Religious Campaign for Forest Conservation

In a major bid to halt the rampant destruction of America’s remaining forests, the Religious Campaign for Forest Conservation announced this week a nationwide call for an end to all commercial timber cutting on public lands.

The new national coalition of clergy and religious leaders met with over one hundred key legislators plus numerous Administration officials between February 1 through February 5 while visiting the office of every Senator and Congressperson. Their goal was to show that the relentless logging of America’s public lands is as much a spiritual wrong as it is an environmental catastrophe.

Linking their religious faith with what they call creation care, the members of the Religious Campaign for Forest Conservation see a clear spiritual obligation to protect and preserve the nation’s dwindling forests and the animals that depend on them.

"For too long, our laws have allowed greed to devastate most of this nation’s wilderness, all for quick, short-term gain," said Fred Krueger, campaign coordinator for the Religious Campaign for Forest Conservation, based in Santa Rosa, California. "Each one of us has a clear moral obligation to spread the word to Congress and the White House that destruction of God’s Earth and God’s creatures is a sin. People of faith will no longer tolerate this unconscionable destruction. This visit to Washington will let our legislators know that saving America’s forests from industrial exploitation is part of our Christian mission".

The Religious Campaign for Forest Conservation believes that there are definite theological as well as Biblical mandates that persons of faith take action to cherish and protect the Earth’s flora and fauna.

"The Scriptures tell us in no uncertain terms that preserving God’s handiwork must be part of our Christian calling", said Mr. Krueger. "Genesis 2:15 states very clearly that we are to care for Creation and this means we must care for it as the Lord cares for it".

Founded only in mid-1998, the Religious Campaign for Forest Conservation is a rapidly growing movement of believers and activists that spans the religious spectrum. In a series of interviews with religious leaders around the country it became apparent that for the first time there is a growing awareness among various religious communities of a need to act to preserve America’s forests.

Dr. Barak Gale of San Francisco, chair of the Bay Area chapter of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, pointed out that the meeting will coincide with the holiday of Tu B’Shevat, which has, since the 1600’s, represented "a renewal of our commitment to Tikkun Olam , a healing of the world, in the most literal sense".

As clear-cut logging, so-called "rip-and-run forestry", has accelerated over the past decade, a growing consciousness of what is being done to public lands has percolated through religious institutions.

The Reverend Owen Owens, national chairman of the organization and Director of the Ecology and Racial Justice Program for the American Baptist Churches’ Office of National Ministries, in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, an organization of one and a half million people, said, "Do we really want to be remembered only as a generation of users, not preservers?

“It is time to use our minds and faith to preserve forests, not mere tree plantations, for the future. We must approach forest stewardship from a Christian point of view".

Ann Alexander, a New York lawyer and National Chair of the Christian Environmental Council, stressed that "saving ancient forests must be a faith-based effort, not only an environmental imperative. Our Scriptures clearly teach that forests are a place where God is present, and cares and provides for his creatures who inhabit them. Paying timber companies nearly a billion dollars every year to needlessly decimate these irreplaceable forests, which God created and loves, is to commit a sin of greed and waste."

Dr. Vincent Rossi, an Eastern Orthodox theologian in Forestville, California, said, "This idea of Christians protecting and caring for God’s forests is fundamental to their faith and is growing stronger in the minds of believers."

While in Washington, the Religious Campaign for Forest Conservation met not only with legislators, but also with Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, Chief Michael Dombeck and department heads of the U.S. Forest Service plus officials in the White House.

"Congress and the Administration need to act now," said Marcie Golde, an Episcopalian from Washington state. "Our politicians must protect God’s and the public’s fish, water and wildlife from this outrageous and abusive timber-cutting".

Dr. Robert Jonas, director of the Empty Bell, A Contemplative Sanctuary in the Boston area, and participant in this week’s legislative visits, said that he was thankful to have found an organization which can speak from a religious perspective for the integrity of our nation’s forests. “As I return from meetings with Congressional Representatives and White House officials, I have a clearer understanding of how horrible the on-going damage to our natural resources really is, but also an enlivened sense of hope. The destruction of our national forests by clearcutting is an issue that cuts across party, age, gender and geographical lines and inspires good people of different religious persuasions to act for the sake of future generations and for the sake of God.

“All of us who gathered in Washington agreed that it is a sin to treat the natural world as a mere commodity. As a group, we find inter-religious common ground which inspires political vision without putting one religious view over another. In this spirit of unity, we declare that when we protect the integrity of our biodiverse world and preserve our ancient forests and wilderness areas, we are really acting for the common good and the welfare of everyone.”

Dr. Doug Baker, a Southern Baptist pastor from Chattanooga, Tennessee, and co-founder of EarthCare Inc., a Christian environmental stewardship organization, reminds us of the spiritual dimension to the forest issue. "At the heart of every problem," says Rev. Baker, "is a problem of the heart. In the New Testament the Book of Romans expresses the redemptive work of Jesus Christ as extending beyond saving the soul of man to the restoration of the whole created environment. When men are reconciled to God by personal faith in Jesus Christ, they should respond by caring for God's creation in the same way that God loves and nurtures us."

Baker provides further religious insight about forests, saying, "It is practical theology when we support the government's initiatives on sustainable development, such as sustainable forestry, but it should not stop there. As God's redeemed people, we must protect the delicate ecosystems in our national forests and public lands that patiently await liberation from its bondage to careless men destroying forests for profit. The crises of ethical and moral behavior in our country should be a wake up call to the time proven standard of the Holy Bible as a rule and guide for our faith and practice."

Some of the group expressed confidence that their pleas would be heard. As Connie Hanson, a Presbyterian and President of Christian Caring for Creation, in Los Angeles, said, "I’m confident that our message, which is to end the logging of our nation’s ancient forests and the commercial logging of our National Forests, will have a tremendous impact on our lawmakers. We have the Truth, the Lord and His Scriptures, as well as the truth, the economics and environmental facts, on our side. With the Lord, the Scriptures, the Truth, and now public opinion on our side, victory is assured".

The Reverend Browlee Hailstock, Jr., Senior Pastor at Zion Baptist Church, in Hampton, Virginia, said, "When you destroy the forests, you destroy our home as well. Trees oxygenate our air; they keep our streams clean; they hold the soil in place. As we destroy God’s forests, we destroy ourselves."

Representing a growing sense among African-American groups that forest care is a justice issue, Rev. Hailstock saw this as an importat issue for the future.

Reinforcing this sense of urgency, Dr. Bob Marshall, a veterinarian from Charleston, West Virginia, said, "In every generation there comes a time when you have to stand up for what is right. Now that we know what is being done to our Earth and our forests, we must make the connection between spirituality and a healthy and whole environment."

This connection was also stressed by Br. Keith Warner, O.F.M., a Franciscan friar in San Francisco and representative of the Franciscan Environmental Network. "Religion and spirituality are guiding forces in people’s lives and they strongly inform our values. These values must in turn inform our social and economic choices, and that means saving what little is left of our precious forests".

Jim Davidson, a Lutheran businessman from Minnesota, said, "Our society is aggressively attacking the natural world, both in America and abroad. I have a difficult time reading the parable of the Prodigal Son. I cannot disconnect the parable and what we are doing to the Earth. We must learn to accept limits and to stop externalizing costs. Like the Prodigal Son, we are squandering our inheritance".

The delegates did not only represent national forest concerns but also international. Anne Glynn-Mackoul, a member of the Antiochian Orthodox Church, from Princeton, New Jersey, and a U.S. representative to the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches, related how a firm conservation policy on the part of the United States towards our own forests on public lands allows the U.S. to speak with integrity when we call for countires in the southern hemisphere to curtail destruction of rainforests there. “We cannot call for personal sacrifice and conservation in other areas of the world when we are unwilling to restrain commercial interests here at home."

Paul Thompson, President and CEO of MAP, International, a Christian international relief and development organization in Brunswick, Georgia, recently returned from a humanitarian mission to Honduras where he surveyed the ravages of Hurricane Mitch. "In helicopter flights above Choluteca province, we saw the clear effect on humans caused by commercial deforestation. Where the forest has been logged, you could see literally thousands of landslides in a 360-degree panorama." Mr. Thompson went on to stress "the unrelenting relationship between environmental degradation and poverty."

The Religious Campaign also points to strong scientific evidence to buttress their arguments for a total ban on logging the National Forests. According to Dr. Calvin DeWitt, Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, "we have alienated ethics from science and science from ethics. We must simultaneously draw from both and we must embrace a vision of a renewed and cared-for Creation. "His writings include the book" Earth-Wise," as well as a work for the United Nations on the concept of an environmental Sabbath.

"Too often, decent but uninformed Christians sit by in silence as Congress mandates the U.S. Forest Service to allow industrial corporations to methodically obliterate what is left of America’s forests," said Mr. Krueger, the coordinator for the Campaign. "The time has come when no person of faith can turn his or her back on what is happening to our forests."