For the past four years, Dr. Nathaniel Van Yperen has been combining his love of nature, travel, and religious studies to improve the curriculum of Pennington’s Religion Department offerings.  

Before joining The Pennington School, Van Yperen, who hails from the village of East Washington, New Hampshire (population: 70!), studied and worked on both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, as well as the upper Midwest. His journey began with his undergraduate work which he divided between the Pacific Northwest and New England. Then Princeton, and in particular Princeton Theological Seminary, became home for the next nine years as he and his wife, Elaine James, each earned two master’s degrees as well as a Ph.D. Today James, an associate professor at the Seminary, also teaches courses on religion.

Most recently, Van Yperen came to us from St. Paul, Minnesota, where he served as a visiting assistant professor of religion at Gustavus Adolphus College. (He had completed teaching stints at other Minnesotan schools, St. Olaf College, the University of St. Thomas, and United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities.) It was at Gustavus Adolphus where he developed and taught courses on environmental ethics, Martin Luther King Jr., and religion and ecology. He was particularly proud of a course on social justice that he developed based on the HBO series The Wire, a crime drama set in Baltimore. The course focused on the issue of the New Jim Crow, America’s disproportionate incarceration of African Americans. 

All along his way to Pennington, Van Yperen has been exploring another passion: writing. Focusing again on the role of ethics and religion in nature, Van Yperen has written several short essays as well as a book. One area of interest is oral environmental history whereby Van Yperen interviews people who are closely tied to the land they live upon. For example, Van Yperen wrote a chapter for the anthology The Land Speaks: New Voices at the Intersection of Oral and Environmental History called “The Public Significance of the Private Farm.” In it, one can read in his subjects’ testimonials about how grateful they are to be able to farm the land they own and how important it is for them to preserve their cultural heritage.

In 2019, Van Yperen published Gratitude for the Wild: Christian Ethics in the Wilderness, a book focusing on religious ethics and environmental challenges. Van Yperen investigates, among other things, the contrast that exists between government-mandated environmental protection and those who reject limits placed on wilderness. 

In the book, Van Yperen refers to the Wilderness Act of 1964, which designated numerous areas in the National Wilderness Preservation System. Van Yperen had an opportunity to spend a week exploring one of the very first areas placed into this system, the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. Boasting over one million acres, it is one of the most completely preserved mountain ecosystems in the world. His journey inspired his recently published article “In and out of the wilderness” in Iowa State University’s Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment. Van Yperen reflects on Bob Marshall’s belief that whereas art and architecture, music, and poetry can be enjoyed as an outsider, one who takes in nature firsthand is all-encompassed by its beauty.

When one considers all this work, it’s safe to say that Van Yperen brings a lot of firsthand knowledge to his classes at Pennington. Along with the sophomore course requirement Religion and Ethics, Van Yperen teaches an introduction to philosophy and a course called Nature and Experience. Most recently, he has been co-teaching a course with our environmental science teacher, Dr. Margo Andrews, that combines both of their passions: Climate Change and Storytelling in Religion and Science.

When asked what has been particularly rewarding about teaching Pennington students, Van Yperen replies that he relishes moments when students latch onto an idea and decide to do something about it. He recalls how a student once came to him with a different angle on the assigned paper prompt, namely that Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream" speech was not a declaration of independence, but a cry of lament. Instead of taking a defensive stance, Van Yperen encouraged his student to “write that essay!” What followed was a compelling and meaningful argument by the student that showed that she had found her voice. These are the types of “lights switching on” moments that compel Van Yperen to continue to build diverse Religion offerings that students choose to take because they’re interested. 

Van Yperen hopes he can organize one of those opportunities again--the summer Wilderness Seminar. In July 2021, he and history teacher Shannon Taylor embarked on a 12-day adventure with seven Pennington students to the Saint Regis Canoe Area of the Adirondacks in New York. The trip combined four days of backpacking and eight days of canoeing, with intermittent stops along the way to read religious and philosophical texts and discuss all that they were learning and observing. Rather than taking place in a dry, climate-controlled classroom, classes were held trailside, sometimes under plastic tarps due to heavy wind and rain. Van Yperen remarks that the lessons learned from such demanding conditions help to solidify all they gained from the texts and discussions.

During this past spring break, Van Yperen took part in a very different Pennington excursion, this time to France as part of the School’s exchange program with two separate schools in France. He was especially grateful to Dr. Lida Castro and Madame Hocquaux for planning such a rewarding cultural experience for students and he appreciated the hospitality that their French hosts exhibited.

When Van Yperen is not canoeing and backpacking, he and his two boys, Hank P ’29 and Forest, avidly follow NBA basketball. However, Van Yperen ends the acknowledgments section of his book, Gratitude for the Wild, with a wish that clearly states his hopes for his boys’ futures: “…may your lives be filled with gratitude for mountains, lakes, and cold rivers that hold trout.”