She is up to her gills in religion. And her religion is of course radical environmentalism. She worships at that altar, and wants all of us to do the same. For many people today who have thrown out the one true God, the vacuum is replaced by various substitutes. Hardcore green religion is one of them. We all need to live for something greater than ourselves, and if we reject the one who created us, then we run with cheap imitations.
Yes, I realise that honorary degrees are usually not worth the paper they are printed on, but in what has got to be the joke of the decade, climate alarmist Greta Thunberg is to be awarded an honorary doctorate in theology from the University of Helsinki!
The 20 year old Swede has already been honoured with a doctorate by the Belgian University of Mons, and was named Time’s ‘person of the year’ in 2019. She is held up by many as our only hope. About the only accolade left is to proclaim her to be the long-awaited Messiah.
It seems to me that Thunberg does not have a theological bone in her body – certainly not any Christian ones. Yet here we have another woke university declaring that she might be Scandinavia’s greatest theologian – if not the world’s. Wow, not bad for a day’s work.
Theology, as I might need to remind some folks, is a word easily broken down. It has to do with the study of God. I am not sure what contributions young Greta has made to that field of study. None, I suspect. But now we must esteem her as some great mind – some great academic.
But as far as I know, she has not even finished a bachelor’s degree. And I am not sure how hot she was even in her high school studies. But none of that matters. In our PoMo world image triumphs over substance any day of the week. Never mind that she basically runs with a script spoon fed to her by her leftist parents. She is now to be bowed down to with her every word taken as gospel.
However, to insist that she is not some renown Christian theologian is NOT to say she is not religious. She is up to her gills in religion. And her religion is of course radical environmentalism. She worships at that altar, and wants all of us to do the same.
For many people today who have thrown out the one true God, the vacuum is replaced by various substitutes. Hardcore green religion is one of them. We all need to live for something greater than ourselves, and if we reject the one who created us, then we run with cheap imitations.
Worshipping Mother Earth or Gaia or Deep Green spirituality is one way to proceed. And this is not new: we have always been looking for alternative religions to embrace. Back in 1982 American sociologist Robert Nisbet (died 1996), remarked that environmentalism has become the third great redemptive movement in human history, following Christianity and Marxism. As he wrote in Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary (Harvard University Press):
From the Gospel of Capitalist Efficiency to the Gospel of Utopianism’ would serve very well as subtitle here. It is entirely possible that when the history of the twentieth century is finally written, the single most important social movement of the period will be judged to be environmentalism.