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By Bill Berkowitz
I can't get that old country song "drilling for the oil in all the wrong places" out of my mind. Maybe, I should put a call in to the ASPCA and see if there's a guard dog available. Then I got the good news.
Focus on the Family's CitizenLink reports that Land quoted scripture and said "In Genesis, chapter 2, God told Adam that He put him in the garden to 'till it' and to 'keep it.' The word 'keep' means to guard and protect; the word 'till' means to cause it to be developed and to cause it to give forth its fruit.' " Dr. Land isn't the only fundamentalist expressing appreciation for the Bush Administration's energy initiative. Norm Geisler, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina, also told CitizenLink that God provided the Earth for our use. "Genesis 1:28 says to subdue the earth and have dominion over it, " Geisler said. "Of course, that gives us the divine mandate to use the resources that are there." (For more from Geisler see his Web site at www.normgeisler.com.) For years, Religious Right groups have anchored their views on environmental issues in Genesis 1:28. "Because nature is wild," explains Nina George Hacker in Concerned Women for America's Family Voice, "we [humans] were given the authority to 'subdue' it for life's necessities."
I explored the founding of ICES last summer, so I won't go into the details here (See "Powerful right-wing coalition launches 'environmental' group" www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=5023). Back then, the Council was just setting up shop and rapidly signing up supporters. However, at the time it looked like Al Gore would likely be president, and the best ICES could hope for was to be another opposition anti-environmental operation. Long story short -- Gore didn't happen. Many of the folks now with ICES have a direct pipeline to the Bush administration. It's a slam-dunk to say that they'll be heavily involved in mobilizing their constituents to back Bush's energy plan. A Father Sirico-inspired Network Veteran author and Religious Right watcher Frederick Clarkson acknowledges that Father Robert A. Sirico, CSP, a Catholic priest, former gay activist, and head of the Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, is one of the main motivators behind the establishment of the Council. In the Spring, 2001 issue of Political Research Associate's The Public Eye (www.publiceye.org), Clarkson writes: "Fr. Sirico was instrumental in forging the 1999 anti-environmentalist Cornwall Declaration [ICES' founding document] that sought to counter established faith-based environmental initiatives by Catholic, Jewish, evangelical, and especially mainline Protestant bodies." Sirico turns the environmental movement's notion of stewardship on its head. A January 2000 report in The Daily Camera noted that as far back as 1994, in a much-circulated piece written for the National Review, Father Sirico "question[ed] the motives and hinting at the perhaps-unconscious pagan nature of the creation care movement [pro-environmental religious]. He argues that true Christians believe that the earth is a 'gift from God for our use' and that nature has no intrinsic value beyond utility." Sirico wrote, "There is no commandment against polluting or mixing trash - that is taken care of by civil law - but there is a very straightforward one about worshipping false idols." Michael Barkey, who serves as a policy analyst at the Acton Institute, overseeing environment, education, and welfare policy and research, and is the executive editor of Acton's Environmental Stewardship Review, told me that, "for many years Father Sirico has been worried about [misguided] theological trends in the environmental movement." The Christian Science Monitor, in a December 1999 story, quotes Barkey: "The Bible does specify that we have to be good stewards. While it seems like a very simple principle, it has broad economic ramifications." Mr. Barkey told the Monitor that "efforts by religious groups to bring an end to logging, for example, violate the separation of church and state." He also accused certain religious groups of blasphemy by promoting Deep Ecology, which places humans not above nature to exercise dominion, but as merely a part of the ecosystem. Friends of the Earth?
"When we embrace the strident messages of radical environmentalism, we are neither just, nor merciful, nor good stewards of the earth, and we condemn the world's poorest people to continued misery and disease. This is not what God intended, and not what our traditions have taught." Dr. D. James Kennedy-- notorious ultra-conservative of the Ft. Lauderdale, Florida-based Coral Ridge Ministries. Dr. Kennedy, a leader in the anti-gay movement and an outspoken denier of the separation of church and state: "If ever an issue needed sound Biblical Doctrine brought to bear upon it, it's the environment, and the Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship, through its Cornwall Declaration accomplishes this." With friends like these, what more can the environment ask for? ICES's Web site maintains that the organization "is building a network of religious, academic and community leaders who can offer sound theological, scientific, and economic perspectives on these issues. Soon, they will provide a credible alternative to liberal environmental advocacy for people in congregations, schools, government, and the religious and secular media." The Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship was founded prior to the 2000 presidential election. Now, with Bush in the White House and ICES up and running, look for this coalition to sound the drumbeat for the president's energy initiatives. Who knows, there might be some faith-based payoff down the road. Bill Berkowitz is an Oakland-based free lance writer covering the religious right and related conservative movements. |
Former Big Oil exec Mr. Cheney put together Bush's energy plan, for which the religious right has found time to offer praise 
Dr. Richard Land: Writes in support of the Bush Energy plan 
Father Sirico: Friend of the environment who is keeping on eye on the right 
© 1997-2002 BEI