Christians---It's OK to be Green

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(Apologies in advance for any formatting irregularities. I'm doing the best I can --- F=L)

http://www.nandotimes.com/healthscience/story/0,1080,500161238-500202637-500886585-0,00.html

Copyright ) 2000 Scripps Howard News Service

By JOAN LOWY

(January 30, 2000 12:29 p.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - Over the past decade, religion and environmentalism have quietly discovered each other. This planet of ours may never be the same.

Episcopal Power and Light is electrifying churches with renewable energy. "Redwood Rabbis" are preserving old growth forests. Evangelical "Noah congregations" are saving endangered species. Catholic bishops are coming to the aid of the Columbia River.

Sometimes called "creation care," "earth stewardship" or "green spirituality," the new religious environmentalism has taken hold with surprising swiftness, catching both traditional environmentalists and their political adversaries off-guard.

The movement is based on the theological view that God not only created the world, but expects man to care for it, not abuse it.

"We're about the moral urgency of environmental issues as fundamental concerns of religious faith," said Paul Gorman, executive director of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment in New York City. "We understand there is something much larger at stake than public policy here.

"We don't believe we are going to reverse the environmental crisis by simply passing laws. We have to change the human understanding of its place and purpose in creation ... Unless you have that fundamental change in values, many of us believe environmental degradation will be irreversible."

The new movement got its big boost in 1993 when Gorman, Vice President Al Gore and astronomer Carl Sagan, among others, helped create the partnership, which is composed of four groups representing distinct sectors of American religious life: The Evangelical Environmental Network, The Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, the United States Catholic Conference and the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, which is composed of mainline Protestant and historically African-American denominations.

Sometimes working together, sometimes working on their own, the partners distributed 150,000 environmental information kits to congregations over three years. They held training sessions and workshops on global warming and other technical issues for clergy and seminarians. Theologians were commissioned to identify and research the environmental tenets in the Bible, the Torah, the Koran and other religious works. A wide array of religious bodies began adopting or expanding policy statements on the environment.

A turning point came shortly after Republicans gained control of Congress in November 1994 and began to press legislation that would have significantly altered the Endangered Species Act. That triggered a backlash from some conservative Christians. Leaders of the Evangelical Environmental Network met with House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other GOP lawmakers, describing the law as the Noah's ark of our time. Republicans eventually backed down.

"All of a sudden there were voices being raised that I had not heard before," recalled Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club.

Traditional environmental groups, which have been historically secular, had mixed reactions to their new allies. Many welcomed their support and fervor, but others were uncomfortable, agreeing with historian Lynn White's conclusion that a Judeo-Christian religious tradition that placed man at the center of the universe was at the root of Western exploitation of nature.

The discomfort was sometimes mutual. "Part of our struggle is that we're too environmental for a lot of the Christians and too Christian for a lot of environmentalists," said Rev. Peter Illyn, an evangelical pastor.

Illyn, the Pacific Northwest director for Target Earth, tries to spread a message of environmental stewardship through booths at Christian rock concerts and PromiseKeepers rallies, talks to church groups and leads llama-packing trips for church youth into the mountains or to a wilderness lake.

"When we talk about wilderness, we ask people to close their eyes and imagine a sunset and in their heart ask God if the wild is not good," Illyn said.

One of Illyn's bumper stickers: "God's Original Plan Was to Hang Out in the Garden with Two Naked Vegetarians."

Environmentalists have also discovered that many of their members and supporters were motivated by spiritual beliefs all along. Beginning in the mid-1990s, Pope said he started receiving copies of environmental sermons from grass-roots activists who wanted to share with him what was being preached in their churches on Sundays.

"We discovered that there are a very large number of people in the Sierra Club who in church were closet environmentalists and in the Sierra Club were closet members of their churches," Pope said. "They sort of felt they had to keep these two aspects of their souls separate."

At the Symposium on Religion, Science and the Environment in Santa Barbara, Calif., in November 1997, Pope stood before the gathering and apologized: "The environmental movement for the past quarter of a century has made no more profound error than to misunderstand the mission of religion and the churches in preserving the creation." After explaining the Greek Orthodox concept of sin as intellectual blindness, Pope concluded, "I stand here to confess that sin."

A year later the movement came into full flower when Harvard University brought together more than 1,000 theologians, scientists and activists in what was billed as the largest interfaith assembly on the environment ever. Among those in attendance were Muslims from 17 nations and the largest gathering ever of Shinto practitioners outside Japan.

Not everyone believes it's a movement made in heaven. Some critics see it as a threat to free market economics and technological progress, while others suspect it's a cover for pagan earth-worship.

One of the most active critics, the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, a pro-business think tank in Grand Rapids, Mich., launched a campaign last year to counter the theological underpinnings of the creation care movement.

"It is just not part of the Judeo-Christian understanding to say that nature in itself has an independent and metaphysical right to be left alone, to be preserved and even adored for reasons other than its usefulness to man," Robert Sirico, a Paulist priest and president of the institute, wrote in an article for the National Review.

"Religious environmentalists are too willing to bend their faith in order to please those who place the Earth, as opposed to man, at the center of God's creation. ... Unless orthodox believers are willing to confront the religious Greens openly, our defenses will be down when Earth Day is proposed and accepted as a holy day of obligation."

The institute has been distributing its theological research to seminarians and clergy. It also convened a strategy meeting last fall of about 30 conservative theologians and scientists to come up with a plan for more effectively addressing the issue.

Margaret Maxey, a University of Texas professor of biomedical engineering and a former Catholic nun, has been warning the mining industry that environmentalism has become a "new national religion unto itself," spread through environmental education in public schools and imposed on citizens through environmental laws and regulations like the Endangered Species Act, violating the constitutional principle of separation of church and state. She likens the creation care movement to the temperance movement that led to Prohibition.

"Mineral extraction is vilified as a 'rape of the Earth,' " Maxey writes in a forthcoming issue of the NMA's Mining Voice magazine. "The alleged 'sacred and inviolable rights' of animals, plants and even rocks and minerals have been used to trump the inalienable and constitutionally guaranteed rights of human beings."

But it is probably too late to reverse the trend, said Cal DeWitt, a professor of environmental science at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and a founder of the Au Sable Institute, which links environmental issues with religion.

"In many respects the environmental movement has been religious all along. It wasn't acknowledged, but it had a mission, it had a fervor, it had a zeal and it was attempting to convince people of the way to go. That's very religious," DeWitt said.

Meanwhile, each religion and denomination is giving the movement its own, special emphasis. Jewish congregations have taken up the cause of forest preservation, which they link to the ancient Tu B'Shvat holiday, a kind of Jewish Arbor Day.

The National Council of Churches has made global warming its priority, establishing grass-roots campaigns in 16 states aimed at eventually winning Senate ratification of an international treaty on climate change. One state is Michigan, the home of auto manufacturing. Another is West Virginia, the heart of coal country.

The Episcopal diocese in Los Angeles recently approved a resolution calling for broad environmental action, from making church buildings more energy-efficient to urging parishioners to be less materialistic and to use less resources.

More than 20 Episcopal churches have banded together in San Francisco to buy their electricity from renewable energy sources. The project, Episcopal Power and Light, has also been meeting with Episcopal leaders from Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut as well as "green energy" producers and environmental groups in an effort to launch a similar project in the Northeast.

"We're more than just being witnesses and voices. We want to be active in the marketplace because that is where we all know change needs to happen. We have to get out there and be part of the change," said Steve MacAusland, a lay Episcopalian who is helping to shepherd the project. "If we don't create the demand for green energy, it's not going to happen."

Joan Lowy is a reporter for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail her at [3]LowyJ@shns.com.

-- (First=Last@Last.=First), January 31, 2000

Answers

Thank you FirstLast, that is beautiful information.

Pete

-- Peter Starr (startrak@northcoast.com), January 31, 2000.


Apostacy - sign of the end times.

-- turkeylurkey (lurker@lurker.com), January 31, 2000.

Environmentalism is a new age cover for pantheism. It is anti- Christian to the core. If you think otherwise you have been decieved.

Mankind has spent thousands of years trying to escape the vagueries of the wild, and now we are supposed to embrace it. Instead we need to embrace our creator, God the Father, through his son Jesus Christ.

newhere

-- new here (new@mindspring.com), January 31, 2000.


While I will agree that some practices of environmentalist wackos is pagan in its origin it is stupid to say that buying electricity from renewable sources, buying recycled products or products with less packaging is apostasy. There is nothing pagan about recycling, composting and being more aware of the air we breathe and the water we drink. While you both are quick to throw out the "Pagan" flames you might do some research on the origins of X-mas and Easter, two HIGHLY pagan holidays, as well as Halloween, Valentines, oh, the list goes on and on.

-- Just Curious (jnmpow@flash.net), January 31, 2000.

One of the original commands given by God to man was to subdue the earth and have dominion over it (Gen. 1:28). That certainly tells us that we are not to just "leave it alone" but to take action to make it useful to mankind. Other scriptures clearly show that we are to be good stewards of what God has provided for us and that means that we are not to unnecessarily pollute, waste or harm the creation. As in all things there is a proper balance and that balance is not as cut and dried as either side would have us believe. We cannot live without polluting in some degree and monetary profit should certainly not be the bottom line for all things. If we would follow the guidelines found in Scripture this problem could be solved.

best regards, rlw

-- rlw (rlw6883@ipa.net), January 31, 2000.



try this Link for some counterviews to the article.


-- Possible Impact (posim@hotmail.com), January 31, 2000.

Once I received the information regarding the pagan based holidays, I had a repsonsibility of what to do with that information. Once I received the information about mother earth celebrations, I had a responsibility of what to do with that. But I also have the information that green is part of the (NWO) scheme, and the responsibility I have with that is to point out that for Christians it is not OK to be green. We should focus on the Kingdom of God, not the Kingdom of the earth as Jesus taught. Get it?

-- turkeylurkey (lurker@lurker.com), January 31, 2000.

Yes, the green movement is the NWO movement, one and the same with the same funders. One goal is to make us a third-world country: no electricity, no farming, no mining, no industry, no food, etc., etc., The second goal is to eliminate our right to own property. The third goal is to physically remove us from where we live to confined biopheres designated in the east and west coastal areas. The interior of the country will be wilderness. This is 'Man and the Biosphere', a U.N. program now being implemented by the State Dept, the Dept. of Agriculture, etc., etc. Go to the U.N. site and read all about it. And they don't care how many of us 'die off' in the process. Anyone who supports this bunch is sadly misled and will be a part of the destruction of this nation.

-- Y2kObserver (Y2kObserver@nowhere.com), January 31, 2000.

From the book: Undue Influence by Ron Arnold,

Probably the most enchanting move of the Pew/Rockefeller/Jones cluster of foundations was the creation of the Evangelical Environmental Network. The Network launched a multi-million dollar public relations campaign in January 1996 to convince the American people that the Endangered Species Act is the 'Noah's Ark of the day.'

The builders of that ark, Congress, were mostly Republicans in 1996, and they were considering the addition of property rights language to the Endangered Species Act, which meant that the government would have to pay when environmental regulations deprived property owners of the use of their property. The prospect of actually paying for what they took from property owners horrified environmentalists, who realized it would bankrupt the United States Treasury instead of the United States citizenry.

They had to get the message out that Congress wanted to 'gut the Endangered Species Act.'

They had to recruit the biggest voice around.

God.

According to the Washington Post, "The environmental Information Center, a Washington-based organization funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and other foundations, is underwriting the cost of ad production" for the EEN's Endangered Species Act campaign.

snip

...that the GOP plans to "slash $380 billion from the programs for the poor" while giving $245 billion in tax cuts to the rich and middle class"----a statement virtually indistinguishable from the White House line.

Which shouldn't be too surprising, since the Clinton administration was part of the project all along. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt for some reason had started giving speeches about his religious beliefs, about how he had been born a Catholic, left the Church, learned Hopi religious beliefs one summer, and "came to believe, deeply and irrevocably, that the land and all the plants and animals in the natural world are together a direct reflection of divinity, that creation is a plan of God."

etc., etc.

-- Y2kObserver (Y2kObserver@nowhere.com), January 31, 2000.


>>>"God's original plan was to Hangout in the Garden with two naked vegetarians."<<<

This load of offensive crap is all the proof we need that this particular group, and the crypto-socialist-NWO-Greens are nothing but a bunch of pagan radicals. Perhaps all of these spiritually confused tree huggers need to remember that Jesus was a carpenter by trade. Something tells me he did not seek an environmentally approved alternative to wood.

-- Irving (irvingf@myremarq.com), January 31, 2000.



paganism agreed!! pantheism agreed!! loving the creation more than the creator is really what is happening--especially when you look at the National Council of Churches--about as far from biblical theology as you can get. unless its a baby--then it is ok to think red versus green. kill baby humans but not baby seals or whales or birds, etc. i love the environment and animals and believe in being a good steward but the priorities of these folks is misplaced.

Here is another fine example of their misplaced priorities--more paganism.

http://www.relionproject.org

-- tt (cuddluppy@aol.com), January 31, 2000.


Irving & TT, AMEN!!!!!!!!!!

Regards, rlw

-- rlw (rlw6883@ipa.net), January 31, 2000.


Sysops,...Troll alert!!!!!! Stop him/her before it starts!!!!!

-- Kyle (fordtbonly@aol.com), January 31, 2000.

Come, Come now...You Neandertals, don't you know a woman has the right to stick an instrument into her little baby's skull and suck the brains out? But, she does not have the right to step on a cockroach or an ant. Also, she must not be allowed to protect herself against rapists and murderers. Take her guns and take her babies!

-- Kyle (fordtbonly@aol.com), January 31, 2000.

"Mankind will not be free until the last priest is strangled with the entrails of the last king."

-- voltaire

-- not a christian (separate@church.state), January 31, 2000.



'not a christian', I agree....even though I am a Christian.

-- Kyle (fordtbonly@aol.com), January 31, 2000.

This is so sad. My post above was offered in the spirit of ecumenicalism and melioration. I see by your responses that you are not willing to open your minds, let alone your hearts. I am so sorry for you and, especially, your children and theirs and theirs. Nineteenth century attitudes will not feed them in the twenty-first century, either physically or spiritually.

Sorry that I even bothered.

-- (First=Last@Last.=First), January 31, 2000.


'not a christian', I wouldn't personally kill anyone, not even a priest. But, I think I know what you mean. I just stay out of their way. Hey man, don't get too mad, just avoid them. Avoid Baptists also, they are closet Catholics. In fact all organized Religion is just waiting to leap on a 'justified' killing spree. Kyle

-- Kyle (fordtbonly@aol.com), January 31, 2000.

first, we are sorry also....that you bothered.

-- Kyle (fordtbonly@aol.com), January 31, 2000.

watch out friends....could this be LL? If not, could still be entertainment value. Raving at MidNite....sorry, Kyle.

-- Kyle (fordtbonly@aol.com), January 31, 2000.

If you oppose priests and kings, then you are opposed to Jesus Christ, who is the HIGH PRIEST and KING OF KINGS.

-- Beerman (frbeerman@juno.com), January 31, 2000.

beerman suck your beer.....I will suck my wine.

-- Kyle (fordtbonly@aol.com), February 01, 2000.

The only true environmentalists are those who recognize that there is a finite limit to the number of people this planet can support. On this basis no major religion qualifies.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), February 01, 2000.

It all comes down to STEWARDSHIP which is management, and handling in such a way that the resource thrives. Who is the best person to talk to about wild game management?? An INTELIGENT, THINKING hunter. Why?? It is in his self interest to see that the particular herd he hunts from thrives, that the herd gets stronger, that culling occurs, that the herd is the right size for its habitat.

STEWARDSHIP......

We are granted stewardship over the beasts and earth but we are ALSO taught to consider them as resources and talents. In the discussion of talents, we are taught to try to increase them. tis not GREEN, tis doing right.

C

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), February 01, 2000.


F=L,
I am glad you posted this article, you did great on the format job.
Don't get discouraged if the answers are not on the topic of your article, it will stand or fall on it's own.

-- Possible Impact (posim@hotmail.com), February 01, 2000.

First = Last

Well this has been an interesting post. It seems that there are alot of issues here, some of the folks with special interests (political, religious) maybe commenting on the one issue of state vs. God which is always a topic of contention.

Then there is the topic of nature "herself". For some reason mankind seems to be in some incredible denial of the natural order. We reflect the advancements in evolution, from the actions of subatomic particles (we ARE dust from the stars) to the need to stay alive at all costs.

The birth and development of society started with this need to stay alive, civilization from agriculture to electricity was created to provide a more stable envirornment in which we could procreate and survive with better odds.

Unfortunately the desire to develop stability has been undermining our relationship with nature. It is specially clear when you have had the experiance to be in an position where nature rules and you are at the whim of forces that care little about faith, political opinion or financial wealth.

When you are in that position then the only thing that counts is respect for nature and its power.

But in our well lit homes, comfee with all the modern convienances there is no reason to bow to such a force, society has provided a security blanket so folks can confuse this issue to the point of total avoidance of the real problems.

To me it is not a matter of the NWO (what a pile of crap) coming down on the rights of others. It is a matter that folks are getting real soft and have no idea of the real issue of what society was originally for. Now we don't fear nature, we fear society.

Not that it is anything new. I don't think we need to worship nature as much as we need to respect "her".

I find it ironic that technology with the help of scientists has developed the threats of pollution and envirornmental rape have also disclosed mysteries of our relationship with the universal design that show the errors of our ways.

But of course Nonlocality, Uncertianty principle, Chaos theory and other profound revelations of science will never make it into the mainstream of society.

To bad. If we understand where we come from maybe we could see where we are going.

-- Brian (imager@home.com), February 01, 2000.


"Stewardship" is defined in Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 1974 edition, as: " The individual's responsibility to manage his life and property with proper respect to the rights of others."

Actually, it is a derivative of an ancient Roman maxim - "sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas" or - each one must so use his own as not to injure his neighbor. The maxim underlies common law notions of trespass and nuisance.

Readers might be interested in Associated Contract Loggers Inc. and Olson Logging, Inc, vs. United States Forest Service, Superior Wilderness Action Network, and Forest Guardians. The suit enjoins the USFS from implementation of management policies that are constrained by certain religious beliefs on the sacredness of trees and other natural flora and fauna, (as promoted by SWAN and Forest Guardians,) contrary to the provisions of the 1st Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Here is a link to the complaint: http://www.snowcrest.net/siskfarm/conlogr.html

-- marsh (siskfarm@snowcrest.net), February 01, 2000.


PC rules! Funny thing is: It will bite them.

-- Kyle (fordtbonly@aol.com), February 01, 2000.

So when are they going to go after beavers for destroying trout streams and woodlots?

-- Sluggo (sluggo@your.head), February 01, 2000.

Where do they get this Green stuff? Last time I looked the Earth was rather Blue.

-- at me (blue@skies.smiling), February 01, 2000.

Sluggo, beavers are animals and therefore sacred. They are allowed to destroy whatever they wish. I am sure f=l would stand by and let a beaver gnaw the kneecaps off of his/her child. Hail Mother Nature!

-- Kyle (fordtbonly@aol.com), February 01, 2000.

I agree with rlw only i'm not much of a believer (allthough i do believe in god), i'm more of a science guy, i love thermodynamics and they tell me that the entropy (wich reflects the desorder in "things") is an ever increasing quantity in an isolated system (at best it's a constant), so human beings are like a miracle, only they're not! we just communicate the desorder to our environment (that's exactly pollution) so that we can be able to stay alive. conclusion: we cannot live without polluting, only if we "over-pollute", we'll die just as well...

-- Emilio DIB (emiliodib@msn.com), October 06, 2004.

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