The Sierra Club as a Religious Organization

Yes, and a good one, too.

The divides in the US have many dimensions, but a significant one is religious. Conservatives crow about their traditional religion- Christianity- and then, bizarrely, vote for Trump. What they really seem to be for is patriarchy and its traditional society-wide hierarchy (based on male-ness, but also on its accessory patriarchal religion and on race). Their model in the South shows that a bare-majority or even minority race can maintain power for decades in an ostensibly democratic society if enough levers of social, political, overt, violent, as well as covert power are used consistently. The movement against Confederate monuments is a watershed in consciousness of the thoroughgoing way the social gestalt of the South has been shaped by its treasonous and revanchist elite.

As far as rural and Southern America are concerned, the bicoastal elite live in another country entirely. In that country, we tend to think we have no narrative, no gestalt at all, but purely a functional this-is-the-way-it-is approach to reality and truth. A committment to reason, science, innovation, good public policy, social justice, etc. But of course, that can not be true. We have a narrative as well, and nothing illustrates it better than the Sierra Club.

This is the home of the shamans of environmentalism- the tree-huggers, whale watchers, and activists, inhabiting a completely different narrative from that of traditional Christianity and patriarchial conservatism. Its roots go deep into paganism and the natural reverence humans have for nature. It is a nature religion, but not animistic. There are no anthropomorphic deities or weird powers. We are the gods, but are fallen, now that we have inherited this awe-ful responsibility of taking care of a world that we have so hopelessly befouled. There is no bearded or other male figure behind the curtain. The Sierra Club conducts pilgrimiges, has its saints, sacred places and its version of the end-times, preaches to its believers, and expounds at every opportunity an ideology of love of and care for nature. It has its fetishes for untrammeled, unspoiled locations, its secret misanthropy, its revelations of human insignificance. And even jihad, if you count GreenPeace in the same sect.

A recent article by Gary Kamiya in the Sierra Club organ makes its religious nature particularly clear:

... Which takes us back to the wilderness within. No matter how refined we may think ourselves, at some level we are all still wild creatures, made up of the same materials as the mountains, the deserts, the oceans, the distant stars. "Wilderness" carries a connotation of chaos and anarchy, but that's misleading. Our inner wilderness is no more disorderly than the world itself is. A wild mind is a balanced mind. The wild world may be deeper and more heterogeneous than the city world, but the difference is only a matter of degree. The sense of wilderness is our birthright, and we can experience it anywhere. "The wilderness as a temple is only a beginning," Snyder writes. "One should not dwell in the specialness of the extraordinary experience . . . to enter a perpetual state of heightened insight." The real goal, he says, is to see all the land around us, whether in the country or in the city, as "part of the same territory—never totally ruined, never completely unnatural." 

Of course there is still absolutely nothing like a face-to-face encounter with deep wilderness. Once at Buck Lake, I was awakened by the screaming call of a pack of coyotes racing unseen through the 3 A.M. darkness, the shrill sound moving fast along the mighty granite ridge across from my campsite, then fading into the distance. That sound still rings in my memory, a quicksilver affirmation of the strangeness and holiness of the world.

The language and sentiments are clearly religious. But there is no theology, no theos at all. It suits the "spiritual-but-not-religious" mindset, whose sprituality is affective and natural, not burdened by over-thought (yet underbaked) theology and relic supernaturalism. Science isn't a problem here, but another way to appreciate the glory of what we love on so many levels- our world and biosphere.

Is all this good? People are naturally religious, creating and needing frames of meaning beyond mere subsistence and reproduction. The Republican Party and current administration shows what can happen when such a frame becomes completely moribund, paying lip service to Catholic and generally Christian dogmas while throwing any semblence of actual moral principle to the wind and practicing shameless greed. It is a revolting spectacle on every level. True religion fosters empathy and puts us in touch with our core values and commonality, not just among males, or with fellow countrymen, or even with humans, but with all beings.

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