Imagine that: it seems that Greta Thunberg is now a top theologian…? Yes, I realise that honorary degrees are usually not worth the paper they are printed on, but in what has to be the joke of the decade, climate change activist (and some may say, alarmist) Greta Thunberg has been awarded an honorary doctorate in theology from the Theology Faculty at 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’ to stop the apocalypse. About the only accolade left is to proclaim her to be the long-awaited Messiah.

Yet as far as I can tell, Thunberg does not have a theological bone in her body – certainly not any Christian ones. If that is the case, why do we have another Woke university declaring her a theologian worthy of praise? Wow, not bad for a day’s work…

‘…she has given us all a task that extends beyond our everyday choices through her actions,’ said the faculty.

‘It is not about the combination of faith and climate, but about the link between Thunberg’s climate activism and science. As faculty, we agree with the fundamental goals she propagates,’ added Professor Martti Nissinen. ‘The Earth is God’s creation, and we care for it. There are already some texts in the Old Testament, for example, in the Prophets, that deal with climate change. Many things have changed since the Bible was written, but much is the same. Humans are the same, God is the same, and the Earth is the same. Only the concerns are more severe.’

Theology, as I perhaps 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 academic mind.

This is a woman who has not finished a bachelor’s degree and is famous for skipping out on her high school studies to engage in years of protesting. But none of that matters. In our Post Modernist world, image triumphs over substance any day of the week. Nowhere is this more true than climate science politics where every idea has to be bowed down to and taken as gospel.

However, to insist that Greta is not an important Christian theologian is not to say she isn’t religious. For many, she is a religious figure and her religion is, of course, radical environmentalism. Those who follow it worship at the green altar and want all of us to do the same.

For many people today who have thrown out the one true Christian God, the vacuum is replaced by various substitutes. A 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, Gaia, or Deep Green spirituality is one way to proceed. And this is not new: humans 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 a 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. Beginning early in the century as an effort by a few far-seeing individuals in America to bring about the prudent use of natural resources in the interest of extending economic growth as far into the future as possible, the environmentalist cause has become today almost a mass movement, its present objective little less than the transformation of government, economy, and society in the interest of what can only be properly called the liberation of nature from human exploitation. Environmentalism is now well on its way to becoming the third great wave of redemptive struggle in Western history, the first being Christianity, the second modern socialism. In its way, the dream of a perfect physical environment has all the revolutionary potential that lay both in the Christian vision of mankind redeemed by Christ and in the socialist, chiefly Marxian, prophecy of mankind freed from social injustice.

Yes, it is a religion alright. And let’s not forget that for those who wish to get into the religion business, false prophets are not usually regarded very highly nor treated very well.

And of course, radical greens thrive on telling tall stories with unsubstantiated claims in order to scare the public. We have a very long list of false prophecies made by these folks. Consider a recent example of a failed claim: Greta has made headlines when she deleted a June 2018 tweet she had put out on the social media.

‘A top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years.’

As one write-up about this says:

The gritpost article to which Thunberg linked has also been deleted, but it can still be accessed through the web archive. In the piece, author Scott Alden quotes Harvard professor James Anderson, who claimed in 2018 that all Arctic sea ice would disappear if humans continue to emit carbon into the atmosphere in the next five years.

Gritpost quotes Anderson who said during a speech at the University of Chicago that ‘Recovery is all but impossible […] without a World War II-style transformation of industry – an acceleration of the effort to halt carbon pollution and remove it from the atmosphere, and a new effort to reflect sunlight away from the earth’s poles.’

He added that ‘this has to be done within the next five years,’ and that ‘[t]he chance that there will be any permanent ice left in the Arctic after 2022 is essentially zero.’

But such utterly nonsensical and patently false predictions and prophecies are par for the course. There are plenty more ticking clocks about to expire, some with extreme claims. Why do movements create deadlines? Is it because the masses are much more easily manipulated and controlled when filled with fear and panic?

It seems the past few years with the Covid craze proved that point beyond a shadow of a doubt. The formula is simple: ditch God, and put some ‘cause’ in his place, hype up the imagined scenarios, and scare the pants off the people, and they will all readily submit to anything. Works like a charm. As I wrote 25 years ago:

As G. K. Chesterton once said, ‘The danger when men stop believing in God is not that they will believe in nothing, but that they will believe in anything.’ Environmental zeal can match that of any religious zealot, often with harmful consequences. Radical environmentalism tends to rely on emotion and doomsaying but is based on little scientific fact. Indeed, bad science, along with deliberate deception on the part of radical greens, coupled with a sympathetic media, has led to a number of government policies that have been counterproductive. By exaggerating the seriousness of environmental issues, intrusive, punitive government controls have been set up which may or may not solve the problem, but do a lot to increase the power of big government and do a lot to threaten property rights of individual citizens.

Sorry Saint Greta, but your bogus doctorate does not impress me at all. Leaves me rather cold in fact – despite all the global warming.

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