Belden C. Lane is a Presbyterian theologian who teaches on a Catholic, Jesuit theology faculty.

 

His doctorate is in American Church History from Princeton Theological Seminary. He has taught theology at Saint Louis University in Saint Louis, Missouri since coming there in 1977. His teaching relates spirituality to questions of geography, place, and nature--asking how particular religious traditions formulate their understandings of God and spiritual practice with respect to the land. He is also a storyteller, once happily introduced as a Presbyterian minister teaching at a Catholic University telling Jewish stories at the Vedanta society.

 

He works increasingly with men, having served as a retreat leader and Weaver at Rites of Passage from Arizona to Australia (through Richard Rohr's work with MALEs in Albuquerque, New Mexico). He also works with the Mankind Project, International. An avid backpacker and lover of wilderness, he and his wife Patricia (a spiritual director) love travel, hiking, and reading.

 

 

His books include The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality (Oxford University Press, 1998) and Landscapes of the Sacred: Geography and Narrative in American Spirituality (expanded second edition, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).