“Climate” Cult? Religions Unite at COP30 Amid World Re-Paganization
https://thenewamerican.com/world-news/un/climate-conference/climate-cult-religions-unite-at-cop30-amid-global-re-paganization/
By Alex Newman
Excerpt: BELÉM, Brazil — Unlike carbon dioxide in the air, the spiritual feeling at the UN COP30 climate summit was so dark and thick you could cut it with a knife. Indeed, the Chinese Communist Party’s demonic “Dragon-Jaguar Guardian Spirit” with the world in its hands symbolized the spiritual reality behind the summit well. This official gift masquerading as “art” from the CCP to Brazil, pictured on the cover, was really a perfect representation of the whole climate process.
Beneath the veneer of unity and moral purpose, critics warned the religious dimension of COP30 revealed a long-term shift that is increasingly out in the open: the re-paganization of the West and the sidelining of Christian civilization. In effect, COP30 shined the light on a growing spiritual realignment: a globalist, syncretistic, Earth-centered ethic replacing the historic Christian understanding that shaped Western civilization and gave birth to the United States and its ideas on liberty.
This religious element is much more than just moral cover for a global power grab. It is a profound re-structuring of the way people see reality, nature, life, the world, and their place in the cosmos. Climate change activism is more than just saving the environment — it is portrayed by this growing legion of religious activists as a shared spiritual mission that unites all decent and honorable people in a holy cause. Obviously, this has profound implications for humanity.
In addition to the political and economic agendas advanced at COP30, one of the least reported but most consequential developments in Belém was in fact the increasingly religious and spiritual framing of the global climate movement. Far from being a secular, science-driven assembly, COP30 brought together an unprecedented coalition of world religions. This alliance included everything from Catholics and Protestants to Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and Indigenous pagans and spiritualists. They all rallied under a reinvented global moral consensus built largely around climate action and CO2 emissions.
Even before the COP30 began, the tone was set during the Faith in Climate 2025 event this summer touted by the UN and Brazilian authorities. COP30 CEO Ana Toni was in attendance and praised the religious fervor. “We have called this great collective effort to fight climate change a ‘mutirão,’” she said, using the Indigenous word for collective effort that became a rallying cry for the summit. “But after this event, I would say that COP30 is not only a great ‘mutirão’ but also a great communion.”
Two crucial spiritual elements long documented by JP about this environmental holy war were on full display in Belém. First, COP30 showed unprecedented religious convergence — a “spiritual coalition” bringing all the major religions and religious movements of the world together behind the UN climate program. The unity revolves around an emerging new moral framework that replaces historic biblical understandings of sin with a new vision, where CO2 emissions and other alleged offenses against “Mother Earth” are the real moral evil. COP30 culminated with a virtual interfaith climate liturgy.
Second, COP30 and the broader climate movement are now increasingly and openly integrating pagan and pantheistic spirituality into everything — all while marginalizing the biblical worldview and the Christian civilization that resulted from it. This was on full display throughout the summit. At official events throughout COP30, Indigenous rituals and pagan earth-worship symbolism were not only present — they were center stage in discussions about the damage humans are supposedly doing to “Mother Earth.”
Religious Convergence and Unity
Supposed man-made climate change has for years served as the perfect pretext for uniting the religions of the world behind a common cause. As JP reported in 2022 from the COP27 in Egypt, a global interfaith coalition worked with the UN to unveil a new “Ten Commandments” on Mount Sinai. Meanwhile, the George Soros- and UN-funded group Religions for Peace, an outfit described by its leader as the “UN of religions,” brings together virtually all major religious organizations and traditions behind the UN and its agenda.
At COP30 in Belém, these trends were clearer than ever. For instance, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) unleashed its Interfaith Liaison Committee (ILC) to inject spirituality into everything. Purporting to represent dozens of religions ranging from Christianity, Islam, and Judaism to paganism and Earth worship, the ILC’s fingerprints were ubiquitous. Its official Prayers and Meditations for COP30 spiritual event brought in imams, rabbis, and even Indigenous shamans from around the world to pray for bold “climate action.”
Meanwhile, a coordinated Interfaith Talanoa Dialogue, an Indigenous term from Fiji meaning process of discussion, featured representatives from countless religions. They stated they were all united in “climate justice” ethics and in supporting global climate targets. In their COP30 Interfaith Call to Action, the religious leaders called for restructuring global society and the global economy around “sustainability” and “climate justice.” Pointing to the recent ruling by the International Court of Justice, the religious leaders also claimed “all UN member states” were bound by supposed international law to submit.
“Climate justice necessitates a rapid and equitable phase out of fossil fuels,” reads the 2025 Interfaith Talanoa Call to Action for COP30. “Achieving a better future requires ambitiously addressing the root causes of climate change…. We as faith communities support economic and societal changes in solidarity with the bold political decisions necessary to build a just and sustainable path forward.”
Ironically, after berating generations of American Christians for being involved in politics, the leftist religious leaders argued that “faith communities call collectively on our moral and ethical foundation to guide, urge, and support governments” in making strong pledges to rein in CO2 emissions. “Governments must exercise political will, leadership, and moral courage to raise ambition and create firm and transparent timetables to ensure targets are met,” the interfaith declaration declared.
Islamic leaders also provided a major push. Omar Lakis with Brazil’s Instituto de Estudos da Religião (Institute for Religious Studies), speaking at the Faith in Climate 2025 event for COP30, said the Muslim Prophet Muhammad taught his followers environmental preservation. “They would save water, even when it was abundant, and conserve resources,” Lakis declared, calling it a “lifestyle that coincides” with fighting global warming. “There’s a word for this, ruma, which means the habit of using only what is necessary. It’s about using water as needed, food as needed, and planting a tree.”
Christians Join Forces, too
Even ostensibly Christian churches and denominations have been jumping on the bandwagon, and they were out in force at COP30. One of the key “Christian” players, known as the ACT Alliance, purports to represent more than 140 Christian denominations around the world. In its COP30 statement, the group was blunt: “Climate justice is a faith imperative that unites us across traditions.”
The World Council of Churches, long under the sway of Soviet-aligned church leaders, pretended to speak on behalf of churches worldwide. “We have launched an Ecumenical Decade of Climate Justice Action at our central committee meeting in Johannesburg in June. And the reason that the word ‘justice’ is part of this title is very important,” said WCC central committee moderator Bishop Professor Dr. Heinrich Bedford-Strohm. “It cannot be that those who have contributed least to climate change are the first victims. There needs to be reparatory justice for those who are now the victims.”
His theological views were interesting, to put it mildly. “When we say God created us, we also affirm that God created us together with nonhuman creation,” argued Bedford-Strohm. “That gives us a sister- and brother-relationship with the whole of nonhuman creation.”
The Roman Catholic Church was out in force, too, featuring its largest delegation ever to attend a UN climate summit with what insiders called an “unprecedented number” of cardinals and bishops. Now under the leadership of Pope Leo XIV, who famously blessed a large ice block as part of a recent climate event, the Vatican doubled down on the late Pope Francis’ eco-religiosity this year. Catholic clergy issued endless pronouncements urging humanity to repent and embrace the “moral duty” to protect Earth.
Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who led the delegation and spoke at the opening leaders’ summit on behalf of Pope Leo XIV, called for united global action. “Collective selfishness and disregard for the common good prevent nations from taking the action that morality demands,” Parolin declared on behalf of the new pontiff. “Climate change is a global problem demanding a global vision.”
The pope himself even released a video encouraging the religious leaders gathered in the Amazon for COP30. Celebrating a “global community that works together,” he lamented that it has “delivered progress, but not enough.” It is time for “concrete actions” rather than just hope and determination, the pope continued.
“The creation is crying out in floods and droughts, storms and relentless heat,” Leo added, claiming without citing a source that one in three people “live in great vulnerability because of climate change.” There is still time to prevent too much warming, “but the window is closing,” he said, touting the Paris Accord as the “strongest tool” for protecting the planet. “Stronger climate action,” he said, will create “fairer economic systems.”
The Laudato Si’ encyclical by Pope Francis was a groundbreaking development for the UN, as it provided a religious pretext for the UN’s environmental agenda. And despite Francis’ passing, it reverberated all the way to the COP30. Indeed, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago said the papal document was regarded by the Brazilian government as “both an ethical compass and a pragmatic guide for this global mobilization” as it prepared its Global Ethical Stocktake for COP30.
Laudato Si’ Movement COP30 representative Susana Moreira, a green-haired activist with tattoos, explained more in an interview with JP. “We brought together different faith leaders from different religions to really talk about this ethical dimension,” she said. “Because we’re all part of this common home and different religions in different ways, they’re all connected to this grounding of how the earth helps us not only to sustain our bodies, our foods, everything that we need, but also how we practice our religions…. We can really find ways to create this interreligious dialogue, to create stronger bonds between the religions, to help care for this common home of ours.”
While there was plenty of “Christian” representation and rhetoric, genuine Christian ideas rooted in the Bible or even tradition were almost entirely absent — except when selectively invoked, usually out of context, to support UN climate mandates. “Christianity” that affirmed global governance was praised as “prophetic.” Christianity that questioned climate orthodoxy was derided as regressive, anti-science, or dangerous.
Re-paganization of the West
At the heart of this whole climate process is the often-implicit but sometimes explicitly stated argument that biblical Christianity is the reason for the “climate crisis” and environmental damage more broadly. In his landmark 1967 essay “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” academic Lynn White, Jr. argued that the Western Christian tradition — especially its interpretation of the Genesis “dominion mandate” — was the root of environmental problems.
The reason this biblical view is so problematic, the professor argued, is because it caused people to think of nature and the planet as a resource for human benefit. This line of thinking has had enormous influence over decades of ecological thought. As one summary puts it: Many environmental writers contend that “Christian dominion theology” conditioned people to undervalue non-humans, thus laying ideological foundations for exploitation of nature.
White, who taught at Princeton, UCLA, and Stanford, blasted Christianity as “the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen.” Among other concerns, he argued that it “insisted that it is God’s will that man exploit nature for his proper ends.” As such, he concluded that because modern science and technology grew out of these Christian views, “Christianity bears a huge burden of guilt” for the supposed “ecological crisis.”
The solution to this problem: Indigenous and tribal wisdom and spirituality. And there were plenty of Indigenous “folx” in feathered headdresses and beads to shower wisdom upon the post-Christian government, media, and non-profit heavyweights at COP30. Guarani leader Mirim Ju Yam, for instance, opened a COP30 event with ancestral ritual songs. “The forest is alive,” he chanted. “The spirits of the land speak. We must listen.”
“In our culture lies the seed of preservation, of life in harmony with the Earth, and the understanding that nature is not something out there,” Ju Yam continued, painting a picture of an idyllic past before the arrival of Christian civilization in which his ancestors enjoyed a “sacred relationship” with land and nature. “Nature is not an object. Nature is everything that exists. We are part of that nature.”
Another religious leader involved in the COP30, “Mother Cícera of Oshun,” with a traditional Afro-pagan religion known as Candomblé, explained her take. “Fresh water belongs to Oshun, rainwater to Iansã, lagoon water to Nanã, which represents decomposition — it falls into the lagoon, the lagoon decomposes, becomes fossil, sinks to the depths, and starts anew,” she said. “We have the god of the forests, Oshosi. All our gods are from nature.” These nature gods must be honored and appeased with sacrifices to save the world.
Multiple COP30 documents and side events promoted the pagan and animistic idea that rivers, forests, ecosystems, and nature have “rights” that must be protected. Pagan shamans in full regalia literally offered prayers to various deities referred to clearly in the Christian scriptures (Deuteronomy 32:17; 1 Corinthians 10:20) as demons. Sessions opened with ancestral chants, invocations of forest spirits, and affirmations that the Earth is a living spiritual being — language rooted not in the biblical worldview but in animistic and polytheistic traditions.
Indeed, multiple “Indigenous leaders” at the summit told JP that “Mother Earth” and “Father Sky” were upset with humanity over climate change and other real and imagined abuses. Because of that, these deities were taking action against mankind. “Indigenous wisdom and spirituality” were repeatedly touted as the solution to placating these angry planetary deities.
Even the UN’s own official messaging was permeated with this overall worldview. For instance, the UN’s top officials and even its agreements repeatedly refer to “Mother Earth,” “the spirit of the forest,” and “healing our relationship with the planet,” all clear echoes of the anti-Christian cosmologies that are increasingly being seen as essential to saving the world.