No matter. EPA will continue to trumpet the racial version of “environmental justice.” Why? Hayward explains:
The elitist environmental movement has always had a problem with its limited appeal to low-income minorities, few of whom identify with the upscale, Volvo-driving profile of environmental organizations’ typical membership. In the early days of the movement, civil rights leaders were often opposed to environmentalism. Richard Hatcher, the black mayor of Gary, Indiana, told Timemagazine at the time of the first Earth Day in 1970: “The nation’s concern with the environment has done what George Wallace was unable to do—distract the nation from the human problems of black and brown Americans.”
It was inevitable, then, that the environmental movement would try to figure out a way to co-opt the civil rights movement, and the answer, starting about 20 years ago, is “environmental justice.” …
In practice, the amalgam of civil rights and environmentalism often summons the worst reflexes of both movements, combining frivolous charges of racism along withunfounded environmental scares. It is not clear which of the two movements has been degraded the most by this unlikely marriage. It is common to hear fully compliant industrial siting decisions near low-income or minority communities labeled “genocide.” Both movements are stuck in the past, comparing issues of perceived environmental injustice to extreme events long past: for the civil rights movement ….
Wherever Progressivism leads, religious liberals are sure to follow, as James Wanliss points out in Resisting the Green Dragon: Dominion, Not Death:
During the 1950s the NCC [National Council of Churches] entertained mostly innocent appreciation of the beauty of God’s creation through its Christian Ministry in the National Parks. Butby 1961 the NCC, little over a decade old, was working the cusp of the burgeoning Green wave when it issued a proclamation decrying human fertility and overpopulation. Theologians such as Joseph Sittler, then of the University of Chicago, exercised enormous influence with tropes such as Earth rape and eco-justice.
Most NCC member churches are proud sponsors of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, founded in 1973 to ensure the continued availability in America of unlimited abortions of unborn babies. Support for abortion, so they claim, proves their passion for the Christian cause and is evidence that they seek to express a prophetic vision of a just world through using “the moral power of religious communities….” They call support for abortion reproductive justice; sodomy, sexual justice; welfare state socialism, economic or social justice; environmentalism, eco-justice; and so on. In the new program justice becomes meaningless because it stands for anything. Well, at least apparently anything that will overturn Christian morality and ethics in favor of left-wing prescriptions.
NCC patronage of progressive political causes seemingly knows no bounds. In 1998, Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, NCC’s General Secretary, urged that belief in the radical environmentalist movement’s assertions about global warming should become a “litmus test for the faith community.” Belief that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, was crucified, and rose from the dead, in contrast, are divisive issues one should not insist on in polite company. Campbell is currently on the board of the World Council of Religious Leaders, an international ecumenicist organization that works to further United Nations visions to create a community of world religions.
One of the prominent departments in the NCC is the EcoJustice Program, “designed to heal and defend creation, working to assure justice for all of creation and the human beings who live in it.” In 2002, following the lead of the Evangelical Environmental Network, the EcoJustice Program embraced the “What Would Jesus Drive?” campaign, aimed at making Americans feel guilty about driving cars. …
By 2005, when the global warming Kyoto protocol came into force, the NCC had enlisted thousands of Christian congregations in a massive letter-writing campaign in favor of environmentalist causes. So it is that Christian congregations become co-opted to train parishioners that it is their moral duty to go Green with Christ, to form Green Congregations, or Eco-Congregations; for the hip and chic, Green is the new black. The NCC EcoJustice program recently reiterated, “The opportunity is before us, to set the example and be a light in this world—Greening our churches, our homes, and calling on our leaders to fight climate change.” However, it is a little hard to imagine how they can remain light to this world given that they and their political allies have banned the humble light bulb and rage against the exhaust fumes from candles, wood fires, and anything else that shines or breathes. In camps, in Sunday schools, and from the pulpits comes the new Gospel of Green—to save the Earth from humans. Guilt manipulators of the world, unite!
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