Cleaning Up the Planet on a Wing and a Prayer : Environment: The Rev. Peter Kreitler went beyond Sunday sermons to meld religion and concern about the Earth into an activist eco-ministry.

The Rev. Peter Kreitler remembers the moment he decided that his occasional “Save the Whales” sermons were not enough to save the planet.

It was Nov. 7, 1990, the day after California voters had defeated two major environmental measures--the “Big Green” and the “Forests Forever” initiatives.

Kreitler was driving his daughter Laura, then 11, to school in Pacific Palisades when the news was repeated on the radio. Laura, who grew up with dinner-table conversation about the environment, turned to him and asked:

“What are you going to do about it?”

Recalls Kreitler: “Suddenly I knew. I stopped the car right in the middle of Bienveneda Avenue and said, ‘Laura, I am going to do a lot.’ ”

Kreitler, who had been an Episcopal parish priest for 22 years, created a new ministry almost on the spot. “I called my bishop and told him I felt deeply called to focus my work on the connection between environment and religion,” he says. “I said I didn’t want any money--just his support and a title. He gave me both.”

And that’s how Peter Kreitler--B.A. ‘66, Brown University, and M. Div., ‘69, Virginia Theological Seminary--became the first minister for the environment for the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. His calling card (made from 100% post-consumer recycled paper) now reads: “Peter Kreitler, Earth Service Inc.” And today, )the organization kicks off the first Los Angeles Earth Week, culminating Saturday with the “Great L.A. Clean-Up,” a full schedule of graffiti removal, beach cleanup, tide-pool cleaning, tree planting, storm-drain repair--a virtual Earth-healing marathon.

“You go out on a wing and a prayer--like an artist with a blank canvas,” says Kreitler, who launched his new career without a model. What he wanted to create was an umbrella organization, linking business, church and environment.

He has made a start. Since January, 1991, he has organized a board of directors for his nonprofit Earth Service, outfitted a donated office with donated furniture, created monthly round-table breakfasts, introduced a program of energy audits for church buildings, led eco-workshops for clerical and lay groups and spoken to organizations ranging from the Santa Monica Rotary Club to the South Bay Ecumenical Conference.

“I am finding a lot of deeply committed people,” he says. And in the process he has assembled a network of supporters who like his message: A connection between personal behavior and preserving the environment should be a moral priority for everyone.

“We will not save creation with a technological fix,” says Kreitler, 49. “We who have been dominant over the Earth have to be in harmony with it--if not we might as well pack it in.” The slogan on his stationery, “Make the Connection,” means that “every action I take, every decision I make--whether I buy a hamburger or pesticides to put on my roses or a new car--has a corresponding environmental impact.”

“I see him on the cutting edge of a real movement,” says David Saltman, an educational TV producer and former executive director of the environment-oriented Surfrider Foundation, a coalition of surfers that recently won a major lawsuit in California against polluting paper companies.

Saltman, who met Kreitler at an environmental round-table, is now an Earth Service board member. “We have the same kind of vision,” says Saltman. “Without a doubt, he is completely committed to a healthy stewardship of the planet.”

Kreitler’s vision has developed over a lifetime. He grew up in an Episcopalian family that valued giving back to the community. He spent summers roaming the wetlands and sand flats of Cape Cod, and did stints in India and Mexico working with the poor and dispossessed in awesomely beautiful mountain villages.

After ordination, he carried on the traditional parish work, of “marrying people and burying people,” as a priest in Kansas City and, since 1974, at St. Matthew’s Church in Pacific Palisades.

All along, his environmental concern sharpened. “I love creation,” he says. “I wind surf. I photograph it. (He has published two photo-essay books.) It has just been a part of my fabric, and I’ve been preaching on issues related to the environment for years.”

Sitting in his Earth Service office in Colorado Place, Santa Monica’s futuristic glass-and-concrete urban park, he flips through a notebook of sermons to find his Earth Day 1970 address. It’s a strident call for environmental reform. Quoting the Genesis creation story, he warned his audience: “We consume and dispose without using our head. . . . Once again the time is coming when the unthinking species will be forced to devise schemes for survival.”

It was a strong message repeated many times through the years.

But though he never considered himself a single-theme priest, he’d frequently weave in environmental references, and he encouraged his congregation to recycle paper, use environmentally safe cleaning products and recycle Christmas trees.

Kathleen Milnes, a staffer for the Alliance of Motion Picture and TV Producers, attended St. Matthews and is now secretary of the Earth Service board of directors. “His work there was a model for what he’s now doing on a larger scale. Connecting religion and the environment made a lot of sense to me, and it’s a niche no one seems to be filling.”

Although Kreitler’s career switch was sudden, it was not unexpected.

“I’m very supportive of his ministry,” says Frederick Borsch, Episcopal bishop of Los Angeles, who approved the new title. “I knew of his enthusiasm because we had often discussed it, but I was surprised, in a sense, that his commitment level was so high.”

Adds Kreitler: “My wife, Katy, saw it emerging in me--we were doing all kinds of household stuff, but I just kept feeling like there was something else. . . . I finally feel that this is the arena to which God has been calling me all along.”

As an environmental consultant, he gets calls from people who want help with the nuts and bolts of an office recycling program. “But the calls I would prefer would be from the managing partner of a large law firm or a corporate executive who wants to talk about the environmental ethic of what they are doing. I’m starting to hear from people like that.”

He charges a sliding scale, from a modest honorarium to churches and schools to something considerably more substantial on the corporate level. The money goes to Earth Service. “I’m not a mercenary, but I want to have a decent living,” says Kreitler. His salary, set by the board, is commensurate with what he made as a priest.

Though Earth Service has a number of activities, the last few weeks have focused on this week’s Earth Day activities. They are co-sponsors, with Earth Day International, of the “Great L.A. Clean-Up,” which Kreitler sees as a vehicle for bringing people together. The plans--incorporating more than 40 environmental groups and thousands of volunteers--are ambitious:

The week starts with a City Hill press conference and ends with a vegetarian banquet, and packed in between are environmental fairs, movie screenings and Saturday’s “Great L.A. Clean-Up.” The results, predicts Kreitler, will be “the largest public citizens’ weeklong clean-up in history.”

For Wednesday--the official Earth Day--Kreitler has organized a 24-hour vigil of prayers for creation at St. Augustine’s Church in Santa Monica.

“The diversity is incredible!” he exclaims. “We have Methodist, Congregationalist, Hindu, male and female rabbis, a Roman Catholic nun, the Unity and Diversity Council.”

Each participant will have an hour’s segment, and Kreitler will kick it off by reading 12 sets of prayers representing every religion in the world.

“We want to dramatize that for centuries people have prayed about the environment. We want to call on people of all religions to recognize that part of their faith is being concerned about creation.”

For information on calendar and volunteer activities: Earth Week Hotline (310) 452-4452.