Religious Campaign for Forest Conservation Environmental Voices addressing the role of Religion Twenty years after Earth Day, those of us who set out to change the world are poised on the threshold of utter failure. Measured on virtually any scale, the world is in worse shape than it was twenty years ago. How could we have fought so hard, and won so many battles, now to find ourselves on the verge of losing the war_ Dennis Hayes Founder, Earth Day [To heal the earth] we must reinstate in our lives the ethic of love and respect for the Earth, which traditional peoples have retained as central to their value systems. This must be accompanied by a revitalization of the values common to all of the principle religious and philosophical traditions. Caring, sharing, co-operation with and love of each other must no longer be seen as pious ideals, divorced from reality, but rather as the indispensable basis for the new realities on which our survival and well-being must be premised. Maurice Strong Secretary General for the U.N. Conf. on Environment and Development We cannot have peace on earth unless we make peace with the earth. This is going to require every sector of human society and it will particularly require what I think is the best organized sector of human society, the Church. The Church has a requirement now to take the lead in replenishing the earth, and to see that all sectors of society replenish the earth, and replenish it again and again. Unless we give as well as take when it comes to looking at our natural resources, humanity is not going to make it. The great opportunity for us now is to join in restoring the simple as well as the complicated things that will let us live in peace with the earth. ... I see no institution in our civilization that can lead to this achievement more than the Church. David Brower, “A Call to the Churches” The environmental movement for the past quarter of a century has made no more profound error than to misunderstand the mission of religion and the churches in preserving the creation.... We knew the nature of the challenge we faced, that it was moral: that the sin which tempts our leaders to despoil nature is pride, or hubris, and that the God whose worship seduces us to follow our leaders down that path is greed, or Mammon. We knew the locus of America's moral instinct: We had seen that America's impulse to redeem and transform itself arose from the churches when they tackled the legacy of slavery and challenged the War in Vietnam.... We knew how hard it is to sustain morally driven organizations. We acted as if we could save future generations, and yet unnamed and unknown species, without the engagement of the institutions through which we save ourselves. We rejected the churches. ... We became as narrow minded as fundamentalists of any religion. I would like to close by acknowledging error. Environmentalists must engage with the churches and with faith. We have not. Indeed, if as White says, in the Eastern tradition intellectual blindness is sin, I stand here to confess that sin. Carl Pope, The Sierra Club “An Apology to the Churches” November 6, 1997