In a blog on August 30, 2022, entitled “The Christian Climate Thorn” I wrote about Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist, and professor of political science at Texas Tech University and, ”one of her major efforts in endeavoring to connect Christians with a belief in climate change, alleging that their faith inhibits them from believing in the theory.” She would have originated these efforts on her husband Andrew Farley, a pastor in Lubbock, Texas - originally a climate atheist, now a faithful follower.
While Christianity remains the world’s largest religion, alternative determinations head people towards secularism, irreligion, globalization, and multicultural and multi-faith societies. While a number of people continue to leave orthodox religion assuming churches are in opposition to “wok” ideologies such as LGBTQ issues or gender concerns, some of it, certainly in the more conservative organizations involves their non-conviction to climate matters.
In conjunction with COP27, the Union Nations Conference of Parties which takes place from November 6th through the 18th, in the resort city of Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, there is a call for repentance to the god Gaia and atonement for failing mother earth. This is to take place on Egypt’s Mount Sinai where the planet’s parishioners will receive the 10 commandments to achieve environmental absolution.
The expected attendance at COP27 is a total of 35,000.
Very much like Hayhoe’s mission, planetary pastors will trace the steps of Moses hoping to lead their congregations of climate devotees away from the transgressions of CO2 emissions into throwing offerings and tithes to carbon taxes, carbon off-sets, and the portentous pals of polar bears.
The linked article cites a YouTube speech given by Tapio Luoma, an Archbishop of the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church (FEL). Unlike the conventional interpretation of the 1st amendment in the US Bill of Rights, the FEL is Finland’s state church. In the video, Luoma talks not of religious piety, but rather the need for people to accept “moderation, unselfishness, and balance” and then claims, “As religious leaders, our task is to first embrace these tasks for ourselves.”
I suspect many church leaders would disagree asserting that bringing salvation to the people is their task and while moderation, unselfishness, and balance can be a virtuous personal goal in many areas, outside of climate, it’s not the mission of a church to have these attributes as religious precepts.
Yet, Pope Francis continues to command his Catholic priesthood to advocate, from the pulpit, for the cause of anthropogenic climate change and to do so at every possible opportunity.
Famed clinical psychologist, writer, and speaker Dr. Jordan Peterson, a Canadian, claims that all of these are simply methods by “woke moralizing narcissists” and “virtue-signaling utopians” to subvert free-market capitalism. This has long been a defined conduit of climate change on the left. Of learned interest is the calculation of renewable energy contributions and at the current rate when these energies could supply all energy needs – at the present standard the year would be 2207.
This issue of religious leaders leading a flock to climate change consciousness is entirely a culmination of the standard phrase, “stay in your own lane”.