October 7, 2002
Fire and brimstone sermons from the pulpit are not what churchgoers are hearing on Sunday mornings anymore.
Today’s Congregationalists may as well be at a Greenpeace convention, as more and more mainline churches become the tame bunnies of the fast growing ecological movement.
Mainline churches seem no longer interested in saving your soul. It’s saving the environment that they are after.
The environment and Mother Earth are the new God, and paganism seems to be the new religion of the day.
Preaching saving the environment from the pulpit is not just the new trend in some hip locations. It seems to be universal.
Last February, 1,200 religious leaders sent a letter to U.S. senators urging energy conservation as a "morally superior" alternative to drilling for oil in Alaska. Last year, 12 Catholic bishops were active in protecting the Northwest’s Columbia River watershed. And in 1998, mainline Protestant churches lobbied for the passage of the Kyoto Protocol.
In a letter to President George W. Bush, after meeting with European environment ministers in March 2001, Environment Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Christine Whitman wrote, "For the first time, the world’s religious communities have started to engage in the issue. Their solutions vary widely, but the fervour of the focus was clear."
According to Matt Sedensky of AP. "Across faiths, the environment movement has been evolving slowly over the last decade or more. Denominations have started looking into their traditions, examining how their beliefs could be applied to ecological issues and releasing statements outlining their positions.
"Many Christian and Jewish groups have set up offices or assigned directors to deal exclusively with being green. Muslim, Buddhist and some other faiths have also taken up the issue.
"Paul Gorman, head of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, said 21 states now have interfaith global warming and energy campaigns. But Gorman estimates that for every house of worship where the environment is an active issue, there are 100 where it is not.
"’We’re only beginning to learn to practice what we preach," Gorman said.
"In Los Angeles, the newly opened Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels is partially powered by solar panels mounted atop the Roman Catholic Church’s conference centre.
"In Palatine, Ill. the Sikh Religious Temple has added water-saving taps and cut its energy use by $720 a month.
"And in Wynnewood, Pa., the Evangelical Environmental Network is gearing up for "What Would Jesus Drive?" a national campaign urging people to think about their transportation choices.
"Some religious groups have resisted the movement. Gorman said some denominations are suspicious of the paganism sometimes associated with ecology, or believe the movement is based more on liberal politics than theology."
Meanwhile, don’t expect your pastor to be interested in your immortal soul. And if you don’t find him up on the pulpit for your regular Sunday service, he could very well be out saving the whales.
Hero with rice feet
Time Magazine has referred to Vandana Shiva as an "environmental hero," and Michael Fumento, Alex Avery and Dennis Avery, of the Hudson Institute take umbrage.
"The Green Century special Earth Summit edition of your magazine called Shiva an environmental hero, lauding her for representing 'traditional voice’ by setting 'an eco-friendly’ standard that agribusiness must show it can outperform,’" the trio wrote in a letter to Time.
"But when it comes to humanity, this 'hero’ has been downright villainous.
"Repeatedly she has sought to block humanitarian food donations to desperate people, using any excuse available. She has attempted to block access of India monsoon flood victims to critical U.S. food donations based on false allegations that such foods pose health threats.
"Even now she’s defending the indefensible decision of the Zambian government to lock away U.S. grain in government warehouses--an act that could kill literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions. This type of grain was declared completely safe by U.S. regulators years ago and Americans have been eating it for over half a decade.
"Shiva also opposes the wonderful new 'golden rice’ under development that Time properly devoted a cover to, in that it could save millions in developing countries from death and blindness due to vitamin A deficiency.
"Ultimately Shiva is no friend to sustainability, either. The very crops she’s desperately fighting against have been engineered to require less application of pesticides, tremendously reducing the use of chemicals.
"The developing world’s growing population cannot sustain 'heroes’ such as these."
The teddybear brigade
Street theatre and the protest have replaced Peter Pan, nursery rhymes and fairytales for the children of the millennium.
Today’s kids storm government meetings in throngs of a thousand or more.
One thousand children representing 19 countries carried colourful banners of their artwork, sang songs and chanted "Save the forests, save our future" as they marched to present their demands to delegates of the Ancient Forest Summit last spring.
Most of the kids arrived in The Hague to spend the day preparing for the demonstration, making banners, preparing speeches, and painting faces.
According to Greenpeace, "When the thousand kids arrived in 10 buses in the harbour where a Greenpeace ship (was) docked, it was a sight for even the most well travelled sailors.
"A symbolic Noah’s Ark filled with colourful animals made by the children accompanied the demonstration. A percussion group kept the beat as the children sang songs from the ancient forest and danced through the city.
"The kids made their way through The Hague escorted by police on horses and motorbikes. Many people came out of their homes and shops to watch the kids pass and cheer them on.
"Although the kids were not allowed on the conference grounds, many ministers and delegates came out to greet them.
"They delivered more than 240,000 signatures to the Summit’s President, Geke Faber, from kids all over the world pleading for the protection of ancient forests."
Activists tone down at charm school
The Battle of Seattle served as a pinnacle for the anti-globalists. In intervening years, the activists have been polishing up their act at a sort of charm school.
Washington Times reporter Warren Veith caught up with the globalization activists who were meeting in a church basement "a couple of miles from the citadels of international finance."
Asundry activists were trying to revive the spirit of Seattle.
"An anti-globalization garage band unleashes a sonic barrage titled "Third World Scene." The anti-Authoritarian Babysitters Club offers to keep an eye on infants of the revolution. Forty or so protest planners stand shoulder to shoulder in a circle and chant "Si, se puede" over and over.
"Translation: 'Yes, it can be done.' Even after Sept. 11.
"Nearly three years after 50,000 protesters virtually shut down a meeting of global trade officials in Seattle, activists would have been pleased to mobilize a mere 10,000 when the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank held their fall meetings in Washington last month. In the aftermath of last year’s terrorist attacks, which made any form of civil disobedience seem unpatriotic, even that goal may have been optimistic.
"But there’s more to a movement than street theatre and crowd counts. Authorities on development issues, including some of globalization’s stalwart defenders, say the movement in this country has broadened, matured and become more influential in the 33 months since Seattle.
"Jubilee 2000, the Third World debt-relief group whose work has been championed by Irish rock star Bono, is the non-government organization with perhaps the most influence over public policymaking.
‘All of the major organizations have grown enormously more powerful and effective. The only thing that’s shrunk is the street protests," said Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Liberal Centre for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. "The movement hasn’t lost momentum at all. It just shifted to a different set of tactics.’"
When they arrived in Washington for last month’s meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund; the activists chanted "quarantine corporate greed" and "drop Bush not the bomb."
Under the watchful eye of the police reinforced by officers from around the country, protesters flooded downtown, banging drums and waving giant puppets as they walked.
Alec Baldwin and PETA udderly ridiculous
Handsome heartthrob Alec Baldwin may cut a romantic figure to American filmgoers, but to some political organizers Baldwin is the enemy.
Baldwin has been a featured guest speaker during a number of Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) fundraisers across the country. When he turned up in Minnesota recently at a DFL fundraiser for gubernatorial candidate Roger Moe and U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone, angry protesters confronted him.
Baldwin, an outspoken liberal and a supporter of the controversial animal rights activist group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), has become a catalyst for Republican criticism.
In Minnesota, about 20 Minnesota College Republicans and staff members from Republican U.S. Senate candidate Norm Coleman’s campaign stood in rain in front of the Fine Line, chanting "Deport Baldwin" and waving signs that said "Paul Wellstone, bad for Minnesota farmers" and "Baldwin and PETA--udderly ridiculous."
DFLers were infuriated, saying that as passionate as campaigns get, seldom do candidates protest one another’s fundraising attempts.
"This us so un-Minnesotan", said Randy Schubring, chairman of the DFL’s Fourth District, as a pickup truck plastered with Coleman signs pulled up and a man with a red T-shirt featuring Wellstone as Lenin jumped out.
"Coleman’s sunk to a new low," he said. "I’m all for free speech, and if they want to protest they can, but they don’t have to get in people’s faces like this."
Police were called and told protesters they could not block the entry, but no arrests were made and the protesters remained on site for the entire two-hour duration of the event.
Inside Baldwin let loose with a fiery speech railing against Republicans and told a packed crowd of several hundred that " you have a senator who is an iconic figure to Democrats across the country."
Republicans, he said, are trying to define Americans as only those who support the president, pledge allegiance and salute the flag. "What American really is--Paul Wellstone gets it," he said. "He gets that government should do its best for all Americans, that it should do the most for the most it can."
He criticized "muscular conservative" media outlets such as Fox News and the Drudge Report for jumping on the war bandwagon. Had a Democratic administration been in charge on 9/11, he said, "you’d see a banner across the bottom of Fox--‘Osama at large, Day 30, Day 40.’ This administration’s answer is, we can’t find Osama? Let’s go get Saddam."
Talking to reporters later, Baldwin said he is dogged by Republican protesters at many stops. Often, he said, they hand out fake airline tickets--as protesters did in Minnesota--claiming that Baldwin once said he’d leave the country if George W. Bush became president.
Baldwin said he once joked that if Bush ever became president ‘It might be a good time to leave the country’. Ever since, he said, Republicans have circulated the fake tickets at his appearances. Baldwin said he is a vegetarian and supports PETA’s opposition to animal research that could be replaced by computer modeling and other means. But. "I part with some in PETA who oppose all (animal-based) medical research."
He said he does not consider himself or PETA anti-farmer or anti-agriculture. "Agriculture"? That’s a big difference," he said.
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