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A Gospel According to Gorbachev: United Nations Plans to Teach Nature Worship in American Schools

Globalist schemers have a plan to teach a pseudo-religion to America's children in public schools, the same schools from which the Christian religion is systematically excluded.

Lee Duigon
  • Lee Duigon
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Globalist schemers have a plan to teach a pseudo-religion to America's children in public schools, the same schools from which the Christian religion is systematically excluded.

The bogus religion is embodied in the United Nations' Earth Charter, a weird mishmash of nature worship, humanism, and aspirations to a socialist world government that might easily be seen as a blueprint for totalitarianism. The most famous of its three co-authors is Mikhail Gorbachev, formerly premiere of the Soviet Union, a communist state whose official religious stance was atheism.

UNESCO (United Nations Economic, Scientific and Cultural Organization) officially approved and adopted the Earth Charter late in 2003, citing it as “an important ethical framework” and “an educational instrument” (see the UNESCO website: unesco.org ).

The first order of business for the Charter's backers is to get it into American schools, said Sandra Hannen of the Center for Respect of Life and Environment, Washington, D. C. headquarters for Earth Charter U. S. A. Ms. Hannen is national coordinator for the organization's campaign to promote the Charter in America.

“A lot of different educational resources will be made available to teachers,” she said. “There will be online lesson plans and ‘tool kits for teachers,' which the teachers can just download.”

The beauty of this plan, for liberals, is that Earth Charter instruction need never appear as a line item in a school budget. Only the most alert parents will ever find out that this plan has become part of their children's education.

Is It a Religious Document?

You can download a complete copy of the Earth Charter from earthcharter.org and see for yourself. One thing you're bound to notice is its frequent use of the words “spiritual” and “spirituality.” Efforts to find out what UNESCO means by these words involved repeated phone calls and emails to the UNESCO office chief in New York, submitting the questions in writing to UNESCO headquarters in Paris, France, and finally, a claim that the official answers to Chalcedon's questions somehow got “lost.”

The Charter sports at least 10 sentences that can only be described as expressions of religious belief and another 15 expressing “values” that many would describe as having a religious dimension. The whole piece is approximately 2,500 words long.

“The Earth Charter does have a spiritual element, but it's not a religious document,” Ms. Hannen said. “I suppose a greater awareness of the earth and involvement with other living things would naturally give you a religious feeling, but that doesn't make it a religion. The statements in the Charter are just values to create a more humane world although the Charter does lend itself to spiritual groups.”

However, James Sniffen of the United Nations environmental division, New York City, had a different take on the Charter.

“The religious community is acting on it, especially the interfaith movement,” he said. “It seems very important to them.”

Last year, the Charter's sponsors carried it into New York in an “Ark of Hope,” a container built to resemble the Ark of the Covenant (for pictures, see the website for The New American Magazine, “The New World Religion,” thenewamerican.com/focus/earth_charter). The “Ark” was displayed at UN headquarters and then housed at the nearby Interfaith Center.

The Interfaith Center describes itself as “a secular educational organization whose mission is to make the world safe for religious differences.”

“We all believe the basic message is out there in all religions,” said Peggy Harrington, at the Interfaith Center. “There's no room for exclusion in today's world.”

Ms. Harrington said she could not understand how “fundamentalist Christians and Jews” could object to the “Ark of Hope,” which is decorated with animist (pagan) religious symbols and contains, in addition to the Earth Charter, artifacts from the “Temenos Project,” an assortment of “creations” by artists, teachers, and mystics including “sacred masks” and “prayers and poems for global healing.”

“I find the Ark of Hope honors the religious tradition,” Ms. Harrington said. “I'm flabbergasted that anyone could think it was disrespectful.”

The Earth Charter is also being promoted, energetically, by the Lindisfarne Institute, a self-proclaimed New Age (pagan) religious-cultural-scientific foundation, and Gorbachev's Green Cross organization, an effort to give an international political dimension to the environmentalist movement.

Space permits only a few brief quotes from the Earth Charter.

On nature worship:

  • “Humanity is part of a vast evolving universe. Earth [not God, ed.] has provided the conditions essential to life's evolution. The protection of Earth's vitality, diversity, and beauty is a sacred trust.”
  • “Recognize and preserve the traditional knowledge and spiritual wisdom in all cultures that contribute to environmental protection and human well-being.”
  • “The spirit of human solidarity and kinship with all life is strengthened when we live with reverence for the mystery of being, gratitude for the gift of life [gratitude to whom? ed.], and humility regarding the human place in nature.”

On grandiose humanistic promises:

  • “Provide everyone an opportunity to realize his or her full potential.” [Huh? ed.]
  • “Ensure universal access to health care that fosters reproductive health and responsible reproduction” [translation: abortion].
  • “Eradicate poverty.”
  • “Eliminate corruption in all public and private institutions.”
  • “Promote the equitable distribution of wealth within nations and among nations.”

As for global government, obviously such colossal projects could not even be attempted without the backing of some form of global enforcement authority. Given that powerful, well-organized free countries like the United States and powerful, well-organized dictatorships like China have been unable to achieve such goals, how much power and organization do the globalists reckon they'll need?

No Laughing Matter

We might laugh this off as just another load of liberal-humanist hogwash, but that would be a mistake. The Earth Charter now carries the UNESCO imprimatur, and its backers include persons who enjoy vast wealth, influence, and power.

Mr. Gorbachev, after all, used to lead a world superpower. The fact that he led the Soviet Union into oblivion has not diminished his self-confidence and has only enhanced American liberals' esteem for him.

Then there's Canadian billionaire Maurice Strong, close advisor to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, director of the UN's 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, well-known for his public statements in support of abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia, and anything else that would decrease world population. He's Earth Charter co-author number two.

Number three is Steven Rockefeller, head of the Rockefeller Foundation (more billions), professor emeritus of “religion” at Middlebury College, and one of the leading lights of the interfaith movement.

These are not lightweights. They have billions of dollars to devote to global mischief, and their friends have billions more.

Logic, Anyone?

Although public educators strive ceaselessly to remove all traces of Christianity from the schools, schools that could not exist without the tax dollars paid by Christians, Ms. Hannen expects these same schools to give the Earth Charter a warm welcome. Given the famous leftist proclivities of America's teachers unions, she's probably right.

Liberals justify their jihad against Christianity in the schools by misrepresenting the “Establishment Clause” of the U. S. Constitution. This clause in the First Amendment forbids congress from establishing a state religion, such as the Church of England or the imperial cult in ancient Rome. But leftists say it means no expression of the Christian faith can be made in any public venue, including the schools, be it a prayer before a football game or a child's crayon drawing of a nativity scene.

Because the Earth Charter is self-evidently a religious text, we can keep it out of our schools by turning the liberals' own argument against them. (This presupposes finding a fair-minded judge.) If they insist there's no place for religion in the schools, then there's no place for this parody of religion.

Logically, there is simply no such thing as the “religious neutrality” so dear to liberals. It's like saying, “We must abstain from making normative judgments.” You just made a normative judgment, dumbo!

By attempting to claim that the schools must be without religious bias, liberals cannot avoid being biased against religion, which is in itself a religious bias. If you disestablish Christianity, you automatically establish something else: in the liberals' case, secular humanism. And in this case, a degraded form of silly neo-paganism promulgated by a washed-up communist dictator, an international intriguer, and a muddle-minded humbug from the interfaith fringe.


Lee Duigon
  • Lee Duigon

Lee is the author of the Bell Mountain Series of novels and a contributing editor for our Faith for All of Life magazine. Lee provides commentary on cultural trends and relevant issues to Christians, along with providing cogent book and media reviews.

Lee has his own blog at www.leeduigon.com.

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