102998 UN AGENCY PROMOTES PANTHEISM, DENIGRATES JUDAISM,
CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM

* The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is supporting the
campaign by radical environmentalists to create a new world religion.
This campaign is intimately connected to the UN drive to formulate an
"Earth Charter," in which the "planetary ethics" that green activists
seek to impose upon all human societies would be codified.

* On October 20-21 in New York, UNEP co-sponsored a conference entitled
"Religion and Ecology: Discovering the Common Grounds." Among the
notables participating were Maurice Strong, Chairman of the Earth
Council and Secretary-General of the 1992 Earth Summit; and Tim Wirth,
president of Ted Turner's United Nations Foundation and formerly U.S.
Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs, where he served as point man
on population and environmental issues for the pro-abortion Clinton
Administration.

* Last week's session represented the culmination of a ten-conference
series held between May 1996 and July 1998 at the Harvard University
Center for the Study of World Religions. A background paper prepared by
Mary Ellen Tucker, the Bucknell University religion professor who
directed the series along with her husband John Grim, reflects the
series' anti-traditional perspective. The objective, Tucker writes, is
the "creative revisioning of mutually enhancing human-earth relations"
away from the orthodox monotheistic understanding, which places man at
the center of God's Creation. "If religions have traditionally
concentrated on divine-human and human-human relations, the challenge is
that they now explore more fully divine-human-earth relations."

* Tucker specifically identifies the great monotheistic religions as
those most culpable in devaluing nature. "For the most part, the
worldviews associated with the Western Abrahamic traditions of Judaism,
Christianity and Islam have created a dominantly human-focused morality.
Because these worldviews are largely anthropocentric, nature is viewed
as being of secondary importance." In contrast, Confucianism and Taoism
are praised for their "life-affirming" outlook, as are the religions of
indigenous peoples.

* Similar attitudes infused the presentations at last week's
UNEP-sponsored discussions. Stephen Rockefeller, who is directing the
drafting of the Earth Charter, participated in a concluding session that
discussed the Charter's implications. One of the speakers was Wangari
Maathai of the Kenyan Green Belt Movement, who characterized herself as
a "student" of Maurice Strong. The Earth Charter is a new set of
Commandments, Maathai declared. "This is like rewriting the Bible."

* The Earth Charter will be formally unveiled in the year 2000 at the
"Millennium People's Forum" and subsequently submitted to the UN General
Assembly. But the pantheistic and anti-humanity thrust of the Charter is
already plainly evident in its last draft, which repeatedly deifies
"Earth" and declares that "Earth itself is alive."

* The draft Charter also promotes abortion. Number 11 of its 18
"interrelated principles" reads as follows: "Secure the right to sexual
and reproductive health, with special concern for women and girls."
"Sexual and reproductive health" is the euphemism commonly employed by
pro-abortion activists for abortion and artificial contraception.