Is Environmentalism a Religion?

"School children, businesses, clergy, politicians and even the United States military soon will honor the birthday of Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union.

Of course, they will call it Earth Day.

Brian Sussman points out in his explosive new book, 'Eco-Tyranny: How the Left's Green Agenda will Dismantle America,' that the first nationwide Earth Day was held April 22, 1970...

Crichton argues that one of the most powerful religions in the Western world is environmentalism. As a religion, he explains how it falls into fundamentalist, ideological traps. Environmentalists are certain of many things--global warming is man-made, oil will run out sooner rather than later, current rates of world population growth are unsustainable--and because they believe these things...

Ball's short piece highlights the "progressive-reactionist" nature of the bio-centric philosophy that currently holds sway in much of academia and large portions of the environmental movement. Progressive in their drive to make every living being on earth equal on a cellular level - plant life not excluded....

Taylor argues, "that although participants in countercultural movements often eschew the label religion, these are religious movements, in which these persons find ultimate meaning and transformative power in nature." This piece also provides a brief history of the rise of religious environmentalism and deep ecology, beginning with Arne Naess in Norway in 1972 and arriving in North America...

Lovelock is a scientists and environmentalist who proposed the Gaia Hypothesis which essentially argues that earth, including everything on it and in it, are one superorganism. In this piece, Lovelock traces the changing view on earth and science in the mid to late 20th century, how he developed the Gaia...

A short film in which a frog saves the earth, and itself, by removing industry. Friends of the Earth is a large, prominent environmental group.

The film features Vandana Shiva, Starhawk, Ruth, John Seed, and Matthew Fox speaking on Deep Ecology, Living Democracy, and Revolution in Consciousness.

"This special edition of the highly acclaimed A Sand County Almanac commemorates the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Aldo Leopold, one of the foremost conservationists of our century. First published in 1949 and praised in The New York Times Book Review as 'full of beauty and vigor and bite,' A Sand County Almanac combines some of the finest nature writing since Thoreau with an...

"The melting of the Ice Age glaciers heralded the arrival of the Archaic peoples in the South and the lives of the South's peoples have long been shaped and challenged by the environment. Conversely, the human impact on the South's landscape has been dramatic, from the mound building of Native Americans to the construction of cities and the birth of modern industry.

'Southern United...

"ReligionandNature.com is a gateway into an ongoing inquiry into the complex relationships between human beings, their religious beliefs and practices, and their earthly habitats. It features the work and projects of an international and interdisciplinary community of scholars investigating the nexus of religion, nature and culture, including the subfield sometimes called religion and ecology...