Richard Cartwright Austin

Richard Cartwright Austin, Obituary Dr. Richard Cartwright Austin, an environmental theologian and activist, died peacefully at age 91 on January 22, 2026, in Abingdon, Virginia. Austin pioneered Environmental Theology with the Presbyterian Church USA. This followed ministries in the Appalachian coalfields of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, his 1971 organizing of the first statewide campaign to abolish strip mining for coal in West Virginia, and his subsequent national leadership of efforts to secure federal legislation to regulate strip mining. 

He was with President Jimmy Carter for the signing of the federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977. Austin wrote his four-book Environmental Theology series while developing Chestnut Ridge Farm near Dungannon, Virginia, where he pioneered organic agriculture and sustainable forestry. He spoke across the United States to Protestant, Catholic, Evangelical, and Eastern Orthodox groups, and he trained young ministers in Christian environmental awareness through the Appalachian Ministries Educational Resource Center in Berea, Kentucky. 

From 1977 to 1982 Austin led the seven-state Coalition of American Electric Consumers in a successful campaign to persuade the American Electric Power Company to abandon plans for the world’s largest hydroelectric pumped-storage power plant at Brumley Gap near Abingdon, Virginia. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1934, Austin was raised in Washington, DC, in a politically active family. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Swarthmore College in 1956. He received a Master of Divinity degree, with honors, from Union Theological Seminary in 1959, winning the church history prize. He earned his Doctor of the Science of Theology degree from San Francisco Theological Seminary in 1975. 

He was married to Virginia Hess from 1957 to 1972. They raised three sons: Samuel Hess Austin, now in Charlottesville, Virginia; John Cartwright Austin, now in Lansing, Michigan; and Paul Wallace Austin, now in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Since 1975 he has been married to Anne Beatrice Leibig, a Gestalt psychotherapist, now retired. 

Austin served a five-church Presbyterian parish in a rural mining area of Pennsylvania prior to serving as Associate Pastor of the Georgetown Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC. In 1966, he was appointed Director of the West Virginia Mountain Project, the denomination’s largest Appalachian mission, in the Big Coal River Valley of West Virginia. Later, from his Virginia farm, he developed an Environmental Theology ministry from 1973 until his retirement in 1999. In 2011, he and Anne moved to the ElderSpirit community in Abingdon, Virginia, which they had helped to develop. Before and after retirement, 

Austin wrote a series of books on “Moral Imagination in Industrial Culture,” drawing upon family history to explore Christian responses to the challenges of industrialization during the past two centuries. Building Utopia: Erecting Russia’s First Modern City, 1930 (Kent State University Press, 2004) draws from his parents’ experiences in the Soviet Union with the largest construction project of Stalin’s first Five Year Plan. An expanded second edition of this book was published in 2017 in Russia, in both English and Russian.

 A celebration of life will be held at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Abingdon, Virginia, on March 14, 2026, including a service at 2:00 p.m. and a reception beginning at 3:00 p.m. In lieu of flowers, donations in Austin’s name may be made to the ElderSpirit Development Corporation (https://elderspirit.org/) or The Clinch Coalition (https://www.clinchcoalition.org/) —both of which he helped to found.

Those wishing to express sympathy online may do so by visiting www.farrisfuneralservice.com and signing the online guest register.  The family of Richard Cartwright Austin is being cared for by Farris Funeral Service & Crematory, 427 East Main Street, Abingdon, VA 24210, (276) 623-2700.