Lindisfarne Association

The Lindisfarne Association (1972–2012) was a nonprofit foundation and diverse group of intellectuals organized by cultural historian William Irwin Thompson for the "study and realization of a new planetary culture".

It was inspired by the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead's idea of an integral philosophy of organism, and by Teilhard de Chardin's idea of planetization.

Thompson conceived the idea for the Lindisfarne association while touring spiritual sites and experimental communities around the world. The Lindisfarne Association is named for Lindisfarne Priory—a monastery, known for the Lindisfarne Gospels, founded on the British island of Lindisfarne in the 7th century.

Advertising executive Gene Fairly had just left his position at Interpublic Group of Companies and begun studying Zen Buddhism when he read a review of Thompson's At the Edge of History in the New York Times. Fairly visited Thompson at York University in Toronto to discuss forming a group for the promotion of planetary culture. Upon returning to New York he raised $150,000 from such donors as Nancy Wilson Ross and Sydney and Jean Lanier. Support from these donors served as an entrée to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Lindisfarne was incorporated as a non-profit educational foundation in December 1972. It began operations at a refitted summer camp in Southampton, New York on August 31, 1973.

From 1974–1977 Lindisfarne held an annual conference "to explore the new planetary culture" with the following themes:

Earth's answer : explorations of planetary culture at the Lindisfarne conferences (1977) reprints some of the lectures given at the 1974 and 1975 conferences.

The Lindisfarne Association was first based in Southampton, New York in 1973 and then in Manhattan at the Church of the Holy Communion and Buildings which was leased to Lindisfarne from 1976–1979.