In 2024, Earth Day is most associated with leftist politicians and their efforts to undermine energy independence and jack up prices in pursuit of “net zero” and the fight against “climate change.” But it wasn’t always this way. Earth Day actually originated with a Pentecostal Christian who did not celebrate it in April.
John McConnell Jr., who passed away in 2012 at the grand old age of 97, was the son of a Pentecostal preacher who, in later life, would also preach to Protestants from traditions including Baptism, Methodism, and Presbyterianism. Along with his mother, McConnell’s father was among the founders of the Assemblies of God church in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1914, just a year before McConnell was born. Growing up, his family steeped him in faith and evangelism.
A pacifist, McConnell served in the Merchant Marine rather than the military during the Second World War. He preached himself aboard his ship and while ashore in Brazil, which joined the Allied cause in 1942. In 1944, he married, but after a series of run-ins with the authorities over his peace activism, he found himself abandoned as a single father in 1954. He remarried on Christmas Day in 1967. By the end of the decade, he came up with the idea for Earth Day, describing it as “Nature’s Day,” a day of “drama, dreams, and dedication to the restoration, renewal, and improvement of Earth’s natural beauty and bounty.”
San Francisco adopted it first, celebrating it on March 21 around the vernal equinox, long associated with nature and renewal in traditional folk culture. Soon, it caught the attention of President Nixon – but he would assign its celebration to April 22, after Democrat Senator Gaylord Nelson, according to McConnell, “stole” Earth Day and associated it with his more political Environmental Teach-In Day and the United Auto Workers.
THE EARTH HAS BEEN GIVEN TO THE CHILDREN OF MEN.
McConnell preached his own version of Earth Day for decades. He also never lost sight of its Christian roots: “The earth has been given to the children of men,” he said, quoting Psalm 115:16. Mankind has a duty to appreciate God’s creation and act as its caretakers.
There is value for conservatives to tease out from the principles behind this old Earth Day. The Bible calls Christians, like the First Man, to be stewards of God’s good Earth and heed its teaching that their bodies are as temples.
While moves by the likes of Biden to cut American industry off at the legs by declaring a “climate emergency” help no one but the pollution superpowers in Asia, a concerted effort to clear our environment of the forever chemicals and microplastics poisoning our food, water, and children would certainly be a good thing.
Happy Earth Day!
