April 23, 2002

A FAITH-BASED ALTERNATIVE TO EARTH DAY SANCTIMONY

Amid all the Earth Day hype, did you happen to hear anything about the Cornwall Declaration?

Didn't think so. It's a manifesto for free-market environmentalism grounded in religious faith. Can't have that.

Not on a holiday dedicated to pagan socialism.

The declaration grew out of a meeting of theologians, economists and scientists held in West Cornwall, Conn., in October 1999. They summed up their conclusions in three sentences:

The 20th century brought unprecedented improvement in human health, nutrition, life expectancy and environmental quality;

_ We have an opportunity, and a moral obligation, to build on these advances, and share them with less fortunate people in America and developing nations;

None of this would be possible, were it not for the religious, economic and scientific traditions now under assault.

They established a group called the Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship, on the Web at http://www.stewards.net, and expanded their conclusions to a two-page statement named, as such declarations often are, after the place where they met.

They released their declaration last Monday, along with a list of distinguished signers, and were resoundingly ignored.

I happened to hear about it from the Rev. Robert Sirico, who passed through Denver recently on his return from a trip to China to meet with Chinese Christians. Sirico is co-founder and president of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, in Grand Rapids, Mich.

I know little more of Lord Acton than his celebrated observation that "power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely," which was a prescient description of the 20th century's brutalities to come (Acton died in 1902). But he said many quotable things about the intimate connection between freedom and faith. For instance:

"Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought."

"Liberty is the condition which makes it easy for conscience to govern."

Acton believed that personal freedom, both political and economic, is the surest path to a just society.

Of course, it may also be the most difficult path, except for all the others, as Winston Churchill said about democracy.

The Acton Institute works to educate people who are or are preparing to be priests, ministers and rabbis on economic fundamentals. Economics plays a very minor role in most seminary training, which is no doubt why the National Council of Churches and its fellow travelers have fallen for every left-wing nostrum there is.

But Acton also "call(s) on executives and entrepreneurs to integrate their faith more fully into their professional lives, to give of themselves more unselfishly in their communities, and to strive after higher standards of ethical conduct in their work."

Concern for the environment is inherent in this mission. To supplement the Cornwall Declaration, Acton has published a volume of essays, Environmental Stewardship in the Judeo-Christian Tradition, which explore the theological basis for man's relation to the natural world from Jewish, Catholic and Protestant perspectives. In his foreword to the book, Sirico writes that the biblical vision of stewardship has been muddled by two false views.

"The one sees the natural world as the source of all value, man as an intruder, and God, if he exists at all, as so immanent in the natural order that he ceases to be distinguishable from it. The other places man as the source of all values, the natural order as merely instrumental to his aims, and God as often irrelevant."

So as not to give the wrong impression, I should say that for me as a nonbeliever, the essays are not particularly persuasive. I have no quarrel with the conclusions or the arguments. I just don't accept the premises, and indeed, the premises of the separate essays are not merely different, they're in some measure imcompatible.

But that should make no difference to believers in any one of the three traditions. If you're tired of Earth Day cant, these essays are a nourishing alternative.

(648 words)