Toward a Religious Construct
of Environmentalism


By C. Ravin, Esq.

Spring 1994


Foreword


In order to better understand the Earth religions, it is essential to be familiar with the misunderstandings surrounding the people who have lived them. To this end, this paper will explore the history of adversity and even persecution which have faced, and continue to vex, adherents to Earth religions.

The focus of this paper, then, is to encourage a positive familiarity with Earth religions by dispelling their common myths and presenting their plain truths. Efforts by mainstream religions recognize the importance of greater environmental concern will also be examined. Once accomplished, the focus shifts to discussing of how Earth religions can bring a healthy devotion to environmental responsibility on a personal and individual basis. Hopefully insight gleaned from Earth religions will then create inroads into a greater environmental ethic for all humankind.

We feel that we have a special responsibility to this planet which we call the earth... We must do everything that we feel is humanly possible to protect the environment in which we live, and we must do it not only for ourselves but for future generations which are yet unborn who also have a stake in what happens to our lands...

~ Ellis Know His Gun, Crow Tribe, testifying for the Northern Cheyenne Class I Air Redesignation, Lame Deer, Montana, January 1977.


Introduction

Earth religions perceive sacredness everywhere. They share a common realization of the interdependence of living things, and the human responsibility for continual renewal.

In the past three decades, awareness of the interdependence of living things has become increasingly widespread in the dominant culture. This awareness has for the most part arisen in response to environmental problems that have resulted from ignoring the interdependence of living things. We now have a host of environmental laws and environmental sciences, but perhaps what we need most is what the traditional Earth religions have: the ancient, lost reverence for the earth and its web of life.

Just what is an Earth religion? First of all, an Earth religion is not focused on preparing for the Afterlife. It is not devoted to building up good karma, “merit”, or building blocks in a heavenly mansion. Earth religions teach us to not live our lives as though someone is going to announce a final score in the end. Author Chas Clifton notes, “We say Death is as important and necessary as Life, but we do not say that life is only a long preparation for death and a “final judgment.”

An Earth religion must necessarily be attuned to the climate, geography, and locale. And any religion, to be effective, must be attuned to the needs of the individual.


Native American Tribal Religions

In traditional Indian cultures, religion was the core of the culture. From the beginning of contact between white people and Indians until fairly recently, Indians have experienced a continuing assault on this basis of their identity. They were commonly regarded as savages who had no religion. Medicine men, who were the religious leaders of many, perhaps most, tribes, were regarded as sorcerers, conjurers, and quacks. In the early period of contact between whites and Indians, Christian writers recorded their opinions that the deaths of Indians by disease or at the hands of the colonists were manifestations of God’s will. In the nineteenth century, the federal government, in its programs to “civilize” Indians, relied on missionary organizations to share its responsibilities for Indian affairs, particularly education, the establishment clause notwithstanding. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, participation in tribal religious ceremonies such as the sun dance was treated as an offense punishable by criminal penalties.

Although the ruthlessness that characterized earlier periods of this conflict has subsided, the conflict remains. The missionary organizations that played a prominent role in “civilizing” Indians continue to be active on reservations today. Their primary purpose is still spreading the word of God according to the teachings of the sect to which they belong. Since the Judeo—Christian mainstream of the dominant culture tends to view itself as the only true religious tradition, the tendency persists to regard tribal religions as primitive superstitions the Indians must reject if they ever hope to achieve the Christian afterlife. This continuing backdrop of intolerance helps to explain the widespread ignorance of and the depth of insensitivity toward traditional Indian religions.

The concern for the natural world can be seen as one of the most significant common attributes of the different Earth religions - they share the realization that human existence is not possible without the natural environment, that the survival of human beings depends upon the survival of other living things. In the belief systems of the Earth religions, the earth is commonly conceived of as a living being, Mother Earth, which gives life to all living things. The life—giving nature of Mother Earth is frequently seen as growing out of her union with the sky or the sun, each of which is seen as a deity. Various plants, animals, birds, fish, geological features, and bodies of water are treated as having sacred characteristics.

Many rituals and ceremonies, particularly in Native American religions, are concerned with giving thanks for the food and other subsistence needs that Mother Earth provides to those who hunt, fish, gather, and/or raise crops. There is an element of stewardship in the performance of such rituals because they are seen as necessary to ensure that the plants, animals, birds, and fish will continue to flourish and make themselves available for human needs.

The religious leaders who perform these rituals and ceremonies tend to see themselves as caretakers of Mother Earth. For example, in the traditional religion of the Hopi Indians this responsibility is described as follows:

Hopis are the caretakers for all the world, for all mankind. Hopi land extends all over the continents, from sea to sea. But the lands at the sacred center are the key to life. By caring for these lands the Hopi way, in accordance with instructions from the Great Spirit, we keep the rest of the world in balance.

In a prepared statement before a Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs convened after the Lyng decision, Ivan Sidney, chairman of the Hopi Tribal Council of Kykotsmovi, Arizona stated:

Our religion embodies a world-view of life, which is deeply intertwined with and represented by the natural structures of our religion. Hopi existence relies upon the unbroken observation of natural laws. Our religious ceremonies are adherent in maintaining the harmony of the universe. The Hopi people continuously attempt to preserve, to the greatest extent possible, observance of their ceremonial customs. This of course means preservation of natural land sites and natural resource materials used in part of our ceremonies — and requires unencumbered access to those sites.’

Furthermore, as clearly stated by an attorney before the same Senate Select Committee, Native religions “view man, nature, and deity as an integral whole, and focus on spiritual renewal through an individual’s relationship with particularly holy places. If those holy places are altered by development, the religious experience is imperiled.”

Much of Native American religious life does not include the existence of a church, periodic meetings, and identifiable dogma. Instead, there is a pervasive quality to Native American religion which gives all aspects of Native American life and society a spiritual significance. In pursuit of traditional religion, a Native American may feel Compelled to relate to Nature and to others in a particular way.

Native Americans tend to consider themselves inseparable from the natural elements of their land. This is why the Native American community in the United States has long been concerned with the preservation of as much of their land as possible. Given sufficient resources, Native American activists can play the game of environmental impact statements and scoping reports, but they can also touch and move even the most development—minded of their brothers and sisters by talking respect for their mother, the Earth. Even before the most hostile of tribal councils, the kind of “Mother Earth” talk that would make Anglo mining executives or legislators roll their eyes can make all the difference.

Native American author Charles Eastman writes,

“There were no temples or shrines among us save those of Nature. Being a natural, the Indian was intensely poetical. He would deem it sacrilege to build a house for Him who may be met face to face in the mysterious, shadowy aisles. Every act of [the Indian’s] life is, in a very real sense, a religious act. He recognizes the spirit in all creation, and believes that he draws from its spiritual power. His respect for the immortal part of the animal, his brother, often leads him so far as to lay out the body of his game in state and decorate the head with symbolic paint or feathers. Then he stands before it in the prayer attitude, holding up the filled pipe, in token that he freed with honor the spirit of his brother, whose body his need compelled him to take to sustain his own life.”

“Kinship with all creatures of the Earth, sky, and water was a real and active principle,” Chief Luther standing Bear of the Lakota Sioux said in 1933. “The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man’s heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans, too. So, he kept his youth close to its softening influence."

Joann Tall, an Oglala Lakota mother of eight, has been active for over twenty years in the struggle to sustain and nurture Native communities. In April 1993, she was awarded $60,000 by the San Francisco-based Goldman Environmental Foundation as one of 1993’s seven “environmental heroes” from around the world. Tall was chosen for her organizing efforts to stop toxic waste dumps and nuclear weapons testing on Indian lands.

Tall says her dedication to environmental work is grounded in the Lakota’s reverence for the natural world. Protecting the environment is fundamental to the survival of Native American peoples, many of whom still depend on their aboriginal rights to hunt, fish, and harvest natural foods and medicines. The identities, spiritual ways, cultures, and health of more than 500 Native American nations in the U.S hinge on their ability to live in a respectful interdependent relationship with their homelands.

Tall is but one of many Native women who are doing this work. “Our women come from a long line of resistance,” she notes. In Native societies, women are not only life-givers, caretakers, clan mothers, and matriarchs, but they are truly the center of Indian communities. In every instance of activism against this destruction, Native women have been on the front lines. From the Navajo grandmothers fighting relocation at Big Mountain, Arizona, to the Dann sisters’ stand to save Western Shoshone homelands in Nevada, to Onondaga clan mothers in New York fighting James Bay Hydro, they persevere in the resistance.

Destruction of Native lands caused by government and industry includes strip-mining, coal-burning power plants, unregulated dumps, intensive logging, hydroelectric dams, uranium mining, contamination of rivers and waterways, and more than 800 nuclear bombs exploded as “tests.”


Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Ass’n

Much has already been written about the startling 1988 case of Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Ass’n. Scholars have universally rejected the majority analysis. Over the objections of Native Americans, various environmental organizations, and the State of California, the Supreme Court in Lyng ruled that the federal government could harvest timber and could construct a road through a portion of a national forest in northwestern California that traditionally had been used for religious purposes by thousands of Native Americans.

Writing for the majority, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor justified the construction of the road in part because the rights that “the Indians may have to the use of the area…do not divest the Government of its right to use what is, after all, its land.”

Of course, how the government obtained the land originally, or what rights still remain with the descendants of the aboriginal occupiers under the law, or under natural law for that matter, was of no consequence in the decision.

Lyng struck a low point in the Court’s modern history regarding religious liberty and free exercise supremacy. The Rehnquist Court devalued the claim of the Native Americans that the timber harvesting and road project would virtually destroy their ability to practice their religion. By dwelling on cold legal technicalities and by elevating governmental land ownership at the expense of a fundamental aspect of religious liberty — the right to practice one’s religion on one’s sacred land — Justice O’Connor demonstrated rather appalling ignorance of the world of spirit in general and of the place of natural environment in Native American religion in particular.

The dissent in Lyng - Justice Brennan, joined by Justices Marshall and Blackmun fully understood the difference between the religious principles of western man and those of Native Americans. Justice Brennan stated: “In marked contrast to traditional Western religions, the belief systems of Native Americans do not rely on doctrines, creeds, or dogmas...Where dogma lies at the heart of Western religions, Native American faith is inextricably bound to the use of the land.” The majority, he added, did not “address this conflict in any meaningful fashion.” Further emphasizing the unconstitutionality of the majority opinion, Justice Brennan stated that “[g]iven today’s ruling, freedom [of the Native American to practice his or her religious belief] amount to nothing more than the right to believe that their religion will be destroyed.”





The Old Religion

The gods of the Witches are the oldest gods of all. They are the same as those divinities that were real to the men of the Old Stone Age, who painted them upon the walls of their sacred caves.

In a chronology of early religion, Gerald Gardner writes in The Meaning of Witchcraft,

Later Paleolithic Period (the Old Stone Age, when man used tools and weapons of chipped stone), the time of cave paintings in France and Spain depicting round dances and a God, or a priest as a God’s representative, dressed in animal skins and with a horned headdress; also of the making of figurines of a Goddess of Fertility, naked and with her feminine sexuality emphasised: about 12,000 to 10,000 B.C.

As society became agrarian, the solar and lunar cycles marked the times for sowing seed and harvesting. The solstices and equinoxes became special days, as did the four days falling halfway between, when great feasts were held. These feasts, called sabbats, and are still celebrated by Witches today.

Witches refer to Witchcraft as the “Old Religion,” or “Wicca”, and believe it has pre-Christian origins. By whatever name, it is a Earth religion. British author Sybil Leek, who notably was kicked out of England for being a Witch, explains:

“We date our Old Religion back to the days when man was first in the world, looking in wonderment around him to see the sun rise and set with regularity, and knowing that some rhythmic movement surrounded him. He could not account for it and so it became part of his worship, for he wished to make his life in association with Nature.”

A witch, originally, was a healer, herbalist, and wise one.43 The word “witch” derives from the Old English “wicce” which meant “to bend or shape,” but was sometimes used to mean “wise” and “wisdom”. Thus, witchcraft literally meant “The Craft of the Wise” or the craft of those who can bend or shape things at their will. This idea endured long into the Middle Ages.

For a thousand years after Christianity first became a state religion in Byzantium, it coexisted peacefully with the Old Religion - at least away from the centers of ecclesiastical power. Many, including priests, followed both.

In the late 1500s in Europe, a wave of hysteria swept the land. Organized religion felt that the ways of the Wicca were a grave threat to their belief systems. The pulpit became a platform for the denunciation and then extermination of anyone suspected of consorting with the Old Gods.

In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII released the Papal Bull declaring Witchcraft a heretical act. This unleashed the fury of the Inquisition against the Old Religion, and Witches were actively persecuted for worshipping a non-Christian god. Over three centuries, an estimated nine million people, most of them women, were executed. In Germany, where the persecution was worst, two villages were left with only a single female apiece after trials in l585. In the face of this onslaught, the Craft went underground.

The worship of the old gods has never died; it has merely either gone underground or changed its form.52 They who would once have been its priests and priestesses, the Christian church in Anglo-Saxon times began to call Witches.


Witchcraft Today

Although the Salem witch trials were much publicized, they were mild compared to the persecution of witches in Europe. Nineteen people were executed as witches in Salem, while in Europe millions were killed. In 1736, England and Scotland repealed the death penalty for witchcraft. Earlier than that, people in Massachusetts began to question the witch trials, and it appears that by 1694, the accused were out of jails as a result of pardon, acquittal, or ignored escapes. Subsequently, Massachusetts tried to repair some of the damage caused by the trials by having the attainder removed from names of those convicted of witchcraft. As recently as 1957, a resolution was passed by the Massachusetts General Court to remove any “disgrace or cause for distress” that attached to descendants of Ann Pudeator, who was executed as a witch in l962.

It wasn’t until this century that Witches began, gingerly, to step out of the broom closet. Contrary to the picture of Witchcraft drawn by the media and Hollywood, Witches do not indulge in “devil worship” or invoke satan. Doreen Valiente states, “They believe that their Old Religion is the aboriginal creed of western Europe, and far, far older than Christianity whereas ‘satan’ is part of Christian mythology and “satanists” are just mixed-up Christians.

Police Officer Kerr Cuhulain “Wicca is not satanism. Satanism is a deviant and perverted Christianity with the same God and Devil. A satanist must, by definition, believe in all the Christian mythos. It is only through that belief that the satanist’s blasphemies have any power. We Witches do not believe in the Christian God or Devil, so the whole question is outside our religion. We are not anti-Christian. We are simply different.

Officer Cuhulain’s friend, Police Officer Sean Watson, states, “We are not to be feared. We are not after your soul or your children. We do not recruit, and do not solicit members. We do not beg for money. We are a quiet, nature-loving religion, without central rules or rulers. We serve and revere the life force in all, and strive to protect those unable to protect themselves. Succinctly put, we have one great Law - as you do no harm do what you will.”

Wicca has no prophets or messiahs. There is neither scripture nor dogma. Each Wiccan has a personal relationship with deity. Wiccans allow fellow worshippers an enormous amount of personal freedom in the practice of their religion. There is room for personal creativity and experience. Wiccans believe in an individual’s right to choose his/her own religious path, and, for this reason, do not prosletyze.

Wicca, along with the most true Western Pagan theologies, is a “monistic” religion. This means that Wiccans view Godhead as being at one with Nature. Other religions, which are “dualistic,” believe that man and nature are corrupt and separate from God, and that the goal of man is to escape from life, the world, and even the “self” identity. Dualistic religions view the world as a vale of tears, and emphasize the suffering and negativity in life. Wiccans, on the other hand, realize that there is indeed a negative existence and material world, but they believe that evil can be Surmounted by maintaining a positive outlook and realizing humanity’s divine nature

Another word describing the Wiccan religion is “pantheistic”, meaning “God in everything.” According to this belief, all of Nature, every particle of energy and every piece of matter contains a spark of the Divine. Thus, the Pagan endeavors to be in tune with the forces and rhythms of Nature in order to broaden wisdom and understanding. Contrary to what some irresponsible scholars have said, Pagans do not bow down and worship the Sun and the Moon and other natural phenomenon. What this means is that Pagans see the nature of Divinity symbolically manifest in these.

Wicca is an Earth religion because of its belief in the sacredness of Nature. Concern for the environment is an extension of the Old Religion’s reverence for life. English Witch Sybil Leek opines, “Part of the work for Witches in the future will be to help all forms of ecology, in order that good may triumph over evils such as the grave, unharmonious states of sickness which pollute the air, water, and countryside.”

A turning point for Wicca and for ecology came in 1967, when American historian Lynn White Jr. published a brief article titled The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis. “By destroying Pagan animism,” White wrote, “Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feeling of natural objects.” Five years later, the English historian Arnold Toynbee published an article blaming the mounting worldwide ecological crisis on the rise of monotheism, and urged a reversion to pantheism. In 1979, Margot Adler, a reporter for National Public Radio, described her progression from environmental concern to Witchcraft in her hugely popular book Drawing Down the Moon.

Modern Wicca owes much of its popularity to the resurgence of Neo-Paganism in the second half of the twentieth century. Throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s, feminist spirituality was the driving force behind NeoPaganism. The polytheistic system of gods and especially goddesses from pre-Christian traditions, which sees the Divine as manifest in all of Nature, became a popular refuge for women who have rejected the patriarchal Judeo-Christian tradition.

Feminist spirituality, or goddess worship, remains a central force in the Pagan revival. But many Pagans have sought through journals, books, and lectures to portray the movement as much broader. Some environmentalists are drawn to Paganism’s pantheistic underpinnings: its reverence for the Earth, its ritual connections with Nature, and the celebrations of the changing seasons.

“Paganism’s flexible structure, which emphasizes individually tailored belief systems over dogma, is among its chief attractions,” said Cambridge resident Rev. Lesley Phillips, who helped found the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans (CUUPS), an officially recognized branch of the Unitarian Universalist Church. “We’re not hampered by creed,” Phillips said.

Neo-Paganism takes the most worthwhile philosophies and practices of the Pagan religions of ancient times, and has adapted them to modern needs and lifestyles. A Neo-Pagan is a person who believes that the Divinity or “God-force” is contained within all living beings and in the material world as well, and who follows a religion which honors and observes the cycles of Nature.

The word “pagan” comes from the Latin word paganus which means “country dweller”.~ Via the Roman legions, where it meant something like “dumb hick civilian,” it entered early Christian jargon with the meaning of non-believer, someone who had not enlisted in Christ’s army. But does its root meaning suggest that all good Pagans should be back-to-the-landers?

Not necessarily. Emphasis is no longer focused on the fertility of crops and humans, but on fertility of the mind. Ed Fitch, author of Magical Rites From the Crystal Well, comments:

“Although our Pagan ancestors honored, even deified, natural forces in their religions, they did so because their lives were dependent upon these forces for successful hunting and a good harvest. Today, life is very much changed and the average person is practically divorced from Nature. It would not be feasible to try to return to the more natural lifestyles of the past. Thus, modern Paganism concentrates on a more spiritual ideal, and strives for higher consciousness and spirituality.”

Paganism is now so prevalent that it cannot be dismissed as a fad, say adherents, religion historians, and theologians. An article in New York Live, the Sunday magazine of the New York Daily News, quotes J. Gordon Melton, head of the Institute f or the Study of American Religion at the University of California/Santa Barbara, as saying, “Witchcraft and Paganism are the fastest—growing religions in the United States.”8° In the book, Megatrends for Women, John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene devote a whole trend-watching chapter to “The Goddess Movement.” Pagan students groups (PSGs) are forming on college campuses, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Paganism is studied alongside mainstream religions in the lecture halls of Harvard Divinity School.

“We’re a growing, living religion,” said Linda Julien, head of the PSG at MIT, and Wiccan high priestess of the Blue Star tradition.

“As people do their homework and look into the movement, they see it’s about nature, about planetary wellness, and living in harmony with others,” said Selena Fox, a nature priestess who has lectured widely and founded an international Wiccan church near Mount Horeb, Wisconsin.


Mainstream Religion and Environmentalism

Within the last year or so, Christianity Today (CT) has discovered environmentalism and the theological challenges it presents. “The very urgency of the problem has created tremendous evangelistic opportunities,” wrote one Ronald J. Snider in the June 21, 1993 issue.

Mr. Snider stated the problem clearly: A religious yearning underlies much environmentalism. People know that the secular, materialistic worldview is causing the problem: Capitalists and Communist societies both pollute equally. “The tragedy is that when these folks yearn for religious solutions, they assume that historic Christianity has nothing to offer. So they turn to goddess worship, nature spirituality, Eastern monism, and New Age nonsense.”8° So, he concluded, Christians should leap into the environmental movement, save the planet for their grandchildren, and also eliminate the “weeds of nature spirituality” before they take over the lawn.

Chas Clifton notes, Mr. Snider stated the problem clearly: A religious yearning underlies much environmentalism.

People know that materialistic worldview is causing the problem: Capitalist and Communist societies both pollute equally. “The tragedy is that when these folks yearn for religious solutions, they assume historic Christianity has nothing to offer. So they goddess worship, nature spirituality, Eastern monism, and New Age nonsense.” So, he concluded, Christians should leap into environmental movement, save the planet for their grandchildren and also eliminate the “weeds of nature spirituality” before they take over the lawn.

Chas Clifton notes, “...[CT’s] writers are starting to see us Pagans as the competition in the cultural arena. They don’t really know who we are or where we are, but they know we’re out there, smiting them hip and thigh with Genesis 1:28. That’s the Bible verse which Yahweh tells the First People, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth’ (King James version). Which they did, and we can all see the consequences.”

The Judeo-Christian ethic holds that man is divinely charged to exercise dominion over and subdue the and. Reverend Richard Cartwright Austin, a theo-ecologist criticizes such an ethic: “Many who love the earth are concerned that biblical tradition may have motivated the human abuse of nature which now threatens the survival of life on this planet. Unintentionally who have gone forth in Jesus’ name to save the world may have also contributed to its destruction.

“The Genesis story, with its emphasis on dominion, appears the perfect rationale for cutting down forests, running roads through every wild place, killing off snail darters,” writes Bill McKibben in his recent book, The End of Nature. 9

Father Sean McDonagh, an Irish theo-anthropologist, hands up an even more damning indictment of Christianity’s relationship to the environment. He points out that after the Black Plague in the fourteenth century, the “belief that a benign God who created and ordered a just world” began to fade from popular imagination. Newton, the “father of modern science,” brought mathematical precision to the laws of motion. The universe resembled a complex, finely calibrated clock with God as the clockmaker. Father McDonagh says that “[t]his ‘mechanical’ view of the universe proved enormously attractive to western man during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries.” Knowledge and cold rationality replaced the spirituality of nature, and the Biblical injunction to exercise dominion over the Earth could be almost perversely fulfilled by actually transforming the Earth’s resources for man’s uses.

Margot Adler comments, “I personally believe that the gravest danger in our world is rampant fundamentalism, world-wide, whether it be Jewish, Islamic, or Christian; the view that there is essentially one path, one way. And that view, coupled with the view that the Earth is not sacred, or not as sacred as the things that come hereafter, allows people to kill other people, even to set nuclear bombs off without much thought, because it does not believe that this world, this body, these lives are sacred.”

Of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero, CT’s man-on-the-scene, Loren Wilkinson, wrote, “the Christian presence was swamped by a plethora of feminist, Universalist, and Pagan groups, who argued that a new religious paradigm must replace the old one, which was shaped by patriarchy, capitalism, theism, and Christianity.

This view of the new paradigm, usually attributed to historian Lynn White, who wrote a significant essay about it several decades back, is endorsed by many Pagans. It is not longer a novelty, and it worries Christians. Some even endorse it: Ian Bradley, author of God is Green: Ecology for Christians admits that “Anthropocentric (human-centered) thinking...has made the Church in the Western world at least one of the prime aiders and abetters of the exploitation and pollution of the earth’s resources.”


Gaia

The Gaia hypothesis has attracted attention in a wide variety of forums, and has been a unifying issue among spiritual feminists, Neo-Pagans, political environmentalists, and animal-rights activists. The theory was advanced in the 1960s by British scientist James Lovelock.

The Gaia hypothesis is the scientific expression of the pre-Christian belief that the Earth is a living creature. As Environment magazine describes it, the idea is “that the earth’s lower atmosphere is an internal, regulated, and necessary part of life itself, and that for hundreds of millions of years, life has controlled the temperature, chemical composition, oxidizing ability, and acidity of the earth’s atmosphere.”

Scientific proponents of the theory scoff at those who adhere to it for religious reasons. Pagans have long found truth in the Gaia hypothesis. A CT article even takes Pagan Gala-believers to task for being “minimally concerned about physical reality and quantitative data.” Yet it concludes that despite carrying the name of a Pagan goddess, the spiritual theory of caring for the Earth is one to which Christians can subscribe.”

Tom Connor, a writer for CT, queries:

“As Christians, where do we fit into the debate over Gala? First we can acknowledge the environmental crisis. Wasting precious resources and being insensitive to the science of the Earth (geophysiology) is a kind of sin. God warned the Israelites: ‘If you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.’ (Lev. 18:28). Second, we need to avoid a knee—jerk rejection of the entire Gaia theory. Gala is the current consensus builder within the New Age. But the ideas underlying Gaia theory are not intrinsically evil because they carry the name of a Pagan goddess. Our puritan forebears refused to use the names of the days of the week because of their Pagan origins. The Gala hypothesis, viewed as a scientific tool, can be constructive and stimulating. Life is not easy to define, and this is where the scientific character of Gala is most intriguing. This does not challenge Christian belief nor does it threaten Christian faith.”

Rev. Michael Dowd, pastor of Church of the Good Shepard United Church of Christ in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is the author of Earthspirit: A Handbook for Nurturing an Ecological Christianity.

In the Christo-Pagan Panel/Interfaith Dialogue section of the Winter 1993-94 issue of Green Egg: A Journal of Awakening Earth, he writes:

“There are a billion Christians on the planet today. Unless Christianity is greened, unless it can integrate the best of natural religion, there is little hope for our species. Only as Christians remythologize their faith in light of a deeply ecological worldview and practice will Christianity contribute to the planet’s recovery rather than its demise. Spiritually mature, loving Pagans can greatly facilitate this process.”


Efforts by Mainstream Religion to Heal the Earth

Mainstream religion has jumped on the environmental bandwagon with renewed zest. The U.S. mainstream religious community recently embraced a $4.5 million, three-year National Religious Partnership for the Environment campaign.113 This new program is a joint effort of four major faith groups: the U.S. Catholic Conference (USCC), the National Council of Churches of Christ, the Consultation on the Environment and Jewish Life, and the Evangelical Environmental Network.

Its three years of activity will range from “public-policy education and development of theological and moral scholarship” to pilot programs in 53,000 congregationS.” The USCC, for instance, aims to provide environmental kits to every Catholic parish in the nation annually during the three years.”

Tony Campolo, author of It Isn’t Easy Being Green, Especially if You’re an Evangelical, is candid about viewing modern environmentalism as an great evangelical opportunity. At the Christian Booksellers Association Convention in Dallas in 1992, he said,

“We let the civil rights movement pass us by in the ‘60s. Are we going to let the ecological movement pass us by in the ‘90’s? I’m a university teacher, and students are really hot on this issue. I’ve stood back and watched a whole generation lost to the Church because the Church refused to say anything about civil rights and the antiwar movement. I don’t want to see that happen again. This is going to be the hot issue for the next generation, and I want the Church to be there in the forefront, saying what needs to be said. If kids are going to join the environmental movement, I want it to be a Christian bandwagon, not a New Age bandwagon.”

Is this just another attempt by one ailing religion to gain adherents from another growing religion? Dr. Sheldon Bennett, Reverend of the United First Parish Unitarian Church in Quincy, Massachusetts, believes so. He sees the danger of such a blatantly evangelical attitude towards ecology. “Using environmentalism for marketing purposes may get people in the door, but then it’s just so much hot air because it doesn’t empower action. The new parishioners are infused with the idea that God’s realm is Heaven, so their actions on the Earth really don’t matter. Those who put great emphasis on an afterlife devalue this life.

Dr. Bennett explains that the meaning of the phrase “dominion over” in the book of Genesis “originally related to the responsibility of good kings to take care of society and of the land. The ancient Hebrews respected nature. They believed, as some Eastern religions do, that they would pay for their environmental transgressions, and would be punished by harsh weather. Christianity, however, can be properly charged with perverting the meaning of Genesis and using it to justify the abuse of nature to further man’s selfish interests. Stewardship was the norm, but that turned around in the sixteenth century. Sir Francis Bacon expounded on the idea that we have the power to examine, manipulate, and exploit the earth, the power to ‘put it on the rack’, as he saw it. Christianity was remiss in riot challenging this.

Last year, the 32nd Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) General Assembly debated approval of a bylaw amendment that would have added to the principles section of the bylaws the following language: “spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of all existence and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.” A substitute bylaw change was voted that reads, “Spiritual teachings of those earth-centered traditions which help us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.2~ Dr. Bennett is certain that this amendment will receive final approval at the 1994 General Assembly this summer.

Dr. Bennett comments “Both Thoreau and Emerson were Unitarians who looked to nature for spiritual inspiration and for what it could teach us. That sensitivity to nature has been with our tradition for a long while. Today, we teach it in our religious education programs. Our new hymnals incorporate material from Earth-centered religions, including Native American and Wiccan. And we are the only mainstream religion to see the wisdom of Pagan ways.”

The UUA has attracted thousands of members since admitting a pagan organization in 1987. That organization, the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans (CUUPS), was motivated by “the realization that a male God passed down through Christianity - and thousands of years before that in Judaism - is not working for a lot of people,” said Leslie Phillips, a Unitarian minister in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a CUUPS co-chair.

These Unitarian pagans have responded with a faith that emphasizes planetary stewardship; their unifying belief in the ancient perception of the Earth as a living being. In adopting this belief, the Unitarian pagans have become one of several church groups that recognize the spiritual dimension of the environmental movement.

California State Senator Tom Hayden has been working to connect the environment and spirituality. After fifteen years of work on the environmental front, plus the defeat of “Big Green,” California’s omnibus environmental initiative, which he coauthored, he saw progress as illusory. In seeking a more sustaining vision, he concluded that spiritual awakening would be the key to environmental reform.

Hayden teaches a ten-week course on the environment and spirituality at Holy Names College and at Santa Monica College. The point of the course is to investigate the world’s great spiritual traditions, seeking new ways to treat Nature with deeper respect.

His purpose is to develop a sort of Earth gospel that can be attached to existing traditions in order to activate people within those religions. “For very practical reasons,” Hayden says. “In Sacramento or Washington, the organized religious community is absent from the environmental debate.”

“The root cause of the ecological crisis is the way nature is demeaned, as if its only value is as a storehouse of things,” he says. “So my question is: How do you extend ethical consideration to it? How do you treat it as having some value independent of human consuiuption?”

Dr. Bennett opines, “Humanity must come to a greater consciousness of our responsibility to care for the Earth. We must expand the idea of the love we all have for our families, friends, and selves to the larger world, including the environment. All religions must work in concert and recognize each other’s strengths.”

While good as theory, the actual prospect of a common environmental ethic among American religions today is daunting. The United States now contains over 1,500 different religious bodies and sects. Unitarians rank second highest of all American religions for median annual household income, and they are number one in the category of percent of members with college degrees. Not surprisingly, the best-educated Americans turn out to be religious liberals.

A better understanding, and even the actual practice of Earth religion, can move humankind toward a greater environmental ethic. Chas Clifton says: “We owe it to other people, other creatures, and the planet to be fair, balanced, honest and not greedy, but we were not born ‘in sin’. Our bodies with their appetites, sexuality, and other physical pleasures are not bad or sinful either. We do not consider our bodies as all but owned by Satan, the way some Christians do. Consequently, we do not need to “free ourselves” from them prematurely. The body is not something that must be ignored or disciplined so that we may be holy. Our bodies live, then die. They deserve good care while we have them and careful disposal when no longer needed.”

Cheryl Ryan, President of the Quincy College Pagan Students Group believes that everyone can help to heal the Earth. She says, “Everyone should try to respect and to maintain the Earth. When Pagans take something from a tree, we explain to the tree why we are doing so. Trees can feel pain, they are alive. Wicca teaches that all of Nature is balanced. That applies to ecosystems. Cutting down 10,000 trees leaves much more out of balance than just an empty field. The effects are felt everywhere. We should also look to our elders as major resources. We can use their wisdom to learn how to can foods, to recycle, to live with less trash. When my grandmother built her house on Cape Cod, she did not cut down one tree on her lot.”

Wicca includes a belief in individual responsibility. Although the concept of living in harmony does not impose strict rules to be followed, or a rigid distinction between good and evil, there is a strong belief that “an act that harms anyone harms us all.” Along with this strong sense of responsibility is a focus on the reality of day-to-day life. Starhawk explains, “Inner work, spiritual work, is most effective when it proceeds hand in hand with outer work.”44 Outer work can include “cleaning up garbage at a campsite or marching to protest an unsafe nuclear plant.

Chas Clifton states, “One thing is important wherever you live: Know where you are. You cannot love the Earth before you understand something about it. Likewise, you cannot “save the planet” without starting where you are. It is a little hypocritical to be concerned about the fates of species on the other side of the globe before you know what happens to your own take-out pizza cartons after you have disposed of them.”

“The key,” concurs biocentrist G. Tyler Miller, Jr., “is to find a sense of place - a river, mountain, or piece of earth that you feel truly at one with...When you become part of a place, it becomes part of you. Then you are driven to defend it against damage and to heal its ecological wounds.”

Earth religion teaches us to live more responsibly with what we’ve got and to scrutinize our impact as individuals on the Earth. We must be conscious of everything we buy, and just as aware of where it all winds up. Everything we do in our lives does make a difference. Whether we choose to walk or to drive, to grow vegetables or to buy them, to recycle or to litter, we each can control the impact on the environment by our decisions. We live in a world of innumerable options, and we will all continue to pollute, yet no choice we make is too small to consider how it will harm the one common denominator we all share - our Earth.

“The Old Ways are Ways for Today,” predicts Ed Fitch. Carl Llewellyn Weschke, president of Llewellyn Publications, the largest Pagan publishing company, writes, “In our hearts, we are all Pagans - for we are pagani, people of the country, born of the Earth. There is wisdom in knowing your origins, and from your roots, you may draw strength and knowledge. Some call this way Wicca. Call it what you will, or call it nothing at all...but listen! Your Mother, the Earth, is calling you, Her child.”

“There’s a growing respect for the elders and the old ways,” says environmental activist Bill Keonen, who is himself a member of the traditionalist Native American Church. “You can’t accomplish much by ignoring them.”

Earth religions can have a lot to offer us, and can point the way to an even better and more challenging future. The world can be molded and improved in many ways, and humankind itself has the potential for veritable godhood. By gaining a deep realization of our most ancient foundations, and by consistently reestablishing our essential oneness with all of Nature, we can make both ourselves and the universe at large into works of greater perfection.