words so long ago may well have protected the new United States from becoming the province of any one church.

As I joined my family in watching the fireworks rise over Chautauqua Lake on July 4, I found myself grateful for those who are careful with their words they choose to speak.

Contempt for the thoughts of others has become widespread in the time in which we live.

Any cursory review of Facebook feeds will reveal disdain and antipathy for ideas that do not precisely square with one's own.

We could use more of the thoughtful discretion of Jefferson and Jewell in our pulpits, in our social media posts and in our public square.