By Mike Lee
 
Environmental leaders have searched their souls in recent years to understand why their movement is losing power. Lately, some say they have found what they were looking for.

They got religion.

“There is a great movement afoot here. It's historic,” said Larry J. Schweiger, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation in Washington, D.C., and a professed Christian.

While there's no official barometer of just how cozy environmentalists and religious groups have become, the broad relationship is developing in often novel ways as both sides realize they share certain goals.

Such alliances have attracted not only Jews, Catholics and mainline Protestants, they're also starting to draw conservative evangelicals, who have long viewed environmentalists as strictly secular.

How much this intertwining of interests will affect the physical world and whether everyone can set aside traditional animosities when they begin talking politics remains to be seen.

But for now, partners in this deepening romance are giddy about the greater prospects for saving species, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and controlling the spread of toxic chemicals.

The latest expression of their collaboration involves tomorrow's Earth Day, which aims to raise environmental awareness and preserve natural resources.

The Earth Day Network, which is coordinating thousands of this weekend's events worldwide, has put together its first-ever “religious Earth Day in a box.”

The kit makes it easy for religious leaders and laypeople alike to participate in the 36th annual celebration.

It provides everything that the uninitiated might need to get started on the topic, including a sample editorial for religious leaders to submit to newspapers, and suggestions for Earth-friendly actions.

“There is enough commonality, believe it or not, to come together,” said Barbara Harrison, religious outreach specialist for the Washington, D.C.-based network, which started ramping up her program two years ago.

The kit's ideas are not particularly spiritual: They range from hosting a forum about climate change and watching the network's online discussion with religious leaders to replacing old light bulbs with more efficient ones and taking a bus to a place of worship.

Spiritual Component
Environmental groups say they need to embrace people of faith as a way to boost their influence on Capitol Hill and in the heartland. The idea is to leave behind scientific vs. religious interpretations about the beginning and end of the world while focusing on topics of agreement.

Instead of first trying to convert the faithful into dues-paying members of environmental groups, the green movement's leaders talk of educating religious groups about ecological problems.

Next is convincing them that they are morally obligated to alter their everyday choices, from the food they eat to the cars they drive.

“Maybe we have been too focused on the political and the economic and the scientific numbers,” said Melanie Griffin, director of environmental partnerships for the Sierra Club in Washington, D.C. “It's kind of coming back to our roots, which are sort of spiritual and value-laden.”

At the same time, many Americans are hearing more than ever about environmental issues from the pulpit. One key reason is that a wide spectrum of religious people are paying more attention to the effects of pollution and global warming on humans. The National Council of Churches, for example, is encouraging members to use Earth Day events to connect the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to environmental justice for the poor.

If nothing else, eco-faith alliances make sense for environmentalists from a marketing perspective. Sixty-four percent of Americans belong to a church or synagogue, and nearly 50 percent attend a service every week or almost every week, according to a 2005 Gallup Poll.

By comparison, only 14 percent of respondents to a poll last month said they were active participants in the environmental movement, a drop of 5 percentage points in four years.

“(Environmentalists) are reaching out to religious people because they want to use our language and they want to get whatever help they can,” said the Rev. Sally Bingham, executive director of the Regeneration Project, an interfaith group in San Francisco that works nationally to promote environmental stewardship.

Bingham also serves on the board of Environmental Defense, one of the country's largest environmental advocacy groups. She plans to preach on climate change during a service Sunday at Grace Cathedral, an Episcopal church in San Francisco.

Another concern for faith-based groups is species protection, which religious leaders call “creation care.” But it may be a third area – the growing accumulation of chemicals in human bodies – that most drives the partnerships.

“We have to start talking about life being healthy . . . and I believe that will have a very important religious connection going forward,” Bingham said. “I liken it to the civil rights movement or the abolition of slavery, where the religious community was leading.”

Evangelical Conversion
Compared with mainline denominations, evangelical Christians have been particularly suspicious of the green movement.

Thanks to their numbers – running in the tens of millions nationwide – and support from President Bush's administration, evangelicals are a particularly important segment to engage if environmentalists want to further spread their message, said Joe Grieboski, president of the Institute on Religion and Public Policy, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

There's still a debate about how far conservative Christians will let their theology take them in terms of active environmentalism, which historically has been the realm of liberals.

“The godly must be crazy; Christian-right views are . . . threatening the environment,” said a 2004 headline in the environmental magazine Grist. The story says apocalyptic end-times theology undercuts the need for making ethical choices toward sustaining life on Earth. But that dynamic is changing as some prominent evangelicals promote a “guardian” outlook about Earth instead of a consumer mentality that condones using natural resources without regard for the future.

“Our movement is trying to talk about (environmental issues) in real ways and not in negative terms,” said Richard Cizik, vice president of government affairs for the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals. “Disengagement is not an option.”

The results of such thinking are starting to sprout. For instance, the Pacific Coast Baptist Association will hold its spring conference in Oakland next month. Among the seminars is one the group has never offered before: “Ecospirituality: Caring for the Earth.”

Local Alliances
The Baptist workshop is just one of many signs of the budding relationship. Last fall, former Vice President Al Gore quoted the Bible when speaking to delegates at the Sierra Club's first nationwide summit in San Francisco. In the walk-up to Earth Day, the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life has posted an Internet call to action titled, “Why Earth Day is a Jewish Holiday.” The essay encourages everything from investing in socially responsible companies to spending time outdoors. “Our natural environment is acting as a barometer of the spiritual and ethical health of our societies,” it reads.

That kind of thinking runs deep at the San Diego Friends Center, where the Quakers and the First Church of the Brethren have joined with two peace groups to build a “green” gathering place.

The center will use excess rice straw from the Sacramento Valley for insulation and solar panels for power, along with other environmentally friendly measures. The coalition started construction in 2004 and hopes to finish next spring.

“If you apply an ethical scale to everything you do, you end up with a better world,” said Hal Brody, the center's construction manager.

At Point Loma Nazarene University, recycling coordinator Renee Robertson said some Christians showed up at Earth Fair festivities in San Diego last year only to protest abortion and gay rights.

“I have no problem with them wanting to take those stands on those isues, but that is not what Earth Day is about,” she said. “We are going to try to present another response by Christians.”

For the city's Earth Day celebration – one of the largest in the country – she's organizing a booth to help other schools boost their recycling programs. At least a half-dozen faith-based groups – from the Christian Vegetarian Association to the Deer Park Buddhist monastery – also are planning exhibits Sunday at Balboa Park.

Grieboski, the think tank president, said disagreements will occur as eco-faith alliances get beyond topics of personal responsibility and into thornier matters of public policy and political tactics. “We need to make sure the religious community doesn't come in with a 'Yahweh or the highway' concept on how to deal with environmental questions,” he said.

Holy Conservation*
If the estimated 300,000 places of worship nationwide reduced energy usage by 25 percent, they would cut air pollution by as much as removing about 1 million cars from the road. Each year, the congregations would:

*Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

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Faith-Based Coalition Spearheads Environmental Cleanup

By John Flesher

A devout Lutheran who considers herself anything but liberal, Jennifer Simula took a mostly dim view of environmentalists. Then she began working for Earth Keeper, a fledgling Upper Peninsula group with a mission of uniting people from different faiths under the banner of caring for the planet — or, as members see it, God's creation. Simula is a convert.

"It really isn't about being left-wing or extremist," said the 24-year-old graduate student at Northern Michigan University in Marquette. "It's a belief that the earth is a gift from God and we have a responsibility to protect it."

Across the country, secular and religious organizations that previously had little use for each other are finding common cause in environmental protection. The movement has spawned groups such as the National Religious Partnership for the Environment and the Evangelical Environmental Network, best known for its "What Would Jesus Drive?" campaign that challenged Detroit to make cleaner cars.

Earth Keeper is trying to build on that momentum in the Upper Peninsula by enlisting organized religion to help protect the region's cherished waters and woodlands. Representatives of nine faiths got things started by signing a pact on Mackinac Island in 2004.

Last year, Earth Keeper sponsored a peninsula-wide cleanup that netted 46 tons of household hazardous waste in a single day. The second annual "Earth Day Clean Sweep" is scheduled for April 22. It will focus on electronic waste, or "e-waste," such as computers, televisions, and cell phones.

The partnership has prepared 28 drop-off sites across the peninsula and a fleet of semi-trucks to haul what leaders expect will be up to 100 tons of waste. A private contractor approved by federal and state agencies will recycle or refurbish the material; none will be dumped in landfills. Toxic metals that could leak into groundwater if not handled properly will be reprocessed or incinerated, said Carl Lindquist, director of the Central Lake Superior Watershed Partnership, part of the Earth Keeper coalition.

The campaign is being funded with a $55,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and donations from other sources, including the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community.

For Lindquist, an environmental activist for more than 20 years, the outpouring of support from the religious community is, well, a godsend.

"I've never seen a more effective public involvement than Earth Keeper," he said.

Although many individual environmentalists are people of faith, the environmental movement and religious establishments have often regarded each other with suspicion — and sometimes hostility.

But relations have warmed in recent years. Environmentalist leaders such as Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, have reached out to faith organizations. Pope John Paul II was among many religious luminaries who have labeled creation stewardship a spiritual duty.

"It comes from a recognition that we do share a lot of the same core values," said John Rebers, a biology professor at Northern Michigan and Sierra Club chairman for the central Upper Peninsula.

Both frown on excessive materialism and consumption, he said. Environmentalists worry about resource depletion and waste, while some religious teachings warn that excessive money and possessions can corrupt the spirit.

The Rev. Jon Magnuson, a Lutheran pastor and co-founder of Earth Keeper, approaches creation stewardship from both perspectives.

"One of the deep and ancient teachings of all the great religious traditions is the hidden web or tapestry that binds us all together," Magnuson said. "So when we heal the environment, we heal ourselves."

Magnuson and Lindquist organized the Mackinac Island gathering two years ago, attended by representatives of several Christian denominations and other faiths, including Judaism, Buddhism and Unitarian Universalism.

They signed an "Earth Keeper Covenant," pledging to educate their members about creation care and to establish a network of faith-based groups that will form a "spiritual shield" for protecting the Great Lakes. Students at Northern Michigan established an affiliated Earth Keeper program and are helping start chapters at other U.P. colleges and universities.

In addition to the annual Clean Sweep waste collection drives, the groups are planning campaigns to reduce mercury contamination and adopt stretches of rivers and streams for litter pickup and pollution monitoring.

The 2005 Clean Sweep addressed a sore subject in the Upper Peninsula, where dumping appliances and other household refuse in the woods is a dubious tradition. People brought everything from oil-based paints to antifreeze and car batteries to more than two dozen house of worship parking lots.

The EPA's Great Lakes office in Chicago was so impressed, it came through with the grant for this year's drive.

"The faith-based approach was very unique, very innovative," said Elizabeth LaPlante, the agency's regional team manager for Lake Superior. Aside from the sheer volume of waste collected, the cleanup was valuable in teaching people about "the dangers of the toxic and hazardous waste in their garages and basements," she said.

Earth Keeper leaders hope that creation care will become a deeply ingrained part of believers' spiritual lives.

The Rev. Alexander Sample, recently installed bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Marquette, acknowledged he hadn't said much about environmental protection from the pulpit but believes it is an important moral issue for Christians.

"We cannot turn a blind eye to abuses of our environment," Sample said. "Even though our focus is on the kingdom of heaven, I don't think we can excuse ourselves from being good stewards of creation by saying this isn't our true home. God's goodness is reflected in the beauty of creation."