Ecology, Shamanism, Science, and Christianity – Part 1

By: Dave Hunt; ©2002

Should Christians be concerned about a hidden agenda behind some of the environmental groups and movements today? Dave Hunt reveals an insidious anti-Christian world view that drives some of the participants.

 

Only the recognition on a worldwide scale of the oneness of creation can provide the critical global consciousness necessary to chart a new course for a sustainable future. (World Council of Churches ^[1])

The Earth is mandating that the human community assume a responsibility never assigned to any previous generation. We are being asked to learn an entirely new mode of conduct and discipline. This is preeminently a religious and spiritual task. (Thomas Berry, Adjunct Associate Professor Emeritus, Fordham University ^[2])

Some of the theories which have been put forth to generate international support for the environmental movement—such as whether the hole in the ozone layer is a cyclical natural phenomenon or man-made and worsening—are debatable. Is the globe actually warming or cooling? In the ’60s and ’70s, scientists were warning about global cooling, not global warming. As late as 1977, the U.S. Academy of Science warned of a coming new ice age. Now we’re being warned of global warming in spite of record-breaking cold—a threat which some scientists have called “just a lot of hot air.”

In mid-December 1993, US News and World Report carried a major exposé titled “The Doomsday Myths.” It named and examined false alarms sounded by environmentalists. Nevertheless, the environmental movement is gathering considerable momentum and has the attention and backing of most government, scientific, and religious world leaders.

A Nature Religion for Today

While it calls primarily upon scientific data for support, the ecological movement is a religion with its own ecotheology. Georgetown University professor Victor Ferkiss approv­ingly says that ecological concern “starts with the premise that the Universe is God.” ^[3] Carl Sagan, the recently deceased high priest of cosmos worship, declared with the authority of academia behind him: “If we must worship a power greater than ourselves, does it not make sense to revere the Sun and stars? ^[4] No, it does not. Reverence does not pertain to things but to persons.

One can hardly escape the similarity between a native bowing before a stick or stone which he credits with some occult power, a witch worshiping “Mother Nature,” and scientists and university professors crediting mystic evolutionary forces with producing the human brain. It is a perversion to give reverence to the impersonal creation instead of to the per­sonal God who created us, a perversion entertained in order to escape moral account ability to our Creator. Therefore the Bible indicts in the terms those who, like Sagan and many of his fellow scientists, worship the creation instead of its Creator; and it warns clearly of the consequent perversion of morals and behavior.

Underlying the environmental movement is the belief that mankind is the product of evolutionary forces inherent within universe. Based upon that theory we must therefore get back in tune with nature, our Mother, rather than with the Creator. New Agers (and they include increasing numbers of scientists) have adopted the view long held by shamans and Eastern mystics that the universe is a living entity of which we are all an integral part. What is needed, therefore, is to recognize our essential oneness with nature or “the Universal Mind” and to experience this oneness through “higher states of consciousness.” This grow­ing pagan spirituality with its worship of creation instead of the Creator is an ideal vehicle for joining in partnership science and religion.

Increasingly, scientists are adopting the shamanistic view that Mother Earth is a god­dess named Gaia. This belief is promoted at high-level gatherings of scientists. Confer­ences of the Dallas-based Isthmus Institute regularly draw leading scientists and religion­ists together to discuss “science and spirituality.” Usually held at a University of Texas campus, typical conferences include discussions of the “spiritual” aspects of ecology and of “Gaia.” ^[5] Of course, their meaning of “spiritual” is pagan/pantheistic and anti-Christian.

Honoring the Goddess

As one would expect, the belief in Gaia is very appealing to feminists and even to those among them who call themselves Christians. A growing movement within the Christian church resulted from the “Re-Imagining God, the Community and the Church” conference held November 4-7, 1993, in Minneapolis, One of the plenary speakers was Chung Kyun Kyung, a South Korean Presbyterian. In her plenary address to this Christian gathering, Chung declared:

I want to share three images of God so striking in Asia and how these images of God transformed my Christianity and my theological understanding of God. The three goddesses I want to share with you are Kali, Quani, and Enna. These three are my new Trinity… I claim Kali as the goddess of justice…. Kali is usually located in India and Sri Lanka, a Hindu image. Quani is Buddhist image of god…. Enna means mother and Enna means earth. It is the indigenous goddess of the Philippines…. ^[6]

The Christian church has been very patriarchal. That is why we are here together, in order to destroy the patriarchal idolatry of Christianity. ^[7]

Instead of being excommunicated from her church and by the Christian community for her blatant blasphemy, Chung is highly honored. Eighteen months before the Minneapolis conference, she had also given a plenary address at Seventh World Council of Churches (WCC) international conference, February 7-20, 1992, in Canberra, Australia. One trembles to repeat her angry, hateful words against the God of the Bible and her wicked perversion of Christianity and the Holy Spirit. Yet the WCC delegates gave Chung a standing ovation. Ecumenical Press Service reported:

Combining verbal fireworks with a performance by Korean and aboriginal dancers, Chung rendered a dramatic evocation of a female Holy Spirit. She linked that spirit to that of Hagar, the Egyptian slave woman in Genesis, who Chung said was “exploited and abandoned by Abraham and Sarah.”

Chung then burned bits of paper bearing the names of other exploited spirits— which she said were full of “han,” the Korean word for anger—and identified them as Holocaust victims, freedom fighters, murdered advocates of non-violence, struggling Korean women, the poor, and women in Japan’s “prostitution army” during World War II.

Chung said, “I also know that I no longer believe in an omnipotent, Macho, warrior God who rescues all good guys and punishes all bad guys….” ^[8]

In that same WCC plenary address, Chung said of the Holy Spirit, “Don’t bother theSpirit by calling her all the time. She is working hard with us.” Eighteen times Chung summoned the spirits of the dead who have suffered injustices in the past. She claimed that “without hearing the cries of these spirits, we cannot hear the voice of the Holy Spirit.” After calling on the spirits of the dead, Chung said, “I hope the presence of all our ancestors’ spirits here with us shall not make you uncomfortable.” ^[9] It is these very demonic spirits with which the shaman works.

Most of those involved in the environmental movement are anti-Christians who blame the Bible and Christianity for the ecological crises we allegedly face. In their celebrated television series, Joseph Campbell tells Bill Moyers, “The Christian separation of matter and spirit… has really castrated nature. And the European mind, the European life, has been, as it were, emasculated by this separation. The true spirituality; which would have come from the union of matter and spirit, has been killed….” ^[10] Yet Campbell rejects the greatest “union of matter and spirit” possible: the incarnation of Christ, when God was born into the world and became a man.

Notes

1. ↑ FWR Report, July 1993, p. 3.
2. ↑ Earth and Spirit: The Spiritual Dimension of the Environmental Crisis, International Con­ference Brochure sponsored by Chinook Learning Center, October 19-21, 1990, Seattle, WA.
3. ↑ Science Digest, November 1981, p. 39.
4. ↑ Carl Sagan, Cosmos (Random House, 1980), p. 243.
5. ↑ Dallas Morning News, September 26, 1992.
6. ↑ Foundation, July/August, 1994, pp. 6-7.
7. ↑ Christian News, March 21, 1994, p. 8.
8. ↑ 8.O Timothy, vol. 11, Issue 3, 1994.
9. ↑ O Timothy, vol. 9, Issue 1, 1992.
10. ↑ Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyer, Power of Myth, p. 197.

Read Part 2