Churches duped by green extremists
By Henry Lamb
web posted April 1, 2002
In a March 26, story by John Fialka, the Wall Street Journal reported that churches in 21 states were mounting an all-out attack against the Bush administration’s proposal to open the Arctic Natural Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration. This campaign is coordinated by the National Religious Partnership for the Environment.
Few, if any, of the churches realize that the NRPE is the outgrowth of deep ecologists who believe the Bible is obsolete, that the earth, gaia, is the giver of life, that human beings are but individual cells in the gaia organism, and that the United Nations is the evolving “brain” of gaia.
Paul Gorman, director of the NRPE, was director of the Temple of Understanding, housed at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. He organized a “Joint Appeal,” consisting of 22 scientists and 100 religious leaders that became the NRPE. Mikhail Gorbachev hosted a conference for the group in Moscow, where James Lovelock, author of The Ages of Gaia, was the featured speaker. Dr. Robert Muller, thirty-year deputy Secretary General of the U.N., and Thomas Berry, served on the Temple’s board of directors.
Writing for World Goodwill, in October, 1989, Robert Muller said:
“We are part and parcel of a living planetary organism. Each of us is a cell, a perceptive nervous unit of the Earth. You as cosmic and earth cells, are part of a vast biological and evolutionary phenomenon.... We have now a world brain which determines what can be dangerous or mortal for the planet: the United Nations and its agencies, and innumberable (sic) groups and networks around the world, are part of the brain.”
Muller readily admits that his beliefs are based largely on the writings of Alice Baily, who founded the Lucifer Publishing Company, and whose works are said to be transmitted by an “ascended master,” called Djwhal Khul.
Thomas Berry’s belief system, called “Cosmolatry,” is even more bizarre. In his Dream of the Earth, he says:
“This re-enchantment with the earth as a living reality is the condition for our rescue of the earth from the impending destruction that we are imposing upon it. To carry this out effectively, we must now, in a sense, reinvent the human as species within the community of life species. Our sense of reality and of value must consciously shift from an anthropocentric to a biocentric norm of reference.”
Berry compares man’s belief that God created the earth, to the ancient belief that the sun revolved around the earth. He says both beliefs are wrong, and the truth is only now being discovered through what he calls “enlightenment.”
Senators Al Gore, Timothy Wirth, and James Jeffords were instrumental in the creation of the NRPE. They arranged Congressional breakfasts with NRPE leaders, helped with funding, and Al Gore delivered a sermon at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, which is reported in Cathedral literature this way:
“I saw children lying in the laps of large dogs and a boy bringing his stuffed animals to be blessed. I saw the not-yet famous elephant and camel march up the aisle; a lawyer who scoops the poop and enjoys being clown-for-a-day; a priest who finds himself covered with wriggling ferrets; a man and a woman who meet when their leashes become enmeshed; a volunteer gardener marching to the altar with a bowl full of compost and worms; a sermon by Al Gore, in which he called on the congregants to recognize that ‘God is not separate from the Earth.’”
The NRPE avoids telling the participating churches the true nature of their agenda. Instead, they are exploiting the churches, converting them into lobbying machines for their extremist policies.
Mikhail Gorbachev, and the U.N.’s Maurice Strong have promoted the Earth Charter, which is expected to replace the Ten Commandments as the basis for social and religious organization. The Earth Charter has been placed in an Ark, and is being ceremoniously conveyed to Johannesburg, South Africa for adoption by the World Summit on Sustainable Development next August.
Churches that promote the NRPE are promoting a new, biocentric, Godless, global religion. Most of them have no idea.
A thorough, well-documented report on the NRPE was published by the Environmental Conservation Organization in 1996, and republished by the Chair of Free Enterprise at the University of Texas. The Rise of Global Green Religion, and the 2001 update are available to ECO members.
Henry Lamb is the executive vice president of the Environmental Conservation Organization, and chairman of Sovereignty International.
Christian churches targeted by pagans
A group called the Temple of Understanding, affiliated with the Gaia Institute and the United Nations Global Committee of Parliamentarians on Population Development, is behind a new push to inundate Christian churches with nature-worshipping propaganda.
The effort is organized under the auspices of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, which works with the National Council of Churches, the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, the Evangelical Environmental Network, and the U.S. Catholic Conference. The $5 million program, funded by Ted Turner and other liberal foundations, attempts to politicize 100 million Americans in 53,000 congregations.
“It is unmistakably clear that the new partnership is the brain child of anti-Christian New Age pagans who promote an environmental religion known as Gaia,” says Tom DeWeese, president of the American Policy Center.
The partnership has sent 53,000 congregations, including every Catholic parish and every Jewish synagogue in the nation, “education and action kits.” The kits contain Sunday school and sermon resource material carefully planned to fit into the doctrine of the particular denomination targeted.
A pillar of the Temple of Understanding is a man named Maurice Strong, who was secretary-general of the first U.N. Earth Summit, which called for 50 percent of the land in each of the 50 states to be turned into wilderness areas where no humans would be allowed to enter. Strong, a millionaire proponent of one-world government, owns a ranch in Colorado where he has built a Babylonian sun god temple, which serves as the center of New Age religious activities. For more on Strong, see “The Coming World Government.” (Matthew 24:11; I Timothy 4:1; Revelation 9:20)