Green guru James Lovelock was right. He warned last week that “the green religion is now taking over from the Christian religion.”

Now at the U.N. Earth Summit, even the image of Christ has been made a forcible convert to the eco-faith, as the city of Rio is bathing the iconic statue of Christ the Redeemer (Christo Redentor) in green light:



This comes on the heels of a Rio+20 side summit in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, where Naomi Tsur, Jerusalem’s deputy mayor for planning and environment, led a discussion about how holy sites around the world can be used to indoctrinate pilgrims visiting venerated places like Bethlehem, Calvary, and the burial site of King David.

The workshop on “Green Pilgrim Cities” took place at the World Congress of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), the group responsible for implementing the U.N.’s “Agenda 21” sustainable-development plans at the local level.


The left-wing National Religious Partnership for the Environment has been working for years in the U.S. to make green tenets a staple of religious life in America. A bizarre eco-version of the Ark of the Covenant is making its way around the globe. And a “Green Bible” is now available at your local Christian bookstore.

So maybe it won’t be long before recycling, carbon-footprint reductions, and riding bicycles to work become the new religious duties of the faithful.


— David Rothbard is president of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and Craig Rucker is CFACT’s executive director.