Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French Jesuit, Catholic priest, scientist, paleontologist, theologian, philosopher, and teacher. He was Darwinian and progressive in outlook and the author of several influential theological and philosophical books. His mainstream scientific achievements included taking part in the discovery of Peking Man. His more speculative ideas, sometimes criticized as pseudoscientific, have included a vitalist conception of the Omega Point and the development along with Vladimir Vernadsky of the concept of a noosphere.
Henri Jozef Machiel Nouwen was a Dutch Catholic priest, professor, writer and theologian. His interests were rooted primarily in psychology, pastoral ministry, spirituality, social justice and community. Over the course of his life, Nouwen was heavily influenced by the work of Anton Boisen, Thomas Merton, Rembrandt, Vincent van Gogh, and Jean Vanier.
Thomas Mulvihill King, S.J. was a professor of theology at Georgetown University. King entered the Society of Jesus in 1951 after completing undergraduate studies in English at the University of Pittsburgh. As a Jesuit, he undertook further studies at Fordham University and Woodstock College and was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1964. After completing a doctorate in theology at the University of Strasbourg in 1968, King began teaching at Georgetown. A member of the American Teilhard Association, he has written or edited several books on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, including Teilhard's Mysticism of Knowing (1981), Teilhard and the Unity of Knowledge (1983) Teilhard de Chardin (1988), The Letters of Teilhard de Chardin and Lucile Swan (1993) and Teilhard's Mass (2005). His other works include Sartre and the Sacred (1974), Enchantments: Religion and the Power of the Word (1989), Merton: Mystic at the Center of America (1992) and Jung's Four and Some Philosophers (1999). He also wrote the introduction for a new 2004 translation by Sion Cowell of Teilhard's The Divine Milieu.
Joan Daugherty Chittister,, is an American Benedictine nun, theologian, author, and speaker. She has served as Benedictine prioress and Benedictine federation president, president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, and co-chair of the Global Peace Initiative of Women.
Thomas Berry, CP was a Catholic priest, cultural historian, and scholar of the world's religions, especially Asian traditions. Later, as he studied Earth history and evolution, he called himself a "geologian".
Raimon Panikkar Alemany, also known as Raimundo Panikkar and Raymond Panikkar, was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest and a proponent of Interfaith dialogue. As a scholar, he specialized in comparative religion.
John F. Haught is an American theologian. He is a Distinguished Research Professor at Georgetown University. He specializes in Roman Catholic systematic theology, with a particular interest in issues pertaining to physical cosmology, evolutionary biology, geology, and Christianity.
Michael Louis Fitzgerald is a British cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church and an expert on Christian–Muslim relations. He has had the rank of archbishop since 2002. At his retirement in 2012, he was the apostolic nuncio to Egypt and delegate to the Arab League. He headed the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue from 2002 to 2006. Pope Francis raised him to the rank of cardinal on 5 October 2019.
Paul Francis Knitter is an American theologian. He is currently an emeritus professor at Union Theological Seminary, where he has served as the Paul Tillich Professor of Theology, World Religions and Culture since 2007. He is also Emeritus Professor of Theology at Xavier University in Cincinnati, where he taught for 28 years before moving to Union. Knitter is known for his work on religious pluralism and multiple religious belonging, particularly regarding Buddhism and Christianity.
Joseph Graham Healey is an American academic who specializes in Small Christian Communities as a teacher, researcher, and writer. Father Healey is a communications specialist with experience in the United States and Eastern Africa.
David Steindl-Rast OSB is an Austrian-American Catholic Benedictine monk, author, and lecturer. He is committed to interfaith dialogue and has dealt with the interaction between spirituality and science.
John Chryssavgis is an Orthodox Christian theologian who serves as advisor to the Ecumenical Patriarch on environmental issues. He is a clergyman of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. In January 2012, he received the title of Archdeacon of the Ecumenical Throne by His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. In 2016, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by St. Vladimir's Theological Seminary. In 2020, he was elected Honorary Professor of Theology in the Sydney College of Divinity.
Spiritual naturalism, or naturalistic spirituality combines a naturalist philosophy with spirituality. Spiritual naturalism may have first been proposed by Joris-Karl Huysmans in 1895 in his book En Route.
Coming into prominence as a writer during the 1870s, Huysmans quickly established himself among a rising group of writers, the so-called Naturalist school, of whom Émile Zola was the acknowledged head...With Là-bas (1891), a novel which reflected the aesthetics of the spiritualist revival and the contemporary interest in the occult, Huysmans formulated for the first time an aesthetic theory which sought to synthesize the mundane and the transcendent: "spiritual Naturalism".
Daniel Patrick Horan is an American Franciscan friar, Catholic priest, theologian, and author. He is currently the director of the Center for the Study of Spirituality and professor of Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Theology at Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana. He is also affiliated Professor of Spirituality at the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas. He previously held the Duns Scotus Chair of Spirituality at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, and taught at several other academic institutions. He is a columnist for National Catholic Reporter.
Environmental theology pertains to "the God-environment relationship and divine expectations of human behavior in relation to the environment".
Although biological evolution has been vocally opposed by some religious groups, many other groups accept the scientific position, sometimes with additions to allow for theological considerations. The positions of such groups are described by terms including "theistic evolution", "theistic evolutionism" or "evolutionary creation". Of all the religious groups included on the chart, Buddhists are the most accepting of evolution. Theistic evolutionists believe that there is a God, that God is the creator of the material universe and all life within, and that biological evolution is a natural process within that creation. Evolution, according to this view, is simply a tool that God employed to develop human life. According to the American Scientific Affiliation, a Christian organization of scientists:
A theory of theistic evolution (TE) — also called evolutionary creation — proposes that God's method of creation was to cleverly design a universe in which everything would naturally evolve. Usually the "evolution" in "theistic evolution" means Total Evolution — astronomical evolution and geological evolution plus chemical evolution and biological evolution — but it can refer only to biological evolution.
Mary Evelyn Tucker is the co-founder and co-director of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology with her husband, John Allen Grim. Tucker teaches in the joint Master's program in religion and ecology at Yale University between the School of the Environment, and the Divinity School. She also has an appointment at Yale's Department of Religious Studies. A pioneer in the field of religion and ecology, she has authored and edited around 20 volumes and has published hundreds of articles.
Ursula King is a German theologian and scholar of religion, who specialises in gender and religion, feminist theology, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
Beatrice Bruteau (1930–2014) was an American contemplative, philosopher and author.
Diana L. Hayes is an African-American Catholic theologian specializing in womanism and Black theology. The first African-American woman to earn a pontifical doctorate in theology, she is professor emerita of systematic theology at Georgetown University.
