I’m so pleased that this type of analysis of the modern environmentalist movement is beginning to show up in the media. There is a great amount of truth and insight in this article. People need to wake up to the fact that environmentalism is morphing into an apocalyptic faith devoid of facts based on traditional scientific method. The secular Left is promoting the movement as a substitute for religion which they have abandoned.
"I’m so pleased that this type of analysis of the modern environmentalist movement is beginning to show up in the media. There is a great amount of truth and insight in this article. People need to wake up to the fact that environmentalism is morphing into an apocalyptic faith devoid of facts based on traditional scientific method. The secular Left is promoting the movement as a substitute for religion which they have abandoned." ~ Unmarked Package
They're true believers - no doubt about it.
Eunuchs For The Green Kingdom
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1778309/posts
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Star Tribune.com Minneapolis - St. Paul, Minnesota 2/8/07
Last update: February 07, 2007 – 9:24 PM
http://www.startribune.com/191/story/988141.html
Environmentalists have embarked on a secular crusade
By Katherine Kersten, Star Tribune
A recent issue of a magazine from one of Minnesota's Lutheran colleges features a picture of the campus pastor, wearing a beanie with a propeller on it. He is leading what the magazine calls a "congregation" of students in a dedication "service" at the foot of a giant new wind turbine that provides power to the campus.
At one point the pastor asked the students to raise their own miniature pinwheels. I could almost imagine them all being suddenly borne aloft by a gust of prairie wind during the closing verse of a great old Lutheran hymn.
Scenes like this are becoming commonplace, as environmentalism and religion intersect in ever increasing permutations. Last week, Catholic and Lutheran leaders joined polar explorer Will Steger and several scientists to lobby the Minnesota Legislature on what the religious leaders called the moral imperative of addressing climate change.
Wind turbines at Christian colleges, solar panels by church steeples and religiously inspired prairie restorations -- all are fine things. Christianity and Judaism teach that human beings have an obligation to be good stewards of the natural world and its resources.
Sometimes, however, it seems something more is going on.
We see it in the apparent eagerness of some "people of faith"' to embrace worst-case environmental scenarios.
We hear it in their crusading zeal as they proselytize others, for example, to attend a screening of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" in the church basement.
Environmental issues are complex, and often involve data that are open to different interpretations.
Yet in some religious circles, if you raise a skeptical question about, say, global warming (a highly debated subject), you are spurned as if you've committed heresy.
Robert H. Nelson, a professor of environmental policy at the School of Public Policy of the University of Maryland, has often rubbed shoulders with environmental true believers. In his view, contemporary environmentalism, in its extreme forms, has become a "secular religion." Nelson likens it, in important respects, to Christian fundamentalism of the sort derived from the Protestant Calvinism of America's Puritan ancestors.
Today's "environmental gospel" is best understood as "Calvinism minus God," says Nelson. In essence, it retells the biblical creation story in secular dress: Human beings were created in harmony with the world, but then were tempted into evil. Now they spread corruption and depravity, and, as a result, face disaster and perhaps the end of the world.
As environmental true believers see it, the Earth was originally a pristine Garden of Eden. Then the Fall intervened. Human beings embraced science and technology, and pridefully disrupted God's Creation. At the same time, human greed led to material addictions -- an echo of the Puritans' deep skepticism about money and wealth, Nelson points out. Today, many environmentalists regard an excess of consumption as one of the modern world's greatest sins, he says.
The result? Human beings now face retribution -- flood, famine, drought and pestilence. These, Nelson notes, are the "traditional instruments of a wrathful God imposing a just punishment on a world of many sinners."
Only a great moral awakening can save humankind. Who will redeem us? God's holy, self-appointed instruments -- his environmental prophets.
The environmental gospel has a strong appeal, especially for contemporary men and women who are turning away from traditional religion. The green crusade satisfies the universal human hunger for meaning. At the same time, it asks little of believers: no tough commandments about forgiving your neighbor or not coveting his wife. Instead, it offers rituals like recycling and (for those who aspire to sainthood) biking to work. The larger society will pay the serious costs of redemption.
There are more sensible approaches to environmental problems than the environmental gospel. Without viewing human beings as inherently wicked, or environmental problems as a righteous clash between good and evil, citizens and leaders could tackle environmental issues as public policy challenges whose solution requires a careful weighing of scientific data and the costs and benefits of various responses.