The greening of American faith - effort of religious organizations to design prayers and demonstration of faith for Earth Day celebrations

MANY religious Americans encountered a strange beast during the octave of Earth Day this year. At weekend services, in place of some traditional prayers, they were asked to pay homage to the earth, sky, and animals.

One prayer resolved that "we must say, do, and be everything possible to realize the goal of the environmental Sabbath: an ecological society.... We cannot let our mother die. We must love and replenish her."

Another prayer, this one from the Iroquois, begins, "We return thanks to our mother, the earth which sustains us. We return thanks to all the herbs, which furnish medicines for the cure of our diseases. We return thanks to the corn, and to her sisters, the beans and the squashes."

These prayers came courtesy of the National Religious Partnerships for the Environment, which, as part of a $4.5-million interfaith effort, distributed environmental-awareness kits to 53,000 evangelical, mainline Protestant, and Roman Catholic congregations (the Jewish version apparently wasn't ready in time for Earth Day). Included in the kits were liturgy suggestions from the National Council of Churches, including litanies, Scripture passages, and hymn titles for a complete worship service.

Even the U.S. Catholic Conference took part, issuing its own monograph for Earth Day, entitled "Renewing the Face of the Earth." (It can at least be said that the bishops' package was better than some; for example, it revived St. Francis's theocentric prayer, "Canticle of the Sun."

There was a time when secular liberalism was partially defined by its desire to separate religion from politics, a separation that has been largely accomplished. Now we are in the midst of an interesting new trend. Secular liberalism seems to be trying to recapture religion for its own uses, and the environment seems to be the main focus of attention.

Astronomer Carl Sagan, a declared atheist, has issued an urgent plea for an "uncommon marriage between science and religion" to help solve environmental problems. Matthew Fox, author of The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, describes the Earth as a kind of Christ figure and dismisses as "Christofascism" any theology that views Jesus' personhood as a unique revelation. He urges Christians to move beyond a theology based on sin and redemption and develop a Creation spirituality with nature as our primary revelation.

Meanwhile, the ecological movement has spawned a revival of pagan Earth worship in the form of Gaia, a concept first advanced by atmospheric scientist James Lovelock more than twenty years ago. The basic premise of Gaian theory is that the Earth itself is a superorganism that is both living and divine.

There are disagreements about whether Gaia is a religion or a scientific theory (though the Gaia Institute even commissioned a complete choral Mass entitled "Missa Gaia"). Certainly its religious aspect has found followers in spiritual feminist circles attracted to the idea of Mother Earth or an Earth goddess. For example, Rowena Pattee Kryder, of the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, explains how Gaia communicates with us, her children. If we are addicted and confused, Gaia sends us earthquakes, floods, and tornadoes to force us to reassess our values.

Man Shall Have No Dominion

THE CURRENT trend began some three decades ago with historians and scientists claiming that Christianity itself was dangerous to the environment.

In Genesis, after God created man and woman in His image, he blessed them with the words: "Be fertile and multiply; fill the Earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on this Earth" (Gen. 1:28). This is the first charge, long before the Fall, and it was given to human beings directly by God.

After God had created the Earth for man's sake, that is, He created man to till the soil. It was an explicit command to mix labor with God's Creation so as to improve upon what appears in a pure state of nature. God's covenant with Adam required him to exercise dominion over the Earth.

In 1967, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, historian Lynn White presented a paper entitled "The Historic Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis." In it he said that this teaching in Genesis is the root cause of environmental degradation.

Vice President A1 Gore devoted an entire chapter of his book, Earth in the Balance, to "Environmentalism of the Spirit," in which he poses a sobering question, and answers it himself. "When giving us dominion over the Earth, did God choose an appropriate technology? ... The jury is still out." The jury is out on Whom?

The UN-sponsored Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 was a high point in this trend toward the fusion of environmentalism and religion. Indeed, Brazilian evangelicals were largely responsible for the environmentalist summit's taking place. At one point during the meeting, a sizable contingent from the United Church of Christ held a demonstration with members of other denominations and opened with the traditional hymn, "Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?"--substituting "Earth" for "Lord."