Calvin DeWitt


True North Campus Ministry

A Ministry of the Presbytery of Lake Michigan 

Calvin DeWitt

Dr. Calvin DeWitt will be at Grand Rapids Community College Sept 28 and 29:

Here is his schedule:  Please check back frequently, we will be adding events.

Wednesday Sept 28

7:30 pm  Public Lecture:  Sneden Hall Multipurpose Room 108 415 Fulton St E, Grand Rapids Community College. This event is free and open to the public.

The Role of Faith and Science in Fostering Earth Stewardship: The Scientific and Moral Ground

How does the world work? (Science), What ought to be? (Ethics), and Then what must we do? (Praxis), are questions that have largely kept separate in their own respective domains.  However, as we come to directly face global climate change and declining biodiversity, these three questions need to be deliberately interlinked in order to address the overwhelming challenge of how rightly to live on earth.  This lecture gives an overview of the problems that we and the biosphere face in our time and presents a framework for Earth Stewardship in developing our the scientific and moral capacity to foster living sustainably on earth.

Thursday, Sept 29

8-9 am Nature Walk, Hodenpyl Woods, We’ll park and meet at Remington Park.  Need a ride? Let Nancy know (821-0351).

10-11 am meeting GRCC Biodiversity Club  room 333 in Calkins Science Center

1-3 GRCC Campus Sustainability Tour- Meet at the Sneden Hall lobby welcome center. Put on your walking shoes and discover the ways GRCC is committed to becoming an environmentally friendly campus. This event is open to all.

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If your group,club, class or department is interested in meeting with Calvin DeWitt, please contact Nancy Janisch at [email protected] or 616-821-0351.

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About Calvin DeWitt

Calvin B. “Cal” DeWitt

Dr. Calvin B. DeWitt “Cal” is an environmental scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison  where he serves as Professor in the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.  He is a member of the University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate faculties of Land Resources, Conservation Biology and Sustainable Development, Water Resources Management, and Limnology and Marine Science; is a Fellow of the University of Wisconsin Teaching Academy and recipient of the Chancellor’s Award for Distinguished Teaching.

His most recent book is Earth-Wise: A Guide to Hopeful Creation Care, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: FaithAlive Resources, 2011).

He teaches Environmental Science at the University of Wisconsin and a graduate course in wetlands research each fall at his home on Waubesa Wetlands.  His home is just south of Madison in the Town of Dunn, where in the mid-1970s he served as Town Chair (Mayor) and helped bring his town to receive the RenewAmerica Award in 1995 and 2000.  In 2002, Cal organized Climate Forum 2002 with his British colleague, Sir John T. Houghton (former co-chair of the Scientific Assessment group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  This Forum engaged 60 leading climate scientists and ethicists in producing theOxford Declaration on Climate Change, a statement that has been particularly instrumental in bringing climate issues into the concerns of evangelicals and the wider public.

Cal has taught and inspired hundreds of students at the University of Wisconsin and has led and contributed actively to conservation and environmental stewardship at the local, state, national and international level. At Au Sable Institute, he developed environmental stewardship education in partnership with 60 evangelical Christian colleges across North America. As a professor at the University of Wisconsin, his courses and discussions with students have helped to open vocations for hundreds of students.  Cal’s conservation leadership has protected 300 acres of forest in metropolitan Detroit, created a 1,000-acre Waubesa Wetlands Reserve in Wisconsin; and developed a nationally recognized land stewardship initiative in the Town of Dunn, Wisconsin.

Among the named lectureships Prof. DeWitt has presented are the Abraham Kuyper Lecture at Fuller Theological Seminary (sponsored by the Center for Public Justice), the Charles Hadden Spurgeon Lecture at Denver Seminary, and the Francis Schaeffer Lecture at Covenant Theological Seminary.

Cal was honored in 2005 with the National Wildlife Federation’s “Connie” Award for his work in bridging environmental science and ethics.  At the banquet where he received this major award, Cal was acknowledged as “a world-class conservationist” who “has made a huge difference with his life in bringing his work as an environmental scientist and ethicist to bear on the church’s role in caring for the environment… in the face of powerful interests.”

Cal has graduate degrees in biology from Calvin College (B.A.) and in biology and zoology from The University of Michigan (M.A. and Ph.D).

Cal lives on Waubesa Wetlands with his wife Ruth, in the Town of Dunn, where they raised their three children. This  marsh, through Cal’s work with his neighbors, is now a 1,000-acre preserve.

Selected Recent Publications:         DeWitt, C.B. 2002. Complementarities of Scientific Understanding of Nature with Religious Perspectives of Creation. In Stephen R. Kellert and Timothy Farnham, eds. Good in Nature and Humanity: Connecting Science Religion and Spirituality with the Natural World. Island Press, 277pp.         DeWitt, C. B.  2003.  Biogeographic and Trophic Restructuring of the Biosphere: The State of the Earth Under Human Domination. Christian Scholar’s Review 32:347-364. (The lead paper in a theme issue of this refereed journal on The Fate of the Earth).

          DeWitt, C.B. 2004. Guardening. Lutheran Woman Today. July issue.                 DeWitt, C. B.  2004.  Neighborliness. Lutheran Woman Today.  June issue.                 DeWitt, C.B. 2004. Responsible Praxis in the Ecological Economy: Contributions of Science and Theology. Proceedings of the Abraham Kuyper Consultation, Abraham Kuyper Center for Public Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, N.J.  (Web site publication at:

http://www.ptsem.edu/grow/kuyper/pdf/dewitt.pdf)   
                 DeWitt, C. B. 2006. Stewardship: Responding Dynamically to the Consequences of Human Action in the World. In: R. J. Berry. Environmental Stewardship: Critical Perspectives—Past and Present. London & New York: T&T Clark International, 145-158.         DeWitt, C. B. 2006. The scientist and the shepherd: the emergence of evangelical environmentalism. In: Robert Gottlieb. The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Ecology, Oxford University Press (ISBN13: 9780195178722ISBN10: 0195178726 ), pp. 568-587.                 DeWitt, C.B. 2007. Contemporary Missiology and the Biosphere, In: D. Jeyaraj, R. Pazmi o and R. Peterson, eds.,The Antioch Agenda: Essays on the Restorative Church in Honor of Orlando E. Costas (Delhi: ISPCK), 305-328.                 DeWitt, C.B. 2007. The Professor and the Pupil: Addressing Secularization and Disciplinary Fragmentation in Academia, J. Amer. Sci. Affiliation 59(2):119-127.                 DeWitt, C.B. 2007. The Place of Creation in Today’s Missionary Discourse: Evangelical Environmentalism in America, In: Lukas Vischer, Missiology and the Environment, Geneva: John Knox Centre, 174-204.                 DeWitt, C.B. 2007. Climate Care: Our Profound Moral Imperative, The Banner 142(4):18-20.                 DeWitt, C.B. 2007. The Creation: Reinstating Its Awesome Meaning in Science and Society, Creation Care2007(Fall/Winter):4-5,24.                 DeWitt, C.B. 2011. Earth-Wise: A Guide to Hopeful Creation Carer, 3rd ed., Grand Rapids: Faith Alive Christian Resources, 158pp.                 DeWitt, C.B. 2008. To Strive to Safeguard the Integrity of Creation and Sustain and Renew the Life of the Earth. In: Andrew Walls and Cathy Ross, eds., Mission in the Twenty-First Century: Exploring the Five Marks of Global Mission, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 84-93.                 DeWitt, C.B. 2008 Inspirations for Sustaining Life on Earth: Greeting Friends in Their Andean Gardens, In: Bill McKibben,  American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau. New York: Library of America, pp. 919-928.

                        DeWitt, C.B. 2008. Reading the Bible through a green lens.  In: The Green Bible, New Revised Standard Version(New York: HarperCollins), pp. I-25 – I-34.                  DeWitt, C.B. 2008. Science, scripture, and con-serving creation.  In Lindsay Moseley, ed. A Gathering of Voices on Caring for Creation. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, pp. 74-88.                 DeWitt, C.B. 2009. A Christian in Science, In: R. J. Berry, ed., Real Scientists Real Faith. Oxford: Monarch Books, 229-245.                 DeWitt, C.B. 2009. Unsustainable Agriculture and Land Use: Restoring Stewardship for Biospheric Sustainability, In: Robert S. White, ed., Creation in Crisis: Christian Perspectives on Sustainability. London: SPCK Publishing, 919-928.                 DeWitt, C.B. 2010. Earth’s Biospheric Economy. In: Melville Y. Stewart, ed., Science and Religion in Dialogue, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 631-644.                 DeWitt, C.B. 2010. The Steward and the Economist. In: Melville Y. Stewart, ed., Science and Religion in Dialogue, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 645-657.

                 DeWitt, C.B. 2010. Sustainable Living in the Biosphere. In: Melville Y. Stewart, ed., Science and Religion in Dialogue, Oxford: Wiley-
Blackwell, 658-670.