Biographical Sketch of John Ronald Engel
Over the course of his life Ron Engel has been a high school biology teacher, park ranger, community organizer, Unitarian Universalist minister, university professor, and leader in local, national and international conservation movements.
Ron grew up on the outskirts of Baltimore where he fell in love with the beauty of the fields and streams of the Maryland countryside and became an avid hiker, birder and canoe enthusiast.
In 1957 he married Joan Helen Gibb also from Baltimore. Joan received her A.B. from Goucher College and her M.A. and Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago. They currently make their home in Tucson, Arizona. Formerly a public school teacher and editor in Chicago, Joan specializes in nature writing and poetry and is closely associated with the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona. They have a son, John Mark Engel, a pediatric ophthamologist in a practice in East Brunswick New Jersey affiliated with the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital; a daughter, Kirsten Helene Engel, Charles E. Ares Professor of Law at the James E. Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona and member of the Arizona state legislature; and two grandchildren -- Alexander John Engel and Michael Matthew Engel.
In 1958 Ron earned his A.B. at Johns Hopkins University where he double majored in the biological sciences and creative writing and participated in early civil rights efforts with students at Morgan State College.
In the course of his work as a seasonal ranger at Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park in California and as a high school science teacher in Baltimore City and Baltimore County public schools he came to the conclusion that only a transformation in moral and spiritual consciousness will enable human beings to live together in liberty, equality and community and accept their responsibilities for preserving the biosphere and building a sustainable economy and society.
From 1960-1964 he studied for the ministry at Meadville Theological School of Lombard College (affiliated with the University of Chicago). During these years he and his family lived in the summers on remote Amygdaloid Island in Isle Royale National Park, Michigan, where he served as permanent seasonal ranger. In 1971 he was ordained by the First Unitarian Church of Chicago.
From 1964-1970 Ron co-directed the Center for Urban Ministry with Neil Shadle and served as minister of the Second Unitarian Church on the near northside of Chicago. He was cofounder of the Neighborhood Commons, one of the first community development corporations in Chicago, which continues today as a predominantly black-owned and managed housing cooperative for low income persons in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.
His struggle to bring together within a comprehensive intellectual framework a commitment to social justice and ecological integrity led him to pursue the Ph.D. program in Ethics and Society at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago where he graduated with honors in 1977.
His award winning 1983 book Sacred Sands: the Struggle for Community in the Indiana Dunes, tells the story of how a progressive understanding of the democratic faith influenced the emergence of the new science of ecology, the Chicago Renaissance in the arts and social reform, and the century-long movement to preserve the Indiana Dunes in northwestern Indiana.
As professor of social ethics at Meadville/Lombard Theological School (1970-2000) and lecturer at the Divinity School and College of the University of Chicago, Ron helped to pioneer the new academic fields of environmental social ethics and ecological philosophy and theology.
Through his work with the National Council of Churches and the Unitarian Universalist Association, and as co-director of the Program on Ecology, Justice, and Faith (funded by the MacArthur Foundation), and co-founder of the Theological Initiative for Eco-justice Ministry in the Association of Chicago Theological Schools, he contributed to the emergence of the movement for eco-justice within the ecumenical religious community.
In 1984 Ron founded the Ethics Working Group of the World Conservation Union, which eventually grew to a network of several hundred persons from over sixty nations, and played a leading role in the articulation of a “world ethic for living sustainably” as the foundation of the second world conservation strategy, Caring for the Earth(1990). During this period he also worked as a consultant on biosphere reserves to the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere program. In the 1990s Ron served as a core member of the international drafting committee for The Earth Charter, launched in 2000 as a widely endorsed civil society proposal for a comprehensive global ethic for the 21st century. He has worked closely for many years with the World Commission on Environmental Law and was a principal advisor for its Draft International Covenant on Environment and Development. He is currently chair of the Advisory Board for the Center for Environmental Ethics and Law.
Upon his retirement as full professor in 2000 Ron was appointed Professor Emeritus at Meadville/Lombard. From 2000-2012 he held the position of Senior Fellow with the Center for Humans and Nature in Chicago where he was charged with responsibility for its North American Global Responsibilities Program.
Ron is the author of Sacred Sands: The Struggle for Community in the Indiana Dunes(Wesleyan University Press, 1983); editor of James Luther Adams,Voluntary Associations: Socio-cultural Analyses and Theological Interpretation (Exploration Press, 1986), co-editor with Joan Gibb Engel of Ethics of Environment and Development: Global Challenge, International Response(University of Arizona Press, 1990), and co-author with Peter Bakken and Joan Engel of Justice, Ecology, and Faith (Greenwood, 1995) as well as nearly one hundred published essays.
His work in global ethics and covenant theology is the subject of critical appreciation and response by colleagues in environmental ethics, philosophy and law in Klaus Bosselmann, Peter Burdon, Kirsten Engel, eds. The Crisis in Global Ethics and the Future of Global Governance: Realizing the Promise of the Earth Charter(Edgar Elgar, forthcoming).
Ron may be contacted at: jronengel@gmail.com; or home address: 2222 E. Hawthorne St. Tucson, Arizona 85719.