Unbelievable. Mollie over at Get Religions reports:

Episcopal Church: This Good Friday, let’s celebrate Earth Day

The story is a mostly straightforward report — albeit written in The Daily Caller’s winking, knowing fashion — about how the Episcopal Church’s office of Economic and Environmental Affairs is asking Episcopalians to stay mindful of global warming, recycling and reducing carbon dioxide emissions this Good Friday:

“This year Earth Day falls within Holy Week, specifically on Good Friday, a profound coincidence,” said Mike Schut, a church spokesman. “To fully honor Earth Day, we need to reclaim the theology that knows Earth is ‘very good,’ is holy. When we fully recognize that, our actions just may begin to create a more sustainable, compassionate economy and way of life.”

Christians observe Good Friday, the day reserved to remember the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, on the Friday before Easter, which is not celebrated on a fixed date. First observed on April 22, 1970, Earth Day is celebrated to raise awareness about efforts to protect the environment.

Schut continued: “On Good Friday, the day we mark the crucifixion of Christ, God in the flesh, might we suggest that when Earth is degraded, when species go extinct, that another part of God’s body experiences yet another sort of crucifixion — that another way of seeing and experiencing God is diminished?”

My first reaction was that this is just plain silly. But it is worse than silly.  While we can by the light of human reason come to know God through his creation, the earth is not God. The earth, like all created things, is good. But the earth is not, like man, created in the image and likeness of God. 

From the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church:

…It is God who made all things, and with regard to each created reality “God saw that it was good” (cf. Gen 1:4,10,12,18,21,25). At the summit of this creation, which “was very good” (Gen 1:31), God placed man. Only man and woman, among all creatures, were made by God “in his own image” (Gen 1,27). The Lord entrusted all of creation to their responsibility, charging them to care for its harmony and development (cf. Gen 1:26-30). This special bond with God explains the privileged position of the first human couple in the order of creation. (#451)

But what is worse, is that the Episcopal Church is asserting that the celebration of  Earth Day is just as important as Good Friday.

Can progressive Christians dilute the Gospel any further?

Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.