I need to rub my eyes. As a Christian saddened at watching most of the US church drown in the excesses and abuses of dominion theology (including "trash the earth anyway" attitudes), I am wondering if I am hallucinating, finally reading what I have longed to see. This is wonderful. Does the author have a website? We need to talk!

Amen to the Sabbath. For rejection of this law, the US is rightly accused of worshipping the dollar. The Sabbath is a kind commandment, not only for rest, but setting aside one day per week to turn our hearts away from money issues, and meditate on just Who it is Who gives us profit. US Christianity frequently serves up conceits about a theoretical 24/7 Sabbath - "rest from works of salvation" - but tell that to the majority of people on this planet. Information handlers may not comprehend the reasons for one day off a week, but most of the planet are busy with shovels and buckets and would laugh at the idea of a theoretical day of rest. It is possible to work both human and beast to death. If the Sabbath commandment applied to spiritual development alone, why command that even beasts of burden should rest? Does anyone think animals need rest from "works of salvation?" Good for the author, to celebrate the Sabbath.

Another theological twist: the popular Christian "pre-trib rapture" hooey that the planet must be destroyed, and off we go for all eternity to an outer stratosphere to become an intelligent gas or something... what does the Lord's prayer say? "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." The earth will indeed go through changes, but it was not meant to be trashed. Adam, by Biblical accounts, was pretty much created for the purpose of tending the garden. And in Revelation, in speaking of the wrath of God, Revelation 11:18 says:
18The nations were angry; and your wrath has come. The time has come for judging the dead,
and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your saints and those who reverence your name,
both small and great– and for destroying those who destroy the earth.”

I think it's high time Christians became concerned with our MANDATE to care for the earth. Great words, great example.

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When I was a kid, there were "blue laws" in my state which forced most businesses to close on Sunday. But when those laws were relaxed, most people were grateful for the convenience and leisure of having an extra day on the weekend to do their shopping. And, nowadays, when one's weekend doesn't necessarily coincide with that of other people, taking one day off a week from environmentally polluting activities would not necessarily coincide with one's own sabbath either, which could be Friday, Saturday, Sunday or other, depending on one's religion. So, a more flexible idea might be to select a day of non-polluting activity apart from any sabbath connection.

As to the serious problem of overpopulation, nature may offer a partial solution. In spite of claims that homosexuality is unnatural, it is commonly found throughout nature, among both wild and domestic animals, and is likely to provide a degree of population control. That control could apply to humans, as well. Instead of society artificially pressuring gays to marry someone of the opposite sex (which is unnatural to them) and to produce children ( which they might not otherwise have), a more natural solution would be to support gay rights and unions worldwide, possibly helping to keep human populations under control.

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The key to Christian and non-Christian Environmentalists working together to save the planet is learning to accept that there are various ways to define God. Chief Seattle once said, "Love this Earth like a newborn loves its mother's heartbeat." Native Americans have long defined God as the Earth and all aspects of nature. And because of this they were able to live tens of thousands of years on this land that we Europeans have managed to ravage in the few hundred years. Pagans also worship Gaia and the elements of nature. Can intellegent spiritual people agree to disagree on the way we speak of our God - "Jesus as God", "Buddha nature as God", "Higher Power", "Spirit", "Goddess" etc. - long enough to see each other as brothers and sisters? Or can we at least respect each other as allies long enough to heal ourselves from this addiction to material things, so that we can save our own species? The Environmental Movement is our movement and our responsibility. We can not expect corporations or our government to go against their own self interest by leading us toward less consumption. And by making religious differences such a major issue in our lives today, they have found a very effective way to keep us from working together in our own best interests.

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I'm just two paragraphs into your article and I'm already singing hallelujah. But there should be more people like you climbing down out of the capitalist machine. This approach is unrivaled. With it, you maximize your own personal heath. And you're communicating most effectively with your neighbors, your society, your world, and most importantly, the antagonists. You're telling the antagonists you won't buy their wares any more. This puts them in a big big jam. Because their money is their everything - stop feeding them money and they're stuck. The people must become self-sufficient. This strangles the war machine. This strangles the giant corporations. The smaller, local businesses will thrive. Every large organization MUST exist under the shadow of the people's giant sledgehammer. When there's even a thought of corruption, squish. This is exactly what T. Jefferson had in mind. Corporations were tolerated only long enough to get some very specific project done, then squish. Gone. This is the way it must be today. This is the gospel of the lord, all rise.

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While one part of me is glad Christians are rising to the environmental challenge, I also think the fact that they are doing so has far more to do with Frank Luntz's political maneuvering than with a true spirit of caring.

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Orthodox Christians on the religious right follow the concept that the earth is mankind's to subdue. Man's ability to rework the earth to their desire is what I was taught in Catholic CCD classes, AWANAs and the teen evangelical Lighthouse group (and this was during the time when ecology was popular). It got far worse when Reagan was elected while I was in the Lutheran Wisconsin Synod. In 1985 I broke out of the Christian Church because what I was taught and read was a 180 from what Christianity professes to be.

I have come to believe that any god that bribes followers with heaven or coerces people with hell if they don't follow is not of God. Stewardship of the earth, and living in harmony it's all that live on this planet is more important to me than any dogma that I have read. To me, this universe is far greater than the dogma that I was taught and it's never ending expanse is a more humbling and clearer proof of God than any book that people have written pretending to be the word of God.

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Thank you God. I have finally found people like me. I thought I was the only one sickened by the hijacked right-wing Christianity. I love God and I love His nature. Yes, yes, yes too much consumerism - too much junk in the stores. Who NEEDS it. No one. I don't understand how GeorgeW, who proclaims his religion at any chance, can even think about drilling in ANWAR. Leave Eden alone. I really felt good reading this article and the comments from all. This is exactly how I have been feeling for a long time. Thanks.

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Dominion in the 'biblical'sense never meant to rape and pillage the eath, but to care and nurture.

Nature reveals the grand utterance/the word of God and
experience teaches us the value of getting away from places of concrete and just being in and with nature.

SOJOURNERS are progressive Christian's dedicated to peace, justice, a moral government budget and to caring and preserving the environment.
www.sojo.net
www.godspolitics.com

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It is my understanding that America's population growth will be coming from immigration, not from our replacement rate. Does the good doctor suggest we curtail immigration? Or that the current residents lower our birthrate low enough to make room for the newcomers? Just wondering!

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I am a bit frustrated at the huge 'surprise' people are noting about the fact that Christians, evangelical ones, to boot, could be caring for the environment. Progressive Christians have been writing, publishing, preaching and teaching about this for decades, and only a few people seem to care. Well, DUH! What frustrates me is that the people who are surprised about this have never apparently cared enough about these issues to actually do a library search on christian and ecology.
To me, who teaches theology at a seminary, this is very frustrating. McKibben has been a more popularly present voice than Sallie McFague, John Cobb, Radford Ruether, and the many other academic theologians who have been writing about this for DECADES but he has been doing this for at least a decade and part of our frustration as professional theologians is that we are so marginalized that nobody, neither conservatives NOR 'secular' environmentalists will take note of what we do. Popular media does not care what progressive evangelicals or mainliners do, unless they consecrate gay bishops, like my church did, a couple of years ago. Guess what, we also care about the environment! And environmentalists as well as other 'secular fundamentalists' only seem to care about what people of faith do when they're so desparate about the state of the world that they would actually consider working in an alliance with them. Other than that, Christians can be safely hated because most of what sensationalist media have been showing are the people we are most ashamed of: Jerry Falwell, Mel Gibson, Ratzinger, for Christ's sake!
Check out the NY Times bestseller list for Jim Wallis's God's Politics: Why the RIght is wrong and teh Left doesn't get it. A major miracle that a progressive evanglical has made it onto that bestseller list. Perhaps finally moderate and progressive Christians get to have a more publicly visible voice again. The Episcopal Church, and especially its Bishop of Alaska have been fighting against drilling in Alaska's Arctic Wildlife Refuge for over 10 years, bet you didn't know that he tirelessly flew around the world to BP shareholder meetings, government meetings to testify, testify, testify. It's not that there aren't people doing it, it's that we can't get any critical mass. Can we end the segregation there? And can we get from knowing about each other to working with each other???? I pray like hell that we will!

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I find it interesting that Jews 2000 years ago had the prophecy of a messiah that would come and save them, but got the prophecy mixed up with reality and crucified their own savior.

Today christians justify thier destruction of the "human life sustainable" environment (we can't kill the earth...yet) and their unwillingness to vote for policy change in our government, by their belief in the end times. They say, "ohh, the bible says all of these things will happen, so we are doing our part to fulfill the word of God.

My point is this; don't be so proud and self-righteous as to think that you understand the will of God. Be humble and appreciate what the Creator has given or you may be crucifying your savior.

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Another progressive Episcopalian with a degree in theology checking in. It really is interesting to those of us who have grown up steeped in the liberal urban churches of the Northeast to realize just how little the rest of the country seems to know about the progressive tradition in Christianity. Hello, Jesus is a liberal ... pro-poor, pro-women, anti-consumption, anti-hypocrisy ... anyway, I am THRILLED to hear somebody FINALLY say what I have been saying for YEARS, about how the "Christian right" howls with outrage because birth control "thwarts God's will" but never issues a peep about how life-extending technology is just as unnatural. If every baby survives, we need to have a lot fewer of them. As Bill McKibben says, "The commandment to 'be fruitful and multiply' is one we can check off the list. We're done with it." And incidentally, the ANIMALS were told to be fruitful and multiply BEFORE Adam and Eve were, and we humans are making that very difficult for them at the moment. Let our fellow creatures fulfill the commandments too!

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I've read nothing in the bible that says ANYTHING about contraception. So that must mean that it's the doctorine of man, not God that says anything about it. Since we've messed so much with the natural life-cycle of people, I totally agree that we've thrown things out of wack. If we're going to mess with one aspect of prolonging life, we can't have people having 10 kids! This planet just can't support such population growth. So to all the people who believe contraception is a sin, please show us all where Jesus said that's so. If Jesus didn't say it, it 'aint so.

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Not all of us are unaware of the progressive Christian tradition. I've even talked recently with some Democrats about emphasizing the prophetic tradition in the Old Testament and how it relates to our progressive social and economic values.

The problem, as I see it, is that, for the last three decades or so, conservative Christians have successfully confused their radical-right political values with Christianity in the minds of most Americans and have been allowed to set the terms of debate. At the same time, too few of the genuinely progressive Christian leaders have been assertive, especially where the media and controversial social issues are concerned, and have seldom demanded that spokespeople for their views were heard as loudly and often as those of the religious right.

In the hope that the era of allowing the religious right to monopolize the media might now be ending, I welcome the voices of true Christian progressives, such as many of those in the Episcopal Church. In a country as religious and moralistic as America, the most convincing and winning arguments against the religious right are likely to come from the religious left.

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I recently finished Dr. West's excellent book, Democracy Matters - Chapter 5, "The Crisis of Christian Identity in America" hits a home run. His assessment is correct. You can't defeat your enemy unless you *know* your enemy, and it gives me a lot of hope to realize that progressive leaders like Dr. West actually do "get it."

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This whole article is bunk. Over crowding and over population are not big long term problems. Ignoring for the moment that we easily produce enough food to be able to feed everyone in the world and ignoring the fact that we could easily support many more people, the real reason that over population isn't an issue is because the human population is peaking out and is predicted by demographers to enter into a world wide decline within this century. The reason for this is that fewer children are being born. This is especially true in the developed world where almost no nation has a birth rate that is above replacement. The populations of nations such as Germany, Japan, Italy, France, etc. are set to experience marked decline. Russias population is already in free fall. Birth rates in the developing world have also leveled off. Here is a wikipedia article with references to show how the overpopulation 'problem' is a long term non issue:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility

In short, we are not looking at a long term over population problem on earth. It's bunk.

Also, all the whining about how the climate is changing and species are going extinct is pointless. Earths climate has been through many drastic changes in the past and life has always adapted and moved on. It's called evolution - or maybe you guys don't believe in that. As for extinctions, those too have featured prominently in earths past. There have been several mass extinction events where nearly all life has been wiped out. These all happened before there were any evil, horrible humans to disrupt the 'delicate balance' of nature. Did you guys know that nearly every species to have ever existed is now extinct? Species come and go but life goes on. That is natures way, no matter how certain nut jobs may try to misrepresent it. Life on earth may be changing, but that is nothing new. Life is in a constant state of flux and no environmental activist will ever change that. Here are a couple of documented wikipedia articles to educate yourselves with:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_extinction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_Change

The world isn't going to end even if the sperm whales go extinct and the ice caps melt. Far more drastic changes occurred on earth long before there were any humans to blame them on.

So what have you guys got for a philosophy - I mean at it's core? Fear - fear of change and fear of the future. Seriously, I don't see anything coming out of the radical environmentalist movement but scaremongering. All the talk about how we need to change our way of life so as to leave less of an 'environmental footprint' is crap. Human beings are a very small part of this world. The earth, and all the life on it, will keep changing no matter what efforts we make to hold them still. If you can't see that you're crazy. You need to embrace the fact that life on earth is dynamic. You need to accept the fact that we must always find new ways to adapt to our changing world. That is natural selection people. That is what has kept life on earth going all these countless eons. Not some hyper conservative, reactionary, at odds with reality environmentalist philosophy that wants to somehow freeze the earth in time. You cannot win with a philosophy like that. It's unworkable. Give up the dogma and join the rest of us in the real world. Yes, it's a scary place - full of change and uncertainty - but it's the only reality we've got.

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