R. Lance Christie died November 4, reports David Klaus: “I don’t know the circumstances but I presume it was the pancreatic cancer which he had been living with which finally overwhelmed him.”

Lance and Oberon Zell-Ravenheart founded the Church of All Worlds on April 7, 1962 while both were students at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, after the Church of All Worlds in Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein.

Lance received undergraduate and postgraduate training in behavioral psychology at UCLA, where he did psychoacoustical research for the U.S. Air Force, and psychopharmacological research at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute.

He served nine years on the Grand County Planning and Zoning Commission, on both the Grand County and Moab City Board of Adjustment, directed several environmental and land use task forces for local and regional government in Southeast Utah, and was Grand County Regional Water Planning Administrator.

In 1998, Lance co-founded the Association for the Tree of Life and served as its President, pursuing ecological preservation and restoration projects including the Colorado Plateau Ecosystem Heritage Plan Project.