This is the fourth summer FREE has offered conferences on environmental stewardship for religious leaders. This year’s are in June and September. The June slots are filled and we have just announced the September 13-17 offering, “Our Environment: Economics, Ecology, and Ethics.” The religious leaders program is popular and the conference location wonderful, Elkhorn Ranch on the northern border of Yellowstone Park.

We will surely have more applicants than places available. This poses problems; whom do we select? Our goal is to exercise leverage by inviting individuals who influence many others. Thus, we find seminary professors, leaders within religious media, and well-known and respected clergy especially attractive candidates.

FREE’s conference series for religious leaders is open to all denominations. We have attracted various Protestants, Roman and Orthodox Catholics, and Jews of several persuasions. We welcome, but have not yet attracted, Adventists and Mormons. (Incidentally, worldwide the number of each of the last three named is roughly 12-15 million.)

Our explicit goal is to have a wide reach and significant influence in helping religious leaders consider how to think constructively and ethically about their stewardship of the earth. This requires economics; good intentions do not suffice.

We began the religious leaders program with thoughts of reaching the conventional denominations. We expected to involve those listed on the church page(s) of local papers, Anglicans, Baptists, Catholics, etc. I recently confronted an unanticipated question: what will we do if a Green follower of Gaia applies?

James Lovelock developed, and William Golding named, the Gaia Principle in about 1970. Essentially, it holds that the entire Earth is one interdependent system. The world would forever be tending toward homeostasis were it not for the influence and disturbances of man.

In 2008, Lovelock wrote, “It would be hubris to think humans as they now are God's chosen race.” He believes it is too late for humans to repair the damage we’ve done.

Should a follower of Gaia, or some other self-professed Green apply to attend, my first task would be to decide if their belief system qualifies as a religion. Fortunately, two economists whom I admire and respect, Bob Nelson of the University of Maryland and Paul Rubin of Emery University, addressed this question in Earth Day editorials and answered yes.

Likewise, historian William Cronon of the University of Wisconsin labeled environmentalism a new religion that “offers a complex series of moral imperatives for ethical action, and judges human conduct accordingly.”

Greens commonly accuse man of playing God. Deuteronomy warns us of the result, “infections, plagues, war” and more. Nelson observes that contemporary environmentalism predicts much the same due to global warming. He sees the ESA as the contemporary Noah’s Ark. Further, environmentalism offers a spiritual home, absent a traditional religious label.

Like the 16th century theologian John Calvin, today’s Greens counsel against materialism. Their message is shrouded in a patina of science leading to specific policy recommendations. Nelson ends with this warning, “When environmental religion seeks a return to an earlier primitive and natural existence, it is embracing utopian dreams that easily can pose a danger to man and earth alike.”

Paul Rubin sees environmentalism as having creation stories and ideas of original sin. It also offers an identity and a method of understanding the world. “As the world becomes less religious, people can define themselves as being Green rather than being Christian or Jewish.”

He finds not temples but rather other sacred structures on the Emery campus, recycling bins for different sorts of trash. Skeptics are deniers and as such evil sinners.

Greens develop food taboos, no farmed salmon, and a bias for organic and locally grown foods. Decades ago I described mandated, as contrasted with market driven, recycling as a religious act of contrition.

Economists are trained and naturally inclined to be critics of socially costly behavior. Hence, Nelson and Rubin find much to criticize among extreme Greens; they’ve found much low hanging fruit. I largely agree with their policy critiques, but my work in anthropology makes me more tolerant of the spiritual dimensions of environmentalism.

I’ve lived with and written about several religious groups whose theology is at least unusual. Hence, I wouldn’t find accepting environmentalism as a religion impossible and believe that economic understanding would improve Green’s policy recommendations.

Policy improves when people instinctively ask the economic question: “And then what?” However, few environmentalists think of their beliefs as religious—and most condemn or avoid economic thinking. Still, I wish some would apply.