Did anyone else hear growing up "Environmentalism is un-Christian because it's a form of Gaia worship (and therefore idolatry)"?
This randomly popped into my head from my childhood, I searched for it online, and apparently it's not even that uncommon of a Christian take today.
Yes, stuff like this:
Also I’m pretty sure I remember hearing something about how Captain Planet was brainwashing kids.the contrarian in me wants to take up gaia worship because i think it'd be pretty wholesome actually. i think i could make a pretty good go of it with some modern cognitive science, a splash of new age babble, and a dab of whiteheadian panpsychism.
but no i've never heard this specifically but i do remember hearing a lot about al gore
Its idolatry to protect the world created by your God. You need to desecrate and accelerate extinction event faster than even cyanobacteria. I'm starting to wonder if these fundies really worship God or fenrir and jorgumandr
An idea I've seen floating around esoteric circles is "the Evangelical egregore". That evangelicals have created a god in their own image and proceeded to worship it.
I didn't grow up Christian but I haven't heard that argument, that is just absurd to me. Aren't we supposed to respect and have love for God's creatures and the world made for us? How do they even arrive at that conclusion?
The Bible says God gave man dominion over the Earth, and many Christians take "dominion" to mean in the colonial sense.
I've had some leaders who would cede that were are to be good stewards of the earth, so maybe don't set fire to forests... while defending the people destroying forests and other ecological structures.
Points at death cult sign.
No no, God placed us here to rule over all the shit he made for us, and promised he wouldn’t destroy the earth, therefor we can be as destructive as we want and everything will turn out fine
JFC, I did not grow up Catholic, but Protestant, and therefore don't usually point to the Pope as a source, but this is fire
More proof most Western "Christians" worship Mammon.
Even when they're saying stuff that's mostly good we still get this shit
papists go in The Apparatus imo
He observed that the world cannot be analysed by isolating one of its aspects, since "the book of nature is one and indivisible", and includes the environment, life, sexuality, the family, social relations, and so forth. It follows that "the deterioration of nature is closely connected to the culture which shapes human coexistence".
That seems totally correct to me. Just not in the way they want it to be.
Literally only in Alpha Centauri.
Evil lurks in the datalinks as it lurked in the streets of yesteryear. But it was never the streets that were evil
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I never heard that specifically, which is weird because I was surrounded by similar ideas, but the evangelical position was "God gave the earth to us and told us to multiply, so by not using our resources we would be spitting in god's face" - this completely ignores the idea that god is supposed to have given us the earth and told us to take care of it, because he's coming back in X many years, but hey nobody in this circle was known for their logic.
Not specifically environmentalism as a whole but taking too much care, enacting those bad government regulations which hurt businesses, that type of thing. I suppose it's because my parents had money issues so they adopted certain environmentalist stances because they were cheap. Don't use too much of things because they cost money but that doesn't sound great or make you feel good so they say oh for the environment, don't use too much for the environment (but they'd burn down 10 acres of rain forest in a heartbeat to save $5).
It was a personal responsibility issue and good Christians™ had a responsibility to be stewards BUT also because of the Genesis "dominion" clause it means we have a right and almost a duty to exploit nature, animals, etc as god has given them to us for our use and thus using them is not defiling them and this world is disposable anyways as god is going to rapture the faithful and destroy it any day now™ so it's fine to trash it a bit because we'll be moving onto some place better. So it was kind of mixed messaging but it came down to the EPA was bad, government was bad, man was given charge of this for a reason, yes some people were bad and irresponsible and good Christians™ had a duty to give at least a moment's thought about the more egregious environmental crimes but could do most of them anyways especially if they saved money.
That dominion clause does a lot of heavy lifting for a lot of garbage opinions but it's a pretty strong clause so I wouldn't say they're stretching it on a textual basis just that the whole thing is way past its best by date and should have been discarded oh many centuries ago.
Did they just call me Greek
Sort of, more like vague allusions to environmentalism being “bad” because atheists and leftists were for it, and it was type of idolatry, but they never really got into the details of that one.
...never heard that specifically but fourty years ago my parents ambushed me with their pastor telling me that i'd go to hell for becoming vegetarian; something about god creating animals for exploitation and to reject that was forsaking his will...
...then they tackled me to the ground, pried my jaws open, and shoved chunks of chicken down my throat: nice people...
Woah no, this take is wild. I was taught environmentalism was halal and required by god lol
Yep I'd hear this all the time and I'd lean into it only to be told that we are commanded by God to be good stewards of the earth. No right answers in cult thinking
Hoy boy you're digging up some repressed childhood memories here.
So like 25 years ago or so my old childhood Christian church that had a strong focus on missionary work decided to run a children's play on how cool and good Christian missionaries are and how we should all grow up to be little missionaries in our own little ways.
But it wasn't good enough to just focus on their own American version of colonialist Christianity during the play, no no no, they just had to made kids dress up in other religion's fake sterotype outfits, go up to the stage in a line, and a light would fall individually on each kid as they read their memorized lines about how stupid everyone else's religions are. They wanted every religion shown on stage to be as dumbed down and silly as possible, so I think either gaia worship or paganism was included with a shitty hippy costume. I wish I could remember the name of the play, because it wasn't just something the pastor's mom made up on the spot. Nah, it had a whole ass merch line, apparently this was a play our old church bought the rights to. I know this because my youth group got to go to a Christian convention shortly after and vendors were selling books, shirts, and paper advertising for it. If I remember right the advertising had like a fake precious memories art style mixed with 90's world peace themed cheap looking clip art where everyone smiles and holds hands because Jesus loves them? If you're a former American Christian maybe you know what I'm talking about, my memory is foggy.
Anyways, now that I'm an adult and can look back just to laugh at this, if anyone could let me know what that church play was called that would be very poggers. I want to look up cursed youtube footage of it to make my partner cringe, ok thanks bye.
Everything I learn about evangelism is (1) against my will, (2) makes annoying American Atheists make sense.