Getting Green Religion
Dave Roberts writing for Grist Magazine talks about the criticism from the right that enviornmentalists are really members of some psuedo-paganistic religion.
“On the one hand, they’re talking to the religious right. The message is that environmentalism is a form of paganism left over from the ’60s hippies. Greens, the implication goes, worship nature instead of God and value trees over God’s chosen people, i.e., us. No doubt in some dark recesses of the web, this charge is accompanied by implications of sorcery and demonic possession and who knows what else. ‘Religion,’ to these people, is taken literally — environmentalism is an alternative religion. On the other hand, they’re talking to the kind of rightie who fancies himself a tough-minded, rational realist . To this guy they’re saying, look, these greens don’t care about empirical evidence or facts, they just want to control public dialogue and scare everyone and get more funding and pass well-intentioned but utterly impractical big government programs. To this guy, ‘religion’ means ‘irrational’ and ‘hysterical.’”
His answer is to counter with an appeal to self-interest and to talk about results. He seems uncomfortable with (non-Christian) religious language from the environmental movement which would no doubt frustrate many green Pagans (and others who approach enviornmental concerns from a spiritual angle).
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