In our continuing series on holidays, what would be a good Christian appropriation of Earth Day? Christians in the past have co-opted pagan holidays to give them a Christian meaning. What could Christians do with Earth Day? How about turning it into a Creation Day, a festival to commemorate God’s creation of the universe. (Or would we need six days for that?) I don’t recall the church ever celebrating that little event!

It seems to me that a successful holiday has to be inspiring and, if possible, fun. Merely hitting people with guilt about not recycling or scaring them to death with global warming scenarios will not make for a happy holiday. Can you think of ways to actually turn this day into a Christian celebration?

One of the environmental solutions hailed by past Earth Days is now seen to be creating huge environmental problems. Using ethanol, made from corn and other agricultural products, has been found to use more energy than it produces, adds to pollution, and now is contributing to a global food crisis.

See Lester Brown and Jonathan Lewis - Ethanol’s Failed Promise - washingtonpost.com.

Robert D. Novak finds the source of Barack Obama’s “bitterness” comment:

Obama’s new resemblance is less to Kennedy or Reagan than to leftist author Thomas Frank, whose 2004 book, “What’s the Matter With Kansas?,” answered the liberal conundrum: Why do ordinary Americans vote against their own economic interests to support Republicans? Frank explained that “deranged” and “lunatic” Kansans were led away by Republicans from material concerns to social issues. Obama similarly described small-town Americans turning to guns and the Bible in frustration over government’s failure to take care of them — a more genteel version of Frank’s thesis. That raises the question, “What’s the matter with Obama?”

Almost everybody I encounter in politics is familiar with Frank’s bestseller. Democrats are united in embracing his theory but are divided about its rhetoric. While sophisticated Democratic politicians regard the book as condescending toward lower-income Americans who voted for Reagan, grass-roots party activists consider it gospel. They tell me that Obama should not back away from what got him in trouble: his declaration at a closed-door fundraiser in San Francisco that “bitter” small-towners in Pennsylvania and elsewhere “cling to guns or religion.”

Obama fans, attention to that comment he made in San Francisco is not a matter of jumping on a statement or refusing to accept his explanation or not putting the best construction on everything. This is an issue of Obama’s ideology. It is important to know his political philosophy. Does he believe that economics and economic oppression account for people’s social and religious beliefs? That is, in fact, the common assumption among many people on the left. He is campaigning on the promise to transcend liberal/conservative ideologies. It is surely legitimate to inquire what he believes. Isn’t it?

Some Muslim scientists and scholars are calling for Greenwich Mean Time as the longitude by which the world’s clocks are set to be replaced by the time at the Muslim holy city of Mecca.

That the world uses the Greenwich observatory as 0 longitude and the starting point for the world’s clocks is condemned as a remnant of British colonialism (though it actually had to do with the pioneering navigation of the British navy). Mecca, according to Muslims, is said to be the true center of the world.

The linked story also says that a Muslim watch has been invented, which runs counter-clockwise and which helps Muslims at prayer find the direction of Mecca so that they can bow down in the right direction.