The other day, Power Line had this interesting item:

The Pew Research Center has published an interesting survey on the political parties and religion. The finding that is getting the most press is that only 29% of respondents view the Democrats as religion-friendly, down from 40% just a year ago.

In general, the public seems to view the parties and their attitudes toward religion as mirror images. Almost exactly equal numbers think the secular anti-religion forces have too much control over the Democrats, and the religious conservatives too much control over the Republicans. In almost exactly equal proportions, respondents see the Republicans more concerned with protecting religious values, and the Democrats more concerned with protecting individual freedoms.

In one critical respect, however, this parallel breaks down. The public is equally divided on the question whether conservative Christians "have gone too far in trying to impose their religious values on the country." But in answer to the slightly more specifically worded question whether liberals have gone too far in trying to keep religion out of schools and government, 67% answer "yes," and only 28% "no." This amounts to a national consensus; it is noteworthy, too, that the numbers are even more stark among black respondents: 75% think liberals have gone too far in trying to keep religion out of schools and government.

These numbers have to be very troubling to the Democrats, but, given the centrality of these issues to the party's activists and donor base, it's hard to see the Democrats making much of a change.

But while many on the far left are self-declared atheists, man seems fairly obviously hardwired to want to believe in some sort of higher being. In the late sixties and early seventies, rock stars such as Pete Townshend, George Harrison, and Carlos Santana were more than willing to abandon western religion for a variety of eastern versions. For a while, it became the norm for superstar guitarists to have their own personal guru or avatar. (Jimmy Page went as far as he could in the opposite direction, but to each his own was certainly a key facet of the 1960s.) Madonna's Kabbalah worship is essentially a variation on this phenomenon.

But these days, the modern far left seems to want modern religions, created in the 20th century (see Hubbard, L. Ron). This is also true in the case of another movement with its roots in the late 1960s, environmentalism, as Jonah Goldberg writes:

A great many people tried to pin the 2004 tsunami on global warming too, even though that wasn't even theoretically possible (it was caused by a deep-sea earthquake). Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth in Britain, spoke for many when he proclaimed, "Here again are yet more events in the real world that are consistent with climate change predictions."

But I also think there's something much deeper going on. It cannot be disputed that not just the activists but millions of normal people honestly believe these self-fulfilling prophecies which explain virtually every kind of weather — except nice weather of course — as the comeuppance of man. And, the key word there is "prophecy."

It's become something of a cliché to say that environmentalism has become a religion, but that's because there's something so obviously true about it. The cant, the ritual, the creation myths all feel more religious than scientific. Within the environmentalist worldview there's "an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all," observed Michael Crichton in a famous speech on the subject.

Secular, "scientific" liberals understandably titter at televangelists who pray away hurricanes or claim that this or that calamity is God's retribution. But as unpersuasive or unhelpful as much of that theater may be, there's at least a serious theology somewhere underneath all the posing. Save for the cults of "deep ecology" and Wicca, environmental theology seems slapdash.

They could start by getting their own theodicy, one that would try to reconcile natural disasters with their faith that Mother Nature is such a nice lady. Rejecting Tennyson's description of nature as "red in tooth and claw" they opt for a nurturing but wounded Mommy Nature. Were it not for man's folly, she would be rocking us to sleep in her gentle arms every night. God, it seems, is a deadbeat dad in this whole scheme and man ultimately has all the power. Indeed, George Bush (with the aid of Haley Barbour, of course) could eliminate catastrophes with the stroke of a pen.

Those who study theodicy spend a lot of time on the book of Job, which tackles God's willingness to do harsh stuff to people who don't have it coming. Despite his hardships, Job never abandons God because to do so would be to abandon hope.

Environmentalists, it seems, need their own book of Job. Because as it stands right now, Mother Nature's ways are not mysterious, but entirely contingent on the output of fossil fuels. And, ironically enough, all of their hopes lie in George W. Bush. Which sounds just a bit like their version of Satan worship.