Anyone who has studied the global environmental movement has no doubt heard the term "Gaia".  Gaia is a revival of Paganism that rejects Christianity, considers Christianity its biggest enemy, and views the Christian faith as its only obstacle to a global religion centered on Gaia worship and the uniting of all life forms around the goddess of "Mother Earth".  A cunning mixture of science, paganism, eastern mysticism, and feminism have made this pagan cult a growing threat to the Christian Church.  Gaia worship is at the very heart of today's environmental policy.  The Endangered Species Act, The United Nation's Biodiversity Treaty and the Presidents Council on Sustainable Development are all offspring of the Gaia hypothesis of saving "Mother Earth".  This religious movement, with cult-like qualities, is being promoted by leading figures and organizations such as former Vice President Albert Gore, broadcaster Ted Turner, and the United Nations and it's various NGO's.  Al Gore's book "Earth in the Balance" is just one of many books that unabashedly proclaims the deity of Earth and blames the falling away from this Pagan God on the environmentally unfriendly followers of Jesus Christ.  The United Nations has been extremely successful in infusing the "Green Religion" into an international governmental body that has an increasing affect and control over all of our lives. 

So, what is this new cult of Gaia?  It is basically a rehashed, modernized version of the paganism condemned by God in the Bible.  Science, evolution theory, and a space age mentality have given it a new face, and made it sound more credible to a modern world, but it is the same paganism in all of its evils.  There have been other religious movements that have presented similar revelations about the deity of a living earth, but Gaia has succeeded in uniting the environmental movement, the new age movement, Eastern religions, and even the leaders of many Christian denominations behind a bastardized version of paganism where the others weren't able to. 

The Gaia hypothesis can be credited to James Lovelock.  Lovelock worked for NASA during the 1960's as a consultant to the "life on Mars" Viking spacecraft project.  Lovelock's theory claims that the earth's "biota", tightly coupled with its environment, act as a single, self regulating living system in such a way as to maintain the conditions that are suitable for life.  This living system, he believed, was the result of a meta-life form that occupied our planet billions of years ago and began a process of transforming this planet into its own substance.  All of the lifeforms on this planet, according to Lovelock, are a part of Gaia - a part of one spirit goddess that sustains life on earth.  Since this transformation into a living system, he theorizes, the interventions of Gaia have brought about the evolving diversity of living creatures on planet Earth.  From Lovelock's perspective in space he saw not a planet, but a self-evolving and self-regulating living system.  His theory presents earth not as the rock that it is, but as a living being.  He named this being Gaia, after the Greek goddess that was once believed to have drawn the living world forth from Chaos. 

The idea of Earth as a living, divine spirit is not a new one.  Plato said "We shall affirm that the cosmos, more than anything else, resembles most closely that living Creature of which all other living creatures, severally or genetically, are portion; a living creature which is fairest of all and in ways most perfect."  As today's version of paganism, Gaia is eagerly accepted by the new age movement and fits neatly into eastern mysticism, but science was needed to gather in the evolutionists and science-minded humanists.  For these people, Gaia was made palatable by Lovelock's Daisyworld model, a mathematical and scientific theory designed to refute the criticisms of Darwin's groupies.  Just as evolution eliminates the need for a divine creator, the Daisyworld model provided a theory of evolving life on earth that incorporates natural selection with a world that is interconnected.  It eliminates a personal yet separate God, and makes humans a part of the divine spirit that is Gaia.

More appealing to the New Agers and the interfaith movement is the mystical side of Gaia.  They can easily relate to the belief that humans can have mystical experiences or a spiritual relationship with Gaia.  A connectedness to nature and the belief that humans are a part of this collective consciousness called Gaia appeals to them.  Gaia teaches that an "Earth spirit", goddess, or planetary brain must be protected.  It is this belief that fuels the environmental movement, sustainable development, and a global push for the return of industrialized nations to a more primitive way of life.  Just as with the evolutionists, the humanists, and the other pagan religions of the world, Gaia has named Christianity as the obstacle to human evolution and our spiritual destiny.  A document mandated by the U.N.-sponsored Convention on Biological Diversity, the Global Biodiversity Assessment, explicitly refers to Christianity as a faith that has set humans apart from nature and stripped nature of its sacred qualities.  The document states:

Conversion to Christianity has therefore meant an abandonment of an affinity with the natural world for many forest dwellers, peasants, fishers all over the world ...The northeastern hilly states of India bordering China and Myanmar supported small scale, largely autonomous shifting cultivator societies until the 1950's.  These people followed their own religious traditions that included setting apart between 10% and 30% of the landscape as sacred groves and ponds.¹ 

While condemning Christianity as the root of all ecological evil, the document goes on to praise Buddhism and Hinduism as they "did not depart as drastically from the perspective of humans as members of a community of beings including other living and non-living elements".  Non-Christian religions are definitely favored by the global government as good stewards of Mother Earth.

Members of this "Green Religion" will all agree that the Earth is in a crisis state and this ecological emergency is the result of Christian traditions.  They believe that the Judeo Christian belief that God assigned man to rule over the earth has caused us to exploit and abuse it.  Monotheism, they assert, has separated humans from their ancient connection to the earth, and to reverse this trend governments, the media, our education system, artists, and other areas of influence must revive earth-centered myth and reconnect us to Earth's spirit.  Al Gore, in his book Earth in the Balance, expounds on this view:

"The richness and diversity of our religious tradition throughout history is a spiritual resource long ignored by people of faith, who are often afraid to open their minds to teachings first offered outside their own systems of belief.  But the emergence of a civilization in which knowledge moves freely and almost instantaneously through the world has spurred a renewed investigation of the wisdom distilled by all faiths.  This panreligious perspective may prove especially important where our global civilization's responsibility for the earth is concerned." (pp. 258-259)

Gore praises the Eastern religions and new age spiritualism, while blaming Christianity for the elimination of the ancient goddess religion, and calls for a new spiritual relationship between man and earth.

"The spiritual sense of our place in nature predates Native American cultures; increasingly it can be traced to the origins of human civilization. A growing number of anthropologists and archaeomythologists, such as Marija Gimbutas and Riane Esler argue that the prevailing ideology of belief in prehistoric Europe and much of the world was based on the worship of a single earth goddess, who was assumed to be the fount of all life and who radiated harmony among all living things. Much of the evidence for the existence of this primitive religion comes from the many thousands of artifacts uncovered in ceremonial sites. These sites are so widespread that they seem to confirm the notion that a goddess religion was ubiquitous through much of the world until the antecedents of today's religions, most of which still have a distinctly masculine orientation...swept out of India and the Near East, almost obliterating belief in the goddess. The last vestige of organized goddess worship was eliminated by Christianity as late as the fifteenth century in Lithuania."

If Gore had read the Bible he would know exactly why Christians will not open their mind to these other beliefs as he suggests.  The Bible very clearly warns us not to.

"So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.  See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.  For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority."  Colossians 2:6-10

Gore also might want to read Romans 1:18 - 25: 

"The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.  For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.  For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.  Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.  Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.  They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the creator - who is forever praised. Amen.

When men began to worship the creation instead of the Creator, the wrath of God was revealed.  As societies begin again to turn from the truth of the creation and worship nature, "Mother Earth", or any other deceiving spirit, the evil and deception in their new religion will be made evident by God's response. 

Romans 1:26 - 32

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts.  Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.  In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another.  Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.  Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.  They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity.  They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice.  They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.  Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. 

Our societies today are becoming a picture of this wickedness, evil, greed and depravity.  As the Christian church is brought into the fold by organizations such as the National Council of Churches and the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, we can be sure the results will be a further decline into immorality and chaos.  There is a drive by these organizations and others to meld Earth worship with Christianity in the name of tolerance, biodiversity, sustainability, and the preservation of Mother Earth.  It is a battle for Christianity and an attack on biblical truth.  When this pagan agenda reaches your church or your community, how will you respond?  Will you speak up for the truth of God or will you exchanged the glory of the immortal God for a global compromise that is leading countless people into spiritual darkness?  As followers of Jesus Christ we know the truth and must boldly proclaim it.   The opposition is fierce and to those who don't know the joy of a relationship with God, it is an appealing proposition.  It is accepting of everything, intolerant of nothing, it deifies the environmentalist, worships the feminist, eliminates all responsibility for sin, and frees you to embrace your sinful nature.  The truth of the Bible must first be taught in our churches, and then shared with the world.  As churches begin to fall away from the faith and corrupt the Word of God, it is left to Bible-believing Christians to stand up for the truth, contend for our faith, and offer to the world an alternative to God's wrath.  If we are ashamed of our faith, if we compromise our beliefs, and if we hide in our churches and ignore what is going on outside of them, we are aiding in our own destruction and countless souls will be lost because of our complacency, selfishness, and inaction.

"For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of god, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.  For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.  So do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord, or ashamed of me his prisoner.  But join with me in suffering for the gospel, but the power of god, who has saved us and called us to a holy life - not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace."   II Timothy 1:6-8

FOOTNOTES

1 - Global Biodiversity Assessment, Chapter 8.1 Introduction:  Concepts of the Economic Value of Biodiversity, 68, 69.