He was indeed a scientist - a bone hunter, he called himself. It seems to me that that is precisely what Loren Eiseley had in mind when, in his autobiography, he stated: “I who profess no religion find the whole of my life a religious pilgrimage.” In fact, I find the primary thrust of Eiseley’s literary and personal essays to be religious. What, after all, does it mean to say that the religious chord does not sound in someone, but that the person vibrates to the concerns historically related to religion? If the person vibrates to such concerns, the chord is religious whether or not it manages to resound in the temples and prayer houses of the devout.
We do not really know what to do with religiousness when it expresses itself outside those enclosures which historians and social scientists have carefully labeled religions.
In an announcement of recent book arrivals, The Christian Century called attention to a critical study of Loren Eiseley by saying: “The religious chord did not sound in him, but he vibrated to many of the concerns historically related to religion.” The statement is somewhat ambiguous, but is typical of the dilemma of contemporary religious scholarship. without the sense of the holy, without compassion, his brain can become a gray stalking horror - the deviser of Belsen. totally and terribly beyond our limited- senses. Like the toad in my shirt we were in the hands of God, but we could not feel him he was beyond us.
I have come to believe that in the world there is nothing to explain the world. My eye is round, open, and undomesticated as an owl’s in a primeval forest - a world that for me has never truly departed. The religious forms of the present leave me unmoved. Ironically, I who profess no religion find the whole of my life a religious pilgrimage. I see more faces watching, non-human faces. I am treading deeper and deeper into leaves and silence. Loren Eisely, in his autobiography, says: “I who profess no religion find the whole of my life a religious pilgrimage.” What does it mean to say that the religious chord does not sound in someone, but that the person vibrates to the concerns historically related to religion? Current articles and subscription information can be found at This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted & Winnie Brock. Copyright by the Christian Century Foundation and used by permission. This article appeared in the Christian Century, April 25, 1984, p. Wentz is professor of religious studies at Arizona State University in Tempe, and the author of The Contemplation of Otherness: The Critical Vision of Religion, to be published soon by Mercer University Press.
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