Gene Marshall

Gene Wesley Marshall began his education as a mathematician and physicist. In 1953 he decided to leave a mathematics career and attend seminary at Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, Texas. He has served as a local church pastor, a chaplain in the army, and in 1962 joined a religious order of families (the Order Ecumenical), and traveled the United States, Canada, Latin America, Europe, India, Hong Kong, and Australia as a teacher and lecturer of religious and social ethics topics.

These trips included an in-depth study of world cultures and a vivid sense of the social conditions of the world's peoples. He was an active participant in the civil rights revolution, serving for one year as the Protestant executive of The National Conference on Religion and Race. For six years he served as dean of an eight-week residential academy that trained leadership for religious and social engagement work throughout the world.

In 1984 Gene and Joyce Marshall organized a nonprofit educational organization, Realistic Living, and began publishing journals, books, and essays. The couple were also organizers of bioregionalism, a geographically sensitive form of ecological realism, radical feminism, and interreligious sensibilities. This book is Gene's eighth book-length project. Gene and Joyce live in Bonham, Texas in a straw-bale house. For more see realisticliving.org.