The following piece is by ConservAmerica Fellow Rob Sisson:
The most holy of days for Christians, Easter, falls two days before Earth Day this year. The order and proximity of the two dates are good reason to contemplate Creator and Creation.
In his excellent new book, Living in Wonder (Zondervan, 2024), author Rod Dreher makes a strong case that many of the ills befalling modern society can be traced to humans’ long road away from enchantment and wonder. Dreher describes his book:
“It’s rather a book about the profoundly human need to believe that we live and move and have our being in the presence of God—not just the idea of God, but the God who is as near us as the air we breathe, the light we see, and the solid ground on which we walk.”
In our age, science and secularism have distracted our eyes from the awe and wonder with which we once saw the world.
Ronald Reagan innately understood this when he delivered a speech designating a new wilderness area:
“Generations hence, parents will take their children to these woods to show them how the land must have looked to the first Pilgrims and pioneers. And as Americans wander through these forests, climb these mountains, they will sense the love and majesty of the Creator of all of that.”
I share that quote occasionally on social media and am excoriated by liberals who either hate Reagan or don’t want God to be part of the conversation for fear of His influence across the policy spectrum.
Dreher points out that everything we encounter in the physical world was created by the Creator and ought to be held in wonder by us. Similarly, many Native American cultures view every animal and inanimate object as an extension of the Creator or even imbued with a spirit.
Living in Montana, I am often overwhelmed by wonder and enchantment. The simple act of walking my dogs on the prairie, surrounded by the Crazy Mountains, Absaroka Mountains, Gallatin Mountains, and Bridger Mountains, reminds me I am in a cathedral only one architect could design. The choirs of meadowlarks and sandhill cranes set against the music of the wind bending grass, rebounding from rock, and bowing trees can carry one’s soul to unbelievable heights.
Reagan, in a speech to the National Campers and Hikers Association in the summer of 1984, double downed on his ‘seeing is believing’ theology:
“I just have to believe that with love for our natural heritage and a firm resolve to preserve it with wisdom and care, we can and will give the American land to our children, not impaired, but enhanced. And in doing this, we’ll honor the great and loving God who gave us this land in the first place.”
Earth Day should not be dismissed as a pagan or liberal celebration; for people of faith, it should be a celebration of Creation and the Creator. Those who believe God has no role in the public square impede their own environmental and conservation goals by discounting potentially strong allies as those who “cling to their guns and Bibles”.
Reagan, in his abiding faith in God, imbued our nation with a sense of optimism that had been missing for decades. I sense, at least in conservative conservation circles, that same optimism rising again.
Dreher is a close friend of Vice President J.D. Vance. As a fellow Catholic, I see Vance as an inspiration to many of us, especially in the way he shines the light of his faith in the ordinary course of his work, as the Gospel of Matthew (5:15-16) instructs. In my one encounter with then Senator Vance, he told me, “I want to be remembered as one of the great champions of the Great Lakes.” I believe him.
President Trump’s frequent messages to Christians on our holidays and saint days are uplifting to so many of us who have felt less than welcome in the public square for years. In the spirit of ‘actions speak louder than words’, President Trump put Reagan’s words into practice when he signed The Great American Outdoor Act into law in his first term. The Act is perhaps the most important conservation law enacted in a generation and assures strong stewardship of our public lands and parks and fully funded one of the most important programs in conservation, the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). LWCF enables every community in America to preserve a small bit of Creation, accessible to all. In his book about President Trump, Ed Russo states, unequivocally, that nothing is more important to the President than “clean air and clean water”. I believe that, too.
Saint John Paul II said, “Man, who discovers his capacity to transform and in a certain sense create the world through his own work, forgets that this is always based on God’s prior and original gift of the things that are.”
Earth Day should be a natural extension of the euphoria and optimism of Easter, when we remind ourselves of God’s prior and original gift of our shared natural heritage. In experiencing that heritage, be it as simple as cherry blossoms in a cityscape or walking a trail in our mountain west or watching waves roll upon a shore, we see and believe.
Rob Sisson was nominated to the post of Commissioner, International Joint Commission, by President Trump in 2018 and served in that capacity for five years. Based in Livingston, Montana, he is an avid hunter and spends many hours in acceptable weather on the area’s streams scaring native cutthroat trout with ugly dry flies. A devout Catholic and Knight of the Order of Malta, Rob often writes from the nexus of his faith and conservation. The views expressed above are his and are intended for the subset of our audience that celebrates Easter, and not as a of doctrine of ConservAmerica.