Craig Rucker
cfact.org
Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its president.
For many, climate change is all about the science. But for others, it’s about something a little more. Call it a spiritual awakening, baptized Green.
Included among the global warming faithful gathered at UN’s COP 27 in Egypt are numerous true believers who feel “Saving the Earth” from climate change is a means to free one’s soul from grips of devilish capitalism.
CFACT had occasion to meet up with some of these Green parishioners during a pair of side events in the main convention area. The first one contained representatives of various religions who all spoke about how faith-based groups are important to the UN climate change orthodoxy and biodiversity process. They preached about the importance of maintaining a personal “connectedness” to a purported planetary consciousness.
“The reason the Earth is in ruin,” chimed a spokesman for the World Wildlife Fund (who was somehow on the panel), “is because we are disconnected from our own self.” The “heart of our message,” he continued, “is that we need to recognize the interconnectedness of all creation.”
To help proselytize those who are yet unbelievers, he noted the WWF is now “mobilizing 30 different religious organizations from around the world to put forward a multi-faith response to the global biodiversity crisis” in the hopes of capturing people’s hearts as well as their minds. They plan to unveil a plan of action at the upcoming COP 15 meeting in Montreal, Canada in December.
Meanwhile, directly following this meeting, a number of young activists gathered in the nearby Hub 3, side event room to showcase how youth around the world are embracing climate action. To begin this session, a young lady directed the crowd in attendance to participate with her in form of group meditation.
“Everything around me is absorbing peace,” she said,” including the sky, the oceans the people, the wildlife, the buildings – and everything is radiating peace.” After going on with more of this sort of banter for several minutes, she concluded by instructing everyone to “open their eyes” and then asking the crowd if they felt good. The audience erupted in applause.
The talks which followed were rabidly anti-capitalism in content, accusing companies and democracies of all sorts of sins for which they could never make penitence. It seemed the only solution for them, according to the panelists, was to confess their sins and then burn at the stake.
The last speaker, a young student from Pakistan, summed up the theology of the gathering quite eloquently. She said “Earth is a living being…and the way you can connect to your ancestors, the way you can connect to your responsibilities, the way you can connect to her, is to listen to her, because she speaks. And she will tell you how to protect her.”
Fortunately, there was no passing of an offering plate where we’d have to awkwardly decline.
Meanwhile, as reported on CFACT’s Climate Depot, an outfit known as the multi-faith initiative held an event at nearby Mount Sinai to bring the world a new set of Ten Commandments of sort. The outfit – which is a consortium of Left-leaning religious organizations including the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development (ICSD), The Elijah Interfaith Institute, and the Peace Department – conducted on the sacred mountain “Climate Repentance Ceremonies” and “put forth a prophetic inter-religious call to action” to help heal the planet.
They smashed some stones on Sinai, in a fashion as Moses did in the Bible, to dramatize how the world needs to repent of its ecological sins. Their new “Ten Principles for Climate Repentance” include:
- We are stewards of this world
- Creation manifests divinity
- Everything in life is interconnected
- Do no harm
- Look after tomorrow
- Rise above ego for our world
- Change our inner climate
- Repent and return
- Every action matters
- Use mind, open heart
CFACT did try to attend this event, but information was scant at the conference as to how precisely to do so. All we do know is when CFACT’s Peter Murphy asked for details at the first side event (mentioned above), he was simply told “we don’t know any details…but we think a new Ten Commandments is a great idea!”
One would have to think Moses would beg to differ on that.
