While we wait for the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, it is appropriate to consider the new religious consciousness which has been embraced by the Clinton administration. In this world view the subjects of worship are the nation's public lands.

Increasingly, New Age believers are calling for protection of lands they consider sacred. On the Internet Christopher McLeod, Project Director of the Sacred Land Project, calls for California's Mt. Shasta to be set aside as sacred. "Why," he laments, "do we [EuroAmericans] have no sacred sites? ... Many people have had transformative experiences at places like Machu Picu or Chaco Canyon ... Others have had these life-changing experiences in the wild."

Do these cries for sacred lands come only from obscure deep ecologists? By no means. Indeed they are boldly voiced by environmental organizations, celebrities and the nation's highest public officials.

Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt has become the nation's official preacher of a New Age form of Christianity which finds a biblical pretext for a doctrine of sacred land worship. In a 1995 speech entitled, "'Between the flood and the rainbow' Our Covenant: To Protect the Whole Creation", Mr. Babbitt discussed how his Roman Catholic upbringing gave him no reverence for nature. Instead, "a young Hopi friend" from the other side of the "sacred blue mountain" opened his eyes to nature's holiness. Later Mr. Babbitt reports, he discovered much the same thing in the Book of Genesis in the account of Noah's savings of all of creation in his ark. Noah's ark, or at least the true significance of it, had apparently been concealed from his by his parish priest.

Mr. Babbitt's conversion to idolatry answers Vice President Albert Gore's call to find a "panreligious" environmental consensus through searching for truth in ancient religions. In his 1992 book, "Earth in the Balance, Ecology and the Human Spirit," Mr. Gore states:

The richness and diversity of our religious tradition throughout history is a spiritual resource long ignored by people of faith, who are often afraid to open their minds to teachings first offered outside their own system of belief.

Mr. Gore looks to Native American religions and ancient pagan religions to anchor his "panreligious perspective." "Native American religions, for instance, offer a rich tapestry of ideas about our relationship to the earth," he says.

President Clinton is also in the choir. On September 18, 1996, President Clinton, Vice President Gore, Interior Secretary Babbitt, and Robert Redford met together at the Grand Canyon to dedicate 1.7 million acres of southern Utah as the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. Mr. Redford has called for these lands, covering acreage nearly the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined, to be set aside as wilderness, stating that they should "be considered sacred."

In his dedication address President Clinton stated, "I want to thank all of our tribal leaders who are here and, indeed, all of the Native Americans who are here. We are following in your footsteps and honoring your ethic today." Then he praised Vice President Gore stating, "And finally, I want to thank ... the Vice President for his passion, his commitment, his vision, and his sheer knowledge of environmental and natural heritage issues. ... I read (Gore's book) Earth in the Balance, and I realized that it was a profoundly important book ..."

The Clinton administration has officially acted to identify and preserve public lands considered "sacred. On May 24, 1996, President Clinton issued an executive order "to preserve and protect Indian religious practices" by assuring access to "sacred sites" and by protecting the physical integrity of such "sacred sites." Previously the National Park Service under Secretary Babbitt's guidance issued a management plan for Devils Tower in Wyoming which sought to restrict public access to Devils Tower annually in June to allow Indians to worship the land privately. The constitutionality of the Devils Tower management plan is under review by a federal judge who has issued a preliminary injunction barring the government from restricting the general public from Devils Tower, while recognizing the right of the government to otherwise accommodate the Indian's religious practices.

What about the millions of acres of public lands which are considered sacred by EuroAmericans such as Mr. McLeod and Mr. Redford? Can the federal government fairly decline to accommodate Mr. McLeod and Mr. Redford while accommodating Native Americans? Given the Clinton administration's belief system, its logical answer to this question would be, "No." As a result, those who use the public lands for recreation, hunting, mining or grazing should anticipate restrictive regulations intended to accommodate the worship of sacred lands.

And what of private lands? Are not many of them sacred as well? Clearly, there must be a federal role for protecting sacred private lands.

The Clinton administration has used the First Amendment's separation of church and state as a reason for banishing all expressions of religious belief from our public life, even to the point of sending the Justice Department out to remove the Ten Commandments from the courtroom walls. That they fill the void they have done so much to create through establishment of Earth-worship is an outrage.

Paul Mortensen is a lawyer in Utah. Malcolm Wallop is chairman of Frontiers for Freedom, a non-partisan political advocacy organization dedicated to preserving constitutional rights, based in Arlington. A rancher, he represented Wyoming in the U.S. Senate for 18 years until his retirement in January 1995.