It’s Official: Environmentalism Is the New Religion
By Mary Theroux • Monday April 11, 2011 1:16 PM PDT • 9 Comments
Robert Nelson, in the Independent Institute’s recent book, The New Holy Wars, points out that environmental religion owes its moral activism, ascetic discipline, reverence for nature, and fallen view of man to the Protestant theology of John Calvin.
Manhattan’s new Church of Earthalujah is perhaps the most striking—though hardly rare—expression of this new religion. Its leader, the Rev. Billy, outlined the church’s purpose and practices in this recent interview.
Asked about influences in his life, Rev. Billy reminisced on the importance of his high school creative writing teacher:
I moved to the East Coast with his family for a bit to get out of a tough Midwestern Calvinist situation.
The tenets of the Church of Earthalujah are based on the view that:
...these freak storms and tsunamis and flocks of blackbirds are not a coincidence—it’s the Earth talking to us. The Earth’s physical systems are in revolt.
Their faith is practiced both in church:
Every Sunday we have a devil and a saint, and the holy writ is the Earth. We have sermons and songs. Scientists give talks.
And on the street:
Friends give us soil from mountains that have been strip-mined and we go into bank lobbies like Chase and Union Bank as if we’ve been invited by an art curator and we sculpt dirt peaks and sing, then exorcise the demon out of the ATMs.
One might be tempted to laugh off such “performance art,” were it not that so many apparently find such tactics absolutely mesmerizing:
...we talked to many middle managers in the lobby at JP Morgan, and now that bank is in negotiations with Rainforest Action Network in San Francisco over their environmental policies.
When corporate policy—not to mention international economic and public policy—is based on faith over fact, may Heaven help us all.
Tags: Business, California, Culture, Economics, Environment, Global Warming, Land use, Religion, United Nations 
John Calvin connected with the modern “religion” of environmentalism? As a Christian who greatly admires the work of Augustine and Calvin, I struggle with such an assertion. First, Calvin’s admonition that the human mind is often an “idol factory” seeking to replace God’s position with various idols such as money, sex, or Mother Earth seems to me to be an accurate critique of the environmentalist movement. Rather than worship the Father who would not spare his own son so atonement could be made for our sins, the environmentalists worship a created thing–the earth, nature, whatever you want to call it. Second, as for Calvin’s reverence for nature, I assume the book means God’s general revelation in the natural realm. This is best seen in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” (Romans 1:20) From the magnificence of the creation we can see some of our Creator’s qualities. This does not encourage the worship of nature, but should make us stand in awe of the Lord of Hosts who spoke it all into existence. Finally, man’s fallen nature is a Biblical principle taught in Scripture and clearly explained by Augustine. Turning again to Romans, Paul explains that “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.” Romans 3:10-11. The prophet Jeremiah taught that “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” Jeremiah 17:19. As Augustine points out, prior to the Fall, man had the ability to sin and the ability not to sin. After the Fall his inclinations are so corrupt that he only has the ability to sin–we are spiritually dead. We are a massa peccati, a “mess of sin,” unable to raise ourselves from spiritual death. But all is not lost, through divine grace God can change our inclinations to where we long for Him and the things that please him. To be sure we cooperate with this grace, but only after the initial divine work of liberation. All that original sin has to do with the environmental movement is this: they are fallen, worshiping the created order rather than the Creator, and need that grace to change their inclinations so they can long for the thing’s of God, accept the work of His Son, and thus be redeemed. Sorry for this long comment, but I cannot agree that Calvin and the Bible are to blame for the modern environmental movement. Calvin’s teaching critques the worshippers of Mother Earth, it does not support them.
William Watkins | Apr 12, 2011 | Reply
I second William Watkins’ comments. The new religion of environmentalism is about as far from the genuine worship of the Creator, as outlined by Calvin and others, as one can get. It may be that the environmentalist religion owes its moral activism to a desire to reclaim the world according to their own warped vision, but that doesn’t mean that their beliefs and those of Calvinism are one and the same.
About the only thing that is accurate in this post is that both environmentalists and Calvinists have a similar view of the fallen nature of Man. I challenge Mr. Nelson, who has otherwise done a great service in writing his book, to re-think this bizarre assertion. To this Reformed Christian, he is way off base in trying to equate Calvinism and environmentalism.
Antonio | Apr 12, 2011 | Reply
I agree it has nothing to do with Christianity but it is a “religion just as is any other devil, nature or statue worship. It therefore should be treated as a religion under the separation clause.
Harold Helbock | Apr 12, 2011 | Reply
This religion is taught in our public high schools and colleges. What happened to separation of church and state? You have to believe it in order to get passing grades. People work hard analyzing this new secular religion in their doctoral theses. Then they go out and teach this religion to their high school and college students.
But wait, we are heading for a real period of colder weather for 20 years or more due to regular, periodic diminished energy output from the sun. With less energy from the sun, there will be less food grown to feed a hungry world.
John Shanahan | Apr 12, 2011 | Reply
God does love the earth, along with ALL of his creation. In John 3:16, when it says “God so loved the world,” the Greek word is “cosmos,” i.e., the entire universe. But He wants the earth to be redeemed and regenerated by redeemed and regenerated man – because that is really the only way it can happen.
Messianic Theonomist | Apr 13, 2011 | Reply
I have noted for more than a decade, that environmentalism (or “environism”—since there is little or no mental exercise in it) is nothing but a religion, whether “new-age” or a reversion to nature-worship and animism. And have published extensively for eight years to point out that fact. The basic tenets of Calvinism (especially TULIP) can quite easily be translated into a earth-worshiping religion without being directly connected, just as the hierarchy of Roman Catholicism or Mormonism can be adopted by some totally different religion. It is nothing but old wine in new bottles. Like many other religions in the past century or two, it seeks to co-opt the Bible for its support, instead of (or in addition to) going out and writing their own holy book.
Nathan | Apr 14, 2011 | Reply
William, Harold and Antonio,
You are correct that Calvinism per se was opposed to nature worship. But you are each missing the real point here. Mary’s blog posting was not claiming that Calvinism included nature worship, but that stripped of supernaturalism when the incoherence of modernism struck, many Calvinists felt left in a quandary in which they could no longer justify God’s existence and instead turned ultimately to the worship of nature. This fact is clearly presented in Robert Nelson’s book, The New Holy Wars, which shows that when God was abandoned by moderns, Calvinism for many people morphed into Congregationalism, then into Unitarianism, then into Transcendentalism, and finally into Environmentalism.
It is no accident that the fathers of most major environmental iconic figures such as Aldo Leopold, John Muir, and Rachel Carson were ministers who all exhibited this trend. In contrast, precious few environmental influences have come from Catholic, Orthodox or Jewish legacy—most all instead come from Protestant roots.
Moreover, this suggests not that Calvin was at all prone to earth worship, but that Calvinism was more susceptible to being corrupted, which is exactly what did occur.
I would hence highly recommend your reading Dr. Nelson’s path-breaking book. Environmentalism is indeed a major religion of Western elites, which have long ago largely abandoned the tenets of Christian teachings.
David Theroux | Apr 14, 2011 | Reply
David,
Thank you for pointing this out. After reflecting on my comments, and the original piece, it does seem that I over-reacted a bit.
I admit that I may have jumped to a conclusion when first reading the original. I now see that the point was that, as you said, a theological system that has lost its bearings could easily become a breeding ground for a totally different ideology, indeed, one that denies the supernatural altogether.
I will endeavor to read Mr. Nelson’s book soon so I can get the full context of his thoughts.
Sincerely,
Antonio
Antonio | Apr 22, 2011 | Reply