Jane Goodall (1934-2025), famed for her decades-long study of chimpanzees and for her advocacy of animal rights and environmentalism, passed away on October 1, 2025, at the age of 91. Christians should have no trouble appreciating her legitimate and significant contributions to our knowledge about chimpanzees and other primates. Goodall observed that chimps made and used rudimentary tools (e.g., stripping a twig of leaves and using it to extract insects from a nest) and that they exhibited emotions and sociality. Gaining fuller and more accurate knowledge about the animal kingdom helps us to clarify what we have in common with animals and what makes us truly unique. At the same time, we may be saddened by the fact that Goodall promoted a mystical, more or less pantheistic conception of the world in which the divine is in all things, excluding the reality of a transcendent Creator with whom we need above all to have a loving relationship.
While Goodall made a genuine contribution to our understanding of primates, she interpreted her experiences among the chimpanzees in a way that minimized the uniqueness of human beings in relation to the rest of creation. What makes humans unique is not the use of tools, but the ability to conceptualize tools and to think about the significance of tool-making. We are unique not in having emotions or feelings but in having the capacity to view our feelings from a standpoint outside our experience. Ultimately, these differences arise from our unique status as biological creatures with the capacity to transcend the biological—a capacity that is integral to what the Bible calls the image of God. Our failures to reflect God’s goodness in the world, in our relationships with each other and with other living things, cannot be overcome by getting closer to nature but by getting reconciled to God, which is precisely what Jesus Christ, the divine Son of God, came into our world to do for us.
Regrettably, Goodall’s admirably persistent pursuit of nature did not lead her to a similar pursuit of nature’s Creator. While she rejected atheism, she did not consider herself a Christian (or anything else specifically) and was content to believe in an undefined spiritual power in all things. Essentially, her spirituality was akin to the animism illustrated in the 1995 Disney animated film Pocahontas, especially in the song “Colors of the Wind.” Animals and trees all have souls or spirits (apparently no different than ours) and nature itself is alive. We can and should have an attitude of respect and responsible stewardship toward living things without divinizing nature.
Below are a number of resources of relevance to understanding, appreciating, and assessing the thought of Jane Goodall. Some of these resources support her beliefs while others take issue with them. Osborne’s article in the Smithsonian Magazine might be the best place to start. It is important, as always, to understand before we criticize (Prov. 18:13).
Suggested Resources on Jane Goodall
“The cathedral and the forest: How two awe-inspiring moments shaped Jane Goodall’s spirituality.” Templeton.org, July 1, 2021. Goodall experienced something like “the ecstasy of the mystic” while listening to Bach in the Notre Dame Cathedral in 1974. She had a second mystical experience while moving through a forest with a family of chimps and viewing a lake after a rainstorm. “It seemed to me, as I struggled afterward to recall the experience, that self was utterly absent: I and the chimpanzees, the earth and trees and air, seemed to merge, to become one with the spirit power of life itself.”
Ewing-Chow, Daphne. “Experiencing Nature’s Divinity: A One-on-One with Jane Goodall.” Forbes, May 24, 2021. “If I have a soul, then I think chimpanzees have souls and probably the trees do too.”
Goodall, Jane. “Primate Spirituality.” In Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, ed. Bron Taylor (London: Continuum, 2005), 1303–6.
Clearly, then, there is no sharp line dividing humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. It is a very blurred line, and differences are of degree rather than kind. This leads to a new respect for the other amazing animal beings with whom we share Planet Earth. We are unique, but we are not as different as we used to think. The main difference is, perhaps, our extraordinarily complex intellect, and our ability to communicate ideas by means of a sophisticated spoken language, by the use of words. (1303)
Many theologians and philosophers argue that only humans have “souls.” My years in the forest with the chimpanzees have led me to question this assumption. . . . And there were moments of perception that seemed almost mystical so that I became ever more attuned to the great Spiritual Power that I felt around me—the Power that is worshipped as God, Allah, Tao, Brahma, the Great Spirit, the Creator, and so on. I came to believe that all living things possess a spark of that Spiritual Power. We humans, with our uniquely sophisticated minds and our spoken language that enables us to share and discuss ideas, call that spark, in ourselves, a “soul.” Is not the same true for a chimpanzee? Or any other sentient, sapient being? It is most unlikely, however, that any animals other than ourselves care—or are capable of caring—as to whether or not they possess immortal souls! (1303, 1304)
What unseen strength suddenly produces the great claps of thunder, the torrential downpour, the savage gusts of wind that bend and sway the chimpanzees clinging to their nests at night? If the chimpanzees had a spoken language, if they could discuss these feelings among themselves, might not they lead to an animistic, pagan worship of the elements? (1304)
Some of the latest thinking in physics, quantum mechanics and cosmology are coming together in a new belief that Intelligence is involved in the formation of the universe, that there is a Mind and Purpose underlying our existence. For my own part, the more science has discovered about the mysteries of life on Earth, the more in awe I have felt at the wonder of creation, and the more I have come to believe in the existence of God. (1306)
Levitt, Steven D. “Jane Goodall Changed the Way We See Animals. She’s Not Done.” Freakonomics podcast, Oct. 28, 2022. In this interview, Goodall recounted being asked what her next big adventure would be and responding, “Dying.” She then explained: “Well, when you die, there’s either nothing, which is fine, or there’s something, which I happen to believe. And if there is something beyond our death, then I cannot think of a greater adventure than finding out what that something is.” “Although I can’t say I’m particularly Christian or Buddhist or Muslim or anything else, I just have this very, very strong feeling that there is a great spiritual power, which I can’t prove and I don’t want to, but it’s a power that gives me strength to cope with the difficult times in life.”
O’Leary, Denyse. “Who (or What) First Used Tools?” Science and Culture Today, Dec. 7, 2024. SCT is associated with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture. In response to speculation that “Lucy,” a hominid known from a fossil dated 3.2 million years ago, might have been able to use tools, O’Leary points out that primates are not the only creatures that use tools. Otters, dolphins, vultures, crows, crabs, and octopi also use physical objects from the natural world as tools—sometimes in surprisingly complex ways. “It’s not stone tool use that is exclusive to humans; vultures can do that too. It’s the ability to form abstract ideas, ideas like the study of tool use among animals and the question of whether ‘Lucy’ might have used tools. We can ignore the principal difference between ourselves and the rest of nature, but it is not going away.”
Osborne, Margaret. “Jane Goodall, Legendary Primatologist and Anthropologist, Dies at 91.” Smithsonian Magazine, Oct. 1, 2025. Goodall passed away on Wednesday, October 1, 2025. When Goodall told her mentor, Louis Leakey, that she had observed “David Greybeard” strip leaves off a twig to use it to extract termites from a nest, Leakey commented, “Now we must redefine tool, redefine man or accept chimpanzees as human.” (Leakey and his wife Mary were famous paleoanthropologists whose work in Tanzania advanced theories of human evolution. Goodall was one of three women whom Leakey mentored in primatology and whom he dubbed “the Trimates.”) Beginning in the late 1980s, Goodall shifted her attention largely to animal rights and environmental activism.
Palmer, Jim. “The Gospel of Jane: The passing of a voice that taught us how to listen.” Deconstructionology (Substack), Oct. 3, 2025. Palmer describes Goodall’s faith as a form of “biocentric spirituality that fused science, nature, and reverence for life.” “Jane Goodall was not explicitly a pantheist, but her worldview deeply resonated with pantheistic themes—especially the sacredness and interconnectedness of all life. She believed that chimpanzees, trees, and ecosystems all carry a ‘spark of divine energy,’ challenging anthropocentric views of the soul. This view aligns with biocentric spirituality, where nature itself becomes the locus of sacred experience.” “Biocentric spirituality emerges from biocentrism, an ethical stance that grants equal moral value to all living organisms, opposing anthropocentrism (human-centered thinking). It goes beyond animal rights to include plants, microorganisms, and ecosystems as spiritually and ethically important.” Palmer makes explicit what Goodall generally left implicit: that in this form of spirituality, nature and life replace the transcendent Creator God as the object of faith, and the paradigm of sin and redemption is rejected. “Back in my religious days, I often told people that I carried Jesus in my heart. And even though I find a non-religious Jesus meaningful, I carry Jane Goodall inside right next to him.”
Smith, Wesley J. “The U.N. Monkeys Around”; “Mainstreaming ‘Animal Personhood.’” Discovery Institute (blog), Aug. 21, 2008; Feb. 5, 2016. Two articles by the Chair and Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism. According to Smith, Goodall’s view of animals as persons led her to endorse Peter Singer’s Great Ape Project, which argued that all great apes (including humans) were a “community of equals” and entitled to the same rights.
Stonestreet, John, and Shane Morris. “Jane Goodall Sees Intelligent Design But Misses God’s Image.” Breakpoint, June 3, 2021. “Indeed, the very curiosity that drove Goodall into the Tanzanian forest and the National Geographic crew into the briny depths leads us all to ask with the Psalmist: ‘What is man that you are mindful of him?’ The answer is in the asking. No other creature reflects on its role and place in creation or its relationship with the Creator.”
Stump, Jim (interviewer). “Jane Goodall and Francis Collins.” Being Human (podcast), BioLogos.org, July 15, 2021. Stump interviews Collins, who founded BioLogos and who was awarded the Templeton Prize in 2020, and Goodall, who was given the same award in 2021.
Whately, Elizabeth. “Jane Goodall Meets the God Hypothesis.” Science and Culture Today, May 25, 2021. Whately notes that although Goodall cogently argues against a materialist worldview, her mystical perspective fails to account for the evidence that an intelligent transcendent Being created the natural world.