On hallowed ground

Stacy J. Willis

Saturday, Dec. 16, 2000 | 12:37 p.m.

Joshua Abbey's dad, Edward, would be shaking his head in disgust.

Rampant development is eating up the desert on all sides of the Las Vegas Valley: The air is polluted; the water supply challenged; the eco-system invaded.

The late environmentalist-anarchist author Edward Abbey "would have written off Las Vegas," Joshua said. "My dad would be relieved that all of this development was sequestered in one little valley, and he would move on to concentrate on preserving larger areas of wilderness."

But for Joshua Abbey, a Las Vegas resident, moving on is not on the agenda. Instead he is combining his legacy of environmentalism with Jewish traditions to encourage the religious community to stand up and protect the Southwestern desert.

Although framing environmental activism in religious rationale is not new -- the trend most recently made its way across the country in the 1990s -- it is an effort that is ill-received in Las Vegas.

"The religious community here just doesn't make the environment a priority," Abbey said.

This is despite Las Vegas being one of the nation's most rapidly growing communities, chock-full of related environmental problems ranging from animal species endangerment to unhealthy air quality.

"But the economy is good, so we're fat, dumb and happy, and the religious community is very quiet," Jane Feldman, a local Sierra Club member, said. "But our environment is suffering, and if we could find allies in the religious community, it would be wonderful."

The goal of uniting religious groups and environmental activists is not only to encourage individual members of congregations to change their wasteful ways and get involved in conservation, but also to lend the religious community's influence in public policymaking on environmental issues.

In the last decade, national coalitions of religious leaders have spoken out about environmental issues, and some religious scholars have published texts highlighting environmentally friendly passages in Judeo-Christian texts.

In 1991 a national group of more than 30 Nobel laureate scientists wrote "An Open Letter to the Religious Community," encouraging involvement in protecting the natural world.

"Efforts to safeguard the environment need to be infused with a vision of the sacred," the scientists wrote.

In 1993 the National Religious Partnership for the Environment was formed, bringing together the National Council of Churches, the Evangelical Environmental Network, the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life and the U.S. Catholic Conference.

Action has been taken on the local level in many communities -- for example, in Minneapolis, a group called the Minnesota Interfaith Ecology Coalition was formed to provide religious retreats aimed at environmental education, fund-raising and activism.

But similar efforts to unite religion and environmental activism in Las Vegas have failed -- frustrating the local environmentalist community.

Abbey started the local Interfaith Coalition for the Environment while working at the Jewish Federation of Southern Nevada in the mid-1990s.

"But it was like pulling teeth to get religious leaders to participate," Abbey said. "We had a few meetings where we sat down and tried to find common ground and make plans, but eventually it just ended."

The president of the Clark County Ministerial Association said Las Vegas's religious leaders are "apathetic" about environmental issues.

"I don't know why, but the religious community here is just not that interested, not that organized and not that informed about this issue," the Rev. Massey Gentry, an Episcopalian and president of the association, said.

The Rev. Peter Moore-Kochlas of the United Methodist Church in San Diego knows that all too well.

As the church's regional director of environmental ministries, he was assigned last year to organize and inform church members about environmental issues in Southern California, Nevada and Arizona.

"I couldn't even get an invitation to Nevada," he said from his San Diego office. "Las Vegas pastors just told me there wasn't an interest in environmentalism there."

"I got a much better response in Arizona, where they organized a group and the participation was quite good."

Mainstream Judeo-Christian theology has been blamed for environmental woes because of its teaching that man has "dominion" over the Earth -- elevating him, some say, above the natural environment.

By contrast, many Native-American and Eastern faiths, among others, are nature-based and consider all living creatures equal.

"Christianity is obviously the source of our culture's dominant values, and our culture is into materialism and the domination of the rest of the world," said Marcus Page, a member of Nevada Desert Experience, an anti-nuclear weapons group that has religious roots.

Beliefs

But many people from Judeo-Christian traditions say that it is actually that role of stewardship that causes them to be environmentally conscious.

"The inference from (the Book of) Genesis is that man was given dominion over the planet, yes, but that means that he should care for it," Abbey said.

"I consider caretaking the Earth to be the 11th Commandment. There is a very strong motivation in Jewish thought to be responsible caretakers for nature. The Hebrew Talmudic phrase 'Tikkun Olam' means 'reparation of the world.' "

While some envision environmental activism as protests and boycotts, churches' more subtle teachings about man's relationship with the Earth more widely affect the activities of the public -- and of public officials. When County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury votes on development and environmental issues, it is often his Mormon faith that guides him, he said.

"My beliefs influence me, yes. My faith teaches me that our bodies and the world around us were given to us by God -- that we don't own anything -- it's all on loan, and we are judged by how we take care of it," Woodbury, a lifelong Southern Nevadan, said.

"As far as the LDS Church is concerned," says Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints spokesman Will Stoddard, "I don't know that we have any particular programs or doctrinal proclamations on the subject. But we have always said that the Earth was made for man to be able to come here and be tried and tested and see if we would be able to go back and live with our father in heaven.

"The Earth is here for our aid, use and enjoyment, and we certainly have a stewardship responsibility to take good care of everything and not abuse it and not cause undue damage -- within reason," Stoddard said.

Leading

While few local churches and synagogues have conservation programs or would devote sermons to environmentalism, one exception is the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Las Vegas.

The church maintains a trail at Red Rock Canyon, has a budding environmental activist group and teaches "Earth-centered traditions, which celebrate the sacred source of life."

The Rev. Gail Collins Ranadive most recently addressed environmentalism in a Thanksgiving sermon:

"The earliest things created are the most sacred, being closest to the source of their creation: Thus plants and animals can be seen as more sacred than humans who came later on in the evolutionary line-up," Collins-Ranadive told her congregation.

"The fate of the planet may well depend on our having such an I-Thou relationship with the Earth. In fact, re-sanctifying our connection with the natural world has been called the moral imperative of our age, if we are to survive as a species."

Collins-Ranadive explained later that she addresses environmentalism "minimally but consciously" as a religious leader.

"The basic problem is that (environmentalism) may mean that people will have to change their way of life, and people don't want to do that," she said.

Collins-Ranadive has adjusted her life to be more environmentally sound -- doing a series of small things such as regularly bringing a cloth bag to the store instead of using disposable grocery bags.

"My personal spirituality is grounded in the natural world. I live very simply and I preach out of that," she said. "Clergy needs to lead gently."

"But it is definitely time for clergy to lead."

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