Saving the Earth While Saving Souls : Environment: An interfaith coalition is leading the fight to view stewardship of the Earth as a sacred responsibility. Member congregations are doing everything from protecting bayous to using solar-powered eternal lights in synagogues.

Towering willow oaks frame a wide spring sky. Birds whistle love calls as old as time. Here, members of Heritage Presbyterian Church make the connection between faith and the Earth.

“We can give praise to God when we see yellow-rumped warblers,” said Kathryn Cochrane, whose committee built the trail that meanders through the suburban church’s Creation Awareness Center, a three-acre wood lot behind the parish parking lot.

The project is one of dozens of recycling, creek-monitoring and other environmental efforts undertaken in recent years by U.S. churches and synagogues, especially those in politically liberal areas. The eco-spiritual movement will get a powerful boost on Earth Day, April 22, from an unprecedented coalition of the nation’s top religious leaders.

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The National Religious Partnership for the Environment, representing the U.S. Catholic Conference, the National Council of Churches, the Evangelical Environment Network, and the Consultation on the Environment and Jewish Life, will ask pastors and rabbis nationwide to begin viewing the environment as a sacred responsibility.

“This is not just the environmental movement at prayer,” said Paul Gorman, executive director of the Partnership for the Environment. “There is a neglected legacy of teachings that instruct stewardship of the environment.”

The appeal letter includes documents explaining the scriptural basis for putting care of the Earth on the religious agenda, beginning with Psalms 24:1: “The Earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.”

Rabbis receive a list of Old Testament references, whereas the pastors’ list cites both portions of the Bible. Each group within the partnership has prepared its own appeal documents.

Considerable negotiating went on among the member organizations about the general thrust of the campaign. Roman Catholics feared that signing on to save the Earth might weaken the Vatican’s strict stand against birth control. Evangelicals worried about environmentalism’s New Age image. Black church leaders feared they would be accused of succumbing to a white-middle-class agenda.

In the end, the groups agreed on two broad concepts: stewardship of God’s creation and ending environmental injustices inflicted on poor populations by the industrialized world.

“It’s the poor and marginalized who are affected first by anything that goes wrong with the environment,” Judy Jones of World Vision, a Christian relief and development agency based in Monrovia, told National Geographic.

The question remains whether the country’s conservative Christian congregations, representing most of religious America, will join any movement that smacks of liberalism. Traditionally, they have viewed environmentalism as elitist and secular.

“These are people who would follow a Rush Limbaugh,” said Cliff Benzel of Evangelicals for Social Action, based in Philadelphia.

The hope is that conservatives will be inspired by such examples as a Roman Catholic church in Houma, La., campaigning on behalf of fishermen to save the bayous; a Presbyterian church in Oakland that asks its members to sign up for a gasoline tithe, reducing their driving by 10%, and a synagogue in Lowell, Mass., that uses solar power in its eternal light.

But many are skeptical.

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“What we’re fighting is a generation that views waste as a sign of well-being,” said Mike Tabor, a Jewish activist who has developed a 16-point energy-reduction plan for synagogues in the Baltimore area, where he lives. “I have to fight it in myself,” said the 51-year-old farmer. “I let the water run while I brush.”

The appeal is part of a three-year campaign to integrate the concept of environmental stewardship into the religious life of America. The partnership will help congregations develop environmental programs and create environmental ministries for young clerics.

The movement began in 1990 when a group of 34 concerned scientists, including astronomer Carl Sagan, wrote an open letter to the world’s religious leaders asking for their help in rescuing the degraded planet.

The response was quick and widespread. Talks were held in Washington, Moscow and Oxford, England. In less than two years, the scientists’ letter had been signed by Christian, Jewish and Muslim spiritual leaders from 83 countries.

“Unprecedented,” Gorman said. “These two worlds have been separate since the church decided Galileo’s head should be separated from his body.”

Much of the credit for bringing the disparate groups together is given to Vice President Al Gore, who arranged private meetings between religious and scientific leaders.

The campaign to rescue the environment promises some interesting bonuses. Not the least, religious leaders hope, could be renewed interest in church life.

Since the 1960s, mainstream Protestant churches have steadily lost members. The Presbyterian Church alone has lost more than 1 million people, one-third of its membership. During the same period, a majority of Americans have come to consider themselves environmentalists.

“A lot of people left because the church didn’t preach and teach what Scripture says about our relationship to the created world,” Kathryn Cochrane said.

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With plans to spend $4.5 million over the next three years, the Partnership for the Environment could create new jobs for clerics and even stimulate new products. Evangelicals for Social Action plans to launch an environmental magazine, the Green Cross.

Booksellers already have noticed new interest in volumes about cultures that view humans as part of, not superior to, the environment. “Earth Prayers From Around the World,” published two years ago, has sold 180,000 copies.

Spreading the word on eco-spiritualism will stimulate debate on it and other controversial issues such as population control, economic development and animal rights.

“It’s bound to be acrimonious,” said Gary Comstock, who teaches religion and ethics at Iowa State University. “But after all, this is the course of the great philosophical reforms.”