God’s Nature : If a growing movement has its way, more Americans will be linking spirituality and environmentalism.

If you’re giving thanks today for nature’s bounty, you’re already pondering spiritual matters (the thanks) and environmental matters (the bounty). And if a growing movement has its way, more and more Americans will be linking the subjects of spirituality and environmentalism.

Already, clerics, scholars and writers from Oakland to Santa Monica are putting the environment on the agenda of the nation’s mainstream religious denominations.

This thinking is heavily influenced by progressive Roman Catholic teachers and American Indian spiritualism, but owes much also to Methodist theologians at Claremont School of Theology and the various energies of Jewish, Episcopal and Quaker lay people. Some of that energy can be found in the faith centers of Ventura County.

Simi Valley Episcopal priest Barbara Mudge, vicar at St. Francis of Assisi Church, has told me how her interest in this theological approach was triggered by her experiences with fellow Episcopal clerics who are Navajo or Seminole tribe members.

“I learned that there is nothing inharmonious between Native American spirituality, with its special regard for the Earth, and traditional Christianity,” she said.

Mudge’s parish, which last year was host of “Global Walk for a More Livable World,” a training camp for the environmentally oriented, has made new strides in recycling, water conservation and tree planting, the pastor reported. But developments in the pulpit have attracted more attention.

One recent Sunday, Mudge brought in a laundry basket full of mail-order catalogues--the unsolicited stuff that comes to her house and everyone else’s. She held them aloft in church and said to the congregation, “This is our god.”

The occasion was National Bible Sunday, and Mudge went on to assert that “we spend more time looking at our catalogues than our Bibles. Greed and consumerism make us go out and buy . . . and use up all the water of the Colorado River.”

She told me that in her congregation, “there are some people who criticize this sort of thinking, but most are of one accord.”

Perhaps this is not so unexpected a trend. After all, the Massachussetts Puritans whose simple life we memorialize each year had a lot in common with the back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s and the city-escapers of the ‘90s. In any event, Mudge has company.

Episcopal cleric Peter Creitler of Santa Monica is editor of the quarterly Earth Service Report. It’s part of a diocesan project to “bring environmentalism into Christianity seven days a week,” he said.

Paul Burks, religious editor of the San Francisco-based quarterly EarthLight, stresses the same idea and cites environmentalist Lester Brown’s annual State of the World report.

“That happiness is to be obtained through limitless material acquisition is denied by every religion and philosophy known to humankind,” said Brown.

Last month, the U.S. Catholic bishops approved a policy statement along these lines in Washington. Ironically, a monk and teacher in Oakland, Father Thomas Berry, has been censured over the past few years by his church’s leadership for straying from doctrine in his discussion of issues surrounding the natural world.

Berry has called for “the development of a comprehensive sense of the sacred dimensions of the universe, how it came into existence and the sequence of transformations through which it has passed. That has to become the sacred story. This has always been seen as secular science, but until it becomes a religious account of the universe and a primary expression of the divine, then I don’t think we can do what needs to be done.”

The idea is that saving the planet is connected with saving our souls.

You can see why Berry’s books are published by the Sierra Club. But he is also quoted at services in New York at the Episcopal cathedral of St. John the Divine, in Washington’s National Cathedral, and at clerical retreats held by members of interfaith councils around the state.

This new trend might offend those who believe we were created to subdue nature rather than coexist within a sustainable environment. But leaders say the main message of this religious ferment is bridging, not dividing.

“There’s a melody playing inside of people--to protect the environment--calling all faiths to wake up,” said Bob Edgar, president of Claremont School of Theology.

Simi Valley, says Mudge, is already waking up.

“The young in the parish and even the city government now recycle,” she said. “It gives me hope for this place.”

Youth is the key, according to the Rev. Michael Dowd, a member of the United Church of Christ’s California-based National Committee on Environmental and Economic Responsibility.

“To the extent that each local congregation embraces and affirms God’s creation as good and defends the quality of the life, the air, water and soil of its bio-region,” said Down, “that is the degree to which young people return to commit themselves to the faith of their parents and grandparents.”

Mudge put the same sentiment this way: “Now is a wonderful time to start being thankful for the Earth.”

* FYI

The following sources track issues of environmentalism and religion, and how they interact:

* EarthLight magazine (415) 960-1767

* Earth Service Report (quarterly) (310) 829-9190

* Sequoia (news of religion in society) (415) 434-0672

* State of the Earth (annual); W.W. Norton Publishers

* “The Dream of the Earth,” by Father Thomas Berry; Sierra Club Books.