Holmes Rolston III couldn't resist a bit of country boy, gee-whiz humility when he was proclaimed winner of the 2003 Templeton Prize at a March 19 luncheon in New York City. Dr. Rolston, 70, hails from Virginia's Shenandoah Valley and grew up in a house that had neither electricity nor running water. A wild streak led him to study the theology of nature, he claimed, so he didn't feel quite comfortable at an "uptown" press conference.

That's one version of his biography.

Another is that Rolston is University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University and an ordained Presbyterian minister. After 30 years of advocating the protection of earth's biodiversity and preaching that nature has intrinsic value, Rolston has earned the honorific title, "father" of environmental ethics. Many of his books — including Science and Religion — A Critical Study (1986); Environmental Ethics (1987); and Genes, Genetics and God (1999) — are available in 18 languages. He has delivered lectures at prestigious universities on seven continents.

And now Rolston is Laureate of the Templeton Prize for Progress toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities, that Sir John Templeton created in 1972. Valued at 725,000 pounds sterling, it is the world's largest monetary award given annually to an individual. The Duke of Edinburgh will make the formal presentation of the Templeton Prize in a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace on May 7, placing Holmes Rolston III in the company of past Templeton Laureates such as Mother Teresa of Calcutta, The Rev. Dr. John C. Polkinghorne, Professor Paul Davies and physicist Freeman Dyson.

For all this, Rolston seems genuinely most comfortable recalling youthful days spent in Virginia, where the Blue Ridge Mountains shaped his farthest horizon and the family property boasted a cistern, a large garden and a chicken yard. As a teenager, he loved to explore the Goshen Pass, studying the area's famous rhododendrons, many varieties of moss, and limestone formations.

"If you've got to be born anywhere on a journey to loving nature, the Shenandoah Valley was a marvelous place. I was born in green pastures," he said, alluding to Psalm 23. His father and grandfather, both Presbyterian ministers, grew up on farms as well, thus "all kinds of nature and the gospel surrounded my cradle."

Not until he entered Davidson College in North Carolina, however, did he get "waked up intellectually," as he puts it. Here, Rolston completed his degree in physics (BS, 1953), while taking many additional courses in biology. He spent hours peering into microscopes, fascinated by the worlds within worlds he found there; he took extended field trips to the Florida Everglades, where he catalogued exotic bugs, plants, and animals. The Latin word natura, he learned, came from a Greek root meaning, "to give birth." This realization was fundamental to his growing belief that mankind emerged from nature. Earth is, quite literally, our parent.

Because he felt called to the clergy like his father and grandfather, Rolston went on to study at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond Virginia (BD, 1956) and subsequently earned his PhD in Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland (1958).

As he looks back on his education, Rolston sees the beginning of what he now calls his lifelong "lover's quarrel" with the two disciplines he most values: science and religion. His teachers of physics and biology insisted that science dealt solely with facts, and was value-free. Theology professors were equally adamant that nature was "fallen" due to Adam and Eve's original sin. Paradoxically, both warring camps were in seeming agreement that all of earth's natural resources existed only to sustain and give pleasure to its human inhabitants.

"I had to fight both theology and science to love nature," he said. "I didn't want to live a de-natured life; nor did I feel humans had a right to de-nature the planet. My vision began personally and expanded globally."

While Rolston was in his late twenties and early thirties, he was a minister in western Virginia. During his free time, he attended classes at East Tennessee State University and, through his studies in mineralogy and geology, gradually gained recognition as a naturalist. "Five days a week, I was a preacher, bringing in the Kingdom," he recalled. "But the other two days, I was going wild, out roaming the hills."

The Appalachian Trail runs through these parts and Rolston was active in a movement to maintain its rugged landscape. While working on this project, he began to notice disturbing changes: forests clear-cut, wildlife decimated and mountains stripped for the coal buried beneath them. Around this time, he discovered a then little-known writer named Rachel Carson, whose provocative book Silent Spring came out in 1962. "No sooner had I discovered that nature is grace, than I found out humanity was treating nature disgracefully," Rolston said.

This realization was the basis for his first major publication, an article entitled "Is There an Ecological Ethic?" which appeared in 1975 in the journal Ethics.

Now as then, however, Rolston isn't simply an ecologist. Of course, he values all attempts to alleviate waste of natural resources, be it recycling or increasing fuel efficiency for automobiles. Yet, Rolston feels these efforts miss the point, because humans participate out of enlightened self-interest: we patronizingly think we give nature value by our attempts to "conserve" it.

Rolston's formulation of environmental ethics centers on a belief that nature's intrinsic value is not only non-anthropocentric, but even anti-anthropocentric. He argues that rather than humanity being master of the natural universe, nature is sovereign and imposes duties on mankind.

"It is not simply how a society treats women, minorities, the handicapped or children that reveals the character of that society, but also what it does to its fauna, flora, species, ecosystems and landscapes," he said. Rolston is well aware that such a 180-degree shift in metaphysics — man serves nature; nature doesn't serve man — makes many people uncomfortable. "I am surprised that a conservationist like me would even win the Templeton Prize," he chuckled. "I hadn't imagined Sir John was much of an environmentalist, seeing as he is such a consummate capitalist."

In the same breath, Rolston praised Templeton for funding such wide-ranging philanthropy that even he, a self-described "tree hugger," could benefit from its largesse. Rolston plans to use all prize monies he will receive to endow ongoing work at an academic institution, most likely his alma mater, Davidson College. As he envisioned a new generation of "bright-eyed, bushy-tailed" environmentalists-in-training, Rolston once again recalled his youth. "I was just a kid, poking at nature with a stick," he said. "I hope to encourage a free debate that I didn't have between religion and the natural sciences, with a particular concern for the conservation of nature."

Such open dialogue is more crucial today then ever, Rolston insists, because the world is currently in a state of overgrown tribalism, with nations only willing to do things that are in their national self-interest. He believes that earth's inhabitants must share responsibility for the planet and that the world's great religions are the only human institutions with the potential for such an all-encompassing vision.

"That's why the Templeton Foundation's devotion to building global solidarity is remarkable and wonderfully encouraging," he concluded. "For our planetary crisis, at root, is one of spiritual information. It's not so much a question of sustainable development or of escalating consumption, but of using the earth with justice and charity. Science alone can't take us there; but combined with religion, perhaps it can."

Biographical material and articles including Rolston's ground-breaking 1975 essay, "Is There an Ecological Ethic?" are available on the web at http://lamar.colostate.edu/~rolston.

Stephen Henderson, a writer based in New York City, contributes frequently to the New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, Town & Country, and Religion News Service, as well as other publications.