When my family lived in Colorado, one of our greatest pleasures was the long drive west from Denver through the Rockies to getaway weekends on the Western Slope. The journey's highest crest stood at more than 10,000 feet, and was ringed by mountains with permanent snowfields towering 3,000 feet above us. The view in the thin air was spectacular. On cold days it literally took our breath away.
Pennsylvania, our current home, has a different appeal. Few places in America can boast the vivid beauty of our rivers and the intense greens of our hills and forests. But despite the differences in terrain, Pennsylvania and Colorado have something in common: Much of their backcountry is still clean and pure—"pure" in the original sense of the Latin word purus,which means "undefiled." In other words, much of the land is unviolated.
The Christian virtue of "purity"—cleanliness of heart, mind, body, and behavior as a path to God—has a long pre-Christian pedigree. Humans instinctively seek to separate themselves from waste and unclean things—partly for health reasons, but also from an inbred sense of their own dignity. Republican Rome placed a high (if selective) premium on the virtue of purity, which disappeared only in the tidal wave of wealth, power, and license that accompanied empire.
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