Open AccessThe Desert Blossoms as a Rose. Toward a Western Conservation Aesthetic
Author(s) -
George B. Handley
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
poligrafi
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2232-5174
DOI - 10.35469/poligrafi.2021.297
Subject(s) - desert (philosophy) , human settlement , christianity , environmental ethics , aka , ethnology , saint , rose (mathematics) , history , art , archaeology , philosophy , art history , law , political science , library science , computer science , geometry , mathematics
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka The “Mormon” Church) offers what believers consider to be the restoration of an original Christianity. This essay explores the grounds for a Latter-day Saint restoration of a once-lost ecological wisdom that could make contemporary settlements in the American West more sustainable, especially where Latter-day Saints have established many communities. While Latter-day Saints and many other settlers of the West considered their work to be a kind of fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy to make the desert “blossom as a rose” through radical environmental transformation, this essay argues for a more aesthetic and ecologically sensitive response to the native qualities of the desert that need protection or even restoration.