My Proposed Gifford Lecture Series -- Sacred Nature Awakened

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Sacred Nature Awakened: 

Reclaiming the Dionysian in Religious Naturalism


My Dream for a Proposed Gifford Lecture Series (8 Lectures)

University of St. Andrews

2030


Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D.




Some dreams feel too bold to speak aloud—but they have a way of charting the future. If I could stand on the Gifford Lectures stage at St. Andrews in 2030, this is the series I would deliver: a sweeping history and passionate renewal of Religious Naturalism, calling it to awaken its Dionysian soul.

 

Religious Naturalism (RN) has emerged over the past century as a bold alternative to both theism and reductive materialism, seeking to ground religious meaning, ethical orientation, and spiritual depth within a fully naturalist worldview. Thinkers from Jerome Stone to Ursula Goodenough, Donald Crosby, Wesley Wildman, Robert Corrington, Carol Wayne White, Loyal Rue, and the naturalistic pagans have crafted diverse visions of sacred nature—ranging from evolutionary epics and tragic realism to phenomenologies of unconscious depth and liberationist ecological ethics. Yet despite its promise, RN has remained largely Apollonian: rational, conceptual, restrained, tethered to system-building and ethical abstraction. It has struggled to ignite the embodied, ecstatic, transformative energies that make religion a lived, communal force.


This lecture series traces the rise of Religious Naturalism as a current within modern thought, mapping its intellectual genealogy, major contemporary figures, and thematic contributions to theology, philosophy, ethics, and ecology. It examines how RN reimagines transcendence, ultimacy, myth, moral order, and public theology without appealing to supernatural realms. At the same time, it offers a sustained critique of RN’s limitations, showing how it often suppresses or neglects the Dionysian dimensions of religion: ritual ecstasy, poetic imagination, embodied community, shamanic healing, and altered states of consciousness. Drawing on naturalistic pagan traditions, ecstatic naturalism, anthropological insights into ritual, and radical theological currents, these lectures argue that a truly mature RN must go beyond rational reverence to reawaken the visceral, transformative power of sacred nature.


Through eight lectures weaving intellectual history, philosophical analysis, constructive theology, and visionary proposal, this series seeks to chart the next horizon for natural religion: a Dionysian Religious Naturalism that is scientifically grounded yet spiritually daring, ethically profound yet bodily alive, rational yet ecstatic—a faith capable of sustaining awe, community, and moral courage in an age of planetary crisis.



Lecture I: “The Forgotten Alternative: A Genealogy of Religious Naturalism”

• Aim: Introduce RN as a suppressed, recurring current in Western thought—from Spinoza, Emerson, Dewey, and Kaufman to contemporary figures.

• Key Threads:

• Jerome Stone’s “underground river” of naturalistic spirituality.

• The eclipse of RN by dualistic theism and reductionist scientism.

• Early efforts to build naturalist religions of nature.

• Tone: Sweeping intellectual history, setting RN as a missing religious option for modernity.

• Quote anchor: Stone (2008), Dewey (1934), Kaufman (1993).


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Lecture II: “Nature as Sacred: Contemporary Conceptions of the Ultimate”

• Aim: Map how today’s RN thinkers (Goodenough, Crosby, Wildman, White, Corrington) construe nature’s sacrality.

• Themes:

• Nature as ambiguous yet sacred (Crosby).

• Nature as emergent complexity, awe-inspiring (Wildman, Goodenough).

• Nature as unconscious depths, sacred folds (Corrington).

• Nature as sacred humanity, intertwined with racial and ecological justice (White).

• Critique: Predominantly Apollonian, conceptual, restrained spirituality.

• Goal: Set up the need for a Dionysian supplement.


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Lecture III: “The Architecture of Meaning: Myth, Narrative, and Religious Orientation”

• Aim: Show how RN reconstructs myth in a disenchanted cosmos.

• Themes:

• Rue’s “Everybody’s Story” and its evolutionary epic.

• Stone’s minimalist transcendence.

• Wheeler’s historical theopoetics.

• Naturalistic Pagan myth-making and ritual experimentation.

• Tension: Universal myth vs pluralistic, embodied storytelling.


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Lecture IV: “Reason, System, and the Apollonian Bias of Religious Naturalism”

• Aim: Critically examine RN’s overreliance on rationality, order, and system-building.

• Case Studies:

• Wildman’s metaphysical scaffolding.

• Crosby’s rational ethics of nature.

• Corrington’s ordinal phenomenology.

• Analysis: The limits of purely intellectual religion: disembodied, abstract, lacking communal ecstasy.

• Position: Without Dionysian dimensions, RN risks becoming a philosophy about religion, not a lived religious tradition.


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Lecture V: “Ritual, Ecstasy, and Embodiment: The Missing Dionysian”

• Aim: Highlight what RN neglects but needs—ritual practice, trance states, embodied community, ecstatic celebration of nature.

• Sources:

• Corrington’s hints toward ecstatic naturalism.

• Naturalistic Pagan rites (Newberg, Steinhart, Halstead).

• Anthropological insights into ritual power, shamanic consciousness (Winkelman 2018).

• Argument: A mature RN must cultivate embodied, transformative experiences of nature’s sacredness.


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Lecture VI: “Sacred Nature and Public Life: Ethics, Justice, and Ecological Faith”

• Aim: Show how RN can ground planetary ethics and public theology.

• Authors: Hogue’s American Immanence, Wheeler’s pluralistic theopoetics, White’s liberationist RN.

• Vision: A civic faith for the Anthropocene—planetary humility, resilience, solidarity.

• Goal: Connect RN to urgent social and ecological movements.


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Lecture VII: “Toward a Dionysian Religious Naturalism”

• Aim: Offer your constructive proposal for the next stage of RN.

• Features:

• Integrate Apollonian clarity and Dionysian embodiment.

• Develop ritual, music, poetry, communal ecstasy, non-rational experience of sacred nature.

• Draw on shamanic, pagan, and ecstatic naturalisms as necessary supplements to philosophy and science.

• Outcome: A vision of RN that is fully alive—rational yet passionate, grounded in science yet transformative in spirit.


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Lecture VIII: “The Future of Natural Religion in a Post-Theistic Age”

• Aim: Conclude with speculative theology of nature’s sacred unfolding in human future.

• Themes:

• RN as a new public theology for secular modernity.

• Challenges: institutionalization, transmission, diversity, ritual innovation.

• Dream: a religion of sacred nature strong enough to inspire awe, ethics, and collective action in an age of planetary crisis.


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