The new world religion: presented to the world as a mystical revelation, the UN Earth Charter is actually a diabolical blueprint for global government. (Cover Story: World Government).

My hope is that this charter will be a kind of Ten Commandments, a "Sermon on the Mount," that provides a guide for human behavior toward the environment in the next century and beyond.

-- Mikhail Gorbachev

Millions of Americans were justifiably shocked and outraged over the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' notorious ruling on the Pledge of Allegiance. "Can our courts really have sunk this low?" people asked. "How can little Johnny and Suzie violate the Constitution by uttering the words 'under God' while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in a public school?"

Yet that is what the Court said in its June 26th decision. This ruling was a continuation of an ongoing subversive campaign aimed at expunging all mention of God and all Christian symbols from the public sphere. Judicial activists have ordered our students not to invoke the Almighty's name in prayer on school property. Posting the Ten Commandments on classroom walls is also supposedly a major no-no. Traditional Christmas carols with religious themes are out, as are Nativity scenes. Christmas and Easter vacations have been de-Christianized to, respectively, winter and spring breaks. Many textbooks have dropped the traditional "Christocentric" dating system of B.C. (Before Christ) and A.D. (Anno Domini, In the Year of Our Lord) in favor of B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era).

Many Christians concerned about this trend are looking hopefully to the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the 9th Circuit's ruling, as it has done with some of that court's previous radical rulings. Even if that were to happen, developments at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (also known as Earth Summit II) could ultimately undo any Supreme Court reversal. If the Earth Summiteers have their way, Johnny and Suzie will not be able to pledge allegiance to "one nation, under God," but they will be able to pledge to "One World, under Gaia" -- that is, Mother Earth. They will not be allowed to have the Ten Commandments or the Holy Bible in class, but could soon be bowing before the pagan "Ark of Hope," reading the "sacred" Temenos Books, and reverently intoning the text of the new UN Earth Charter.

Those decrying the 9th Circuit Court's harmful decisions will take little comfort in learning that senior 9th Circuit Court Judge J. Clifford Wallace was among the jurists attending the Johannesburg Summit's Global Judges Symposium. That meeting was hosted by several globalist institutions with a pronounced hostility toward the United States. The participants, which included judges from Communist regimes, pledged to "apply new legal instruments in keeping with the principles of sustainable development' and the international "Rule of Law."

One of the documents designed to advance this process, the long-awaited Earth Charter, was formally unveiled to the world at Johannesburg. Crafted by a conclave of "Wise Persons" headed by former Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev, it is set to become the Holy Writ of the UN's new "global spirituality." Although the Earth Charter is not a legally binding document, its impact may prove damaging and pervasive. Its benign-sounding verbiage and symbolic nature camouflage its dangerous purpose. The Charter is intended to become a universally adopted creed that will psychologically prepare the world's children to accept the necessity of world government to save the environment. It is also an outrageous attempt to indoctrinate your children in the UN's New Age paganism.

The Preamble of the Earth Charter states:

... we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny. We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature.... Towards this end, it is imperative that we, the peoples of Earth, declare our responsibility to one another, to the greater community of life, and to future generations.

According to the Charter, humanity must undergo a global "change of mind and heart." And the UN's all-wise seers visualize themselves as the lead change agents for this global undertaking. The Earth Charter Initiative, however, candidly admits that it intends to recruit your children as change agents, as well. "We seek to increase the participation of young people in utilizing the Earth Charter as a guideline in their work as active agents of change," says the Earth Charter Initiative website. They have been doing precisely that, and will be accelerating their program throughout the world -- including in schools in your neighborhood. The U.S. Conference of Mayors is but one of hundreds of organizations, schools, municipalities, and other entities that have signed on as supporters of this declaration of a new "global ethic" for the world.

Blasphemous Symbols

Weeks before the start of Earth Summit II, the Earth Charter arrived in Johannesburg for a series of rituals, celebrations, and promotions aimed at setting the spiritual tone for the global conference. The venerated Charter is housed and transported in the Ark of Hope, a blasphemous mimicry of the biblical Ark of the Covenant, which held the two tablets containing the Ten Commandments that God gave to Moses. The Ark of Hope is actually designed to look like the Ark of the Covenant and its devotees carry it around with worshipful solemnity. Accompanying the Charter and the Ark are the Temenos Books, containing aboriginal Earth Masks and "visual prayers/affirmations for global healing, peace, and gratitude," created by 3,000 artists, teachers, students, and mystics. According to the Temenos Project, which launched the effort, a temenos is "a magical sacred circle where special rules apply and extraordinary events inevitably occur."

The Ark, Charter, and Temenos Books were placed on display at the UN summit site and then put to work building the new global ethic. Day after day, UN acolytes carried the sacred objects from school to school, where tens of thousands of children already had been prepped with Earth Charter propaganda. Public ceremonies with mayors and celebrities augmented the school events.

The summit's opening day featured a four-hour symposium entitled, "Educating for Sustainable Living with the Earth Charter." Steven Rockefeller, a religion professor and scion of the fabulously wealthy banking family that donated the land for the UN headquarters in New York, was preeminent among the presenters. Professor Rockefeller is also chairman of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Earth Charter International Drafting Committee. According to Rockefeller, the way to go about "building peace on earth" is through the "inclusive, integrated and spiritual approach" of the Earth Charter.

Covering the summit for USA Radio, Cathie Adams told THE NEW AMERICAN that Rockefeller described the Charter as an effort to incorporate the "wisdom of the world's religions." Razeena Wagiet, environmental adviser to South Africa's national minister of education, was one of the presenters who followed Rockefeller to the podium. According to Wagiet, astrologers have foreseen that the world is about to enter a "Golden Age, a New Age, an Age of Aquarius."

Earth Charter Integration

Outlining how the Earth Charter is to be integrated into lifelong education for all, Hans van Ginkel, chairman of the International Association of Universities, told the symposium: "We must mobilize all in education about sustainability; that's how we meet the next generation." Sixteen million teachers must be trained, he noted, and "the only way to move forward is by integrating the Earth Charter into curriculum."

The Rockefeller-Gorbachev Earth Charter effort is already fast at work on that score. Their website declares:

The Earth Charter values and principles must be taught, contemplated, applied and internalized. To this end, the Earth Charter needs to be incorporated into both formal and non-formal education. This process must involve various communities, continue to integrate the Charter into the curriculum of schools and universities, and constitute an ongoing process of life-long learning.

According to the same website, the Earth Council, UNESCO, and the Earth Charter Initiative folks already have many of the curriculum materials and programs prepared; in fact, they're already up and running in schools across the globe. Some American schools got an advance start on the rest of humanity with Charter activities, coinciding with the journey last year of the Ark and its contents to the UN in New York. The pilgrimage began in Vermont, where Steven Rockefeller, in his role as dean of religion at Middlebury College, held a sacred Earth ceremony. Joining him and the other worshipers was Jane Goodall, the celebrity chimpanzee expert who has become a fixture at forums sponsored by Mikhail Gorbachev and the UN. The Charter was carried on foot, by car, and by boat, arriving in New York City on November 8th, to be greeted by Pete Seeger, the leftist folksinger. On January 24th, the Ark and Charter were carried in a procession from the Interfaith Center of New York to the United Nations Church Center Chapel, a distance of about 15 blocks.

The Charter's authors are not shy about the importance of their handiwork. "My hope is that this charter will be a kind of Ten Commandments, a 'Sermon on the Mount,' that provides a guide for human behavior toward the environment in the next century and beyond," Gorbachev stated in a 1997 interview with the Los Angeles Times.

Canadian billionaire socialist Maurice Strong, who presided over the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, is somewhat less tentative. "The real goal of the Earth Charter," said Strong, "is that it will in fact become like the Ten Commandments." (Emphasis added.) Mr. Strong had high hopes that the Charter, conceived in 1987, would be adopted by the world at Rio. Alas, there were too many other messianic projects on Gaia's burners at that confab. Gaia, the Greek goddess of Earth, has become the supreme deity in the green theology of the militant environmentalists.

In his opening address to the Rio summit, Strong directed the world's attention to the "Declaration of the Sacred Earth," which was part of the pre-Summit ceremonies. "The changes in behavior and direction called for here," said Strong, "must be rooted in our deepest spiritual, moral, and ethical values." According to the declaration, "The [ecological] crisis transcends all national, religious, cultural, social, political and economic boundaries." "The responsibility of each human being today is to choose between the force of darkness and the force of light," Strong exhorted. "We must therefore transform our attitudes and values, and adopt a renewed respect for the superior laws of Divine Nature."

The "Sacred" Text

"The protection of Earth's vitality, diversity, and beauty is a sacred trust," the Earth Charter asserts. However, "an unprecedented rise in human population has overburdened ecological and social systems. The foundations of global security are threatened." Thus, "we urgently need a shared vision of basic values to provide an ethical foundation for the emerging world community."

According to the Charter, we must:

* "Recognize that all beings are interdependent and every form of life has value..." (Unborn children, of course, are not included in the UN's definition of "every form of life." The Earth Summit II documents continue to support the UN's pro-abortion policies.)

* "Affirm faith in the inherent dignity of all human beings." (UN agencies, however, support policies of euthanasia for those determined not capable of living a "quality" life.)

* "Adopt at all levels sustainable development plans and regulations...." (This is a prescription for global socialism in a super-regulated global state.)

* "Prevent pollution of any part of the environment..." (Enforcing this dictum would mean stopping virtually all human activity.)

* "Internalize the full environmental and social costs of goods and services in the selling price." (This seemingly harmless sentence would empower the state to price, tax, and regulate all production and consumption.)

* "Ensure universal access to health care that fosters reproductive health and responsible reproduction. (This is a thinly disguised call for socialized medicine that includes abortion and population control.)

* "Eliminate discrimination in all its forms, such as that based on race ... [and] sexual orientation." (This provision is clearly aimed at criminalizing those who refuse to accept homosexuality as positive and good.)

* "Promote the equitable distribution of wealth within nations and among nations. (Few Marxist documents have put their "redistribution of wealth" program more plainly.)

The Charter includes much, much more. It ends with this stirring exhortation: "In order to build a sustainable global community, the nations of the world must renew their commitment to the United Nations, fulfill their obligations under existing international agreements, and support the implementation of Earth Charter principles with an international legally binding instrument on environment and development."

The Charter will soon be making its way to schools, city governments, state legislatures, teachers organizations, civic groups, professional associations, judges, and law schools. The aforementioned Global Judges Symposium concluded its summit activities by issuing the so-called Johannesburg Principles on the Rule of Law and Sustainable Development. "We recognize," it states, "the importance of ensuring that environmental law and law in the field of sustainable development feature prominently in academic curricula, legal studies and training at all levels, in particular among judges and others engaged in the judicial process."

The judicial symposium was sponsored by the United Nations Environmental Program (largely supported by U.S. tax dollars) and the Environmental Law Institute, one of the principal eco-activist legal groups supported by U.S. tax-exempt foundations.

For the amount of time, effort, and money invested in the Earth Charter program over the past decade, its profile at the recent Johannesburg Earth Summit was remarkably subdued. Apparently, the plan is to orchestrate a global stealth campaign for the Charter among a sympathetic core constituency. As the campaign picks up steam, activists will obtain signatures and public support for this new global ethic from local, state, and national governments, schools, and organizations - without stirring the suspicions and opposition of churches, pro-life, and pro-family forces. Once a critical mass of support has been built among students, teachers, journalists, and public officials, the Charter will appear to be universally accepted and unstoppable.

Americans can make sure that that scheme does not work by informing themselves and their friends and neighbors about this blatantly diabolical and blasphemous deception.