Iona University.
February 20, 2025.
Please view the recording of Dr. Drew Dellinger as the Animator for the Thomas Berry Forum Contemplative Ecologists Circle for February 2025. We celebrated Black History Month at Iona University with Drew revealing the linkages from Thomas Berry’s wisdom to Martin Luther King’s sense of interconnectedness.
Drew reports:
When actress Nichelle Nichols—who portrayed Lt. Uhura on Star Trek: The Original Series—died on July 31, 2022, some readers of her obituaries may have been surprised to discover that one of the show’s “biggest fan[s]” was none other than Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In fact, Dr. King was deeply interested in the universe at large, this “vast cosmic order,” as he put it, populated with planets, stars, and galaxies.
King’s unheralded interest in astronomy and cosmology is but one part of a larger, mostly unknown side of King’s thought that scholar Drew Dellinger has been uncovering and presenting for twenty years. In this presentation, Dellinger will introduce the overarching aspects of what he calls “the Ecological King.”
In addition to his prophetic Christianity, King’s philosophical worldview was rooted in a vision of interconnectedness, interrelatedness, and interdependence. These sentiments, present in nearly all of King’s speeches, sermons, and writings, mark his thinking as distinctly “ecological.” Furthermore, Dr. King frequently expressed ideas that we would recognize now as precursors of environmentalism and Environmental Justice. “The cities are gasping in polluted air,” King wrote, “and enduring contaminated water.” He also declared that, “somewhere we must make it clear that we are concerned about the survival of the world.”
As more and more activists, advocates, and movements are coming to understand that the issues of our time are fundamentally linked and interconnected, it is increasingly common to see slogans such as “racial justice is climate justice,” or “climate justice is gender justice.” At this pivotal moment for democracy, justice, and the planet, recovering the full dimensions of the Ecological King—along with his radical challenges to white supremacy, poverty, and war—can provide us with an inspiring vision, analysis, and program-for-action in an uncertain time.
“Drew Dellinger’s work on Martin Luther King Jr.—wrestling with the ecological crisis—is unprecedented, pioneering, and path-blazing. I stand with him 120 percent.”
—Dr. Cornel West, author of Race Matters and The Cornel West Reader
