Rev. Ross Calvin

Rev. Ross Calvin was a major New Mexico Author.  He came to Silver City in the late 1920's, seeking relief for diseased lungs. He expected to stay six months. Instead, he became rector of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd. In 1942 he moved to Clovis, New Mexico, to build a new Episcopal church there. During his Silver City residency, Calvin wrote Sky Determines, considered by many critics to be among the best books written about New Mexico.

Calvin had earned a PhD in philology at Harvard and had taught at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh before studying for the priesthood.

Sky Determines reveals an author at home in conceiving big ideas about the environment and about the place of human society in a physical world. It is not a religious or spiritual work. The Rev. Paul Moore, current rector at Church of the Good Shepherd, the position once held by Calvin, says that Calvin's wide-ranging interests reflect an earlier concept of a pastor's role. "In a pre-industrial time, religious professionals were expected to broach questions about all spheres of life. Priests were not viewed as specialists, like mechanics or plumbers, with religion as the only subject that they had tools for. Calvin in this small town found support to observe and investigate the whole of existence."

Reference: SKY DETERMINES an Interpretation of the Southwest by Ross Calvin