Religious Campaign for Forest Conservation

Orthodox Christians have had a long and vigorous sense of value for creation down through the centuries, including the forests. This faded as influences from modernity and consumerism grew in their impact upon society and Church emphasis.

Bishop of Alexandria and patron saint of conferences, Athanasius entered into many dialogues to preserve an authentic Christian understanding of Church doctrine. He frequently used lessons from nature to exemplify his instruction and his writings are filled with a sense of creation as a primary instructor of Christian life.

He praises this "Book of Creation" and says, "the plants and creatures are like letters proclaiming in loud voices to their Divine Master and Creator the harmony and order of things."

A founder of Eastern communal monastic life, Basil shows the handiwork of the Creator everywhere in creation and probes deeply into the reasons for creation's structure. He lays out a Christian cosmology that he says existed before time, that goes beyond spatial limitations, that remains orderly and intentional, and that is filled with an intelligible hierarchy beyond human comprehension. This marvelous creation he says is the "supreme icon" of Christian faith which leads to knowledge of the "Supreme Artisan."

We remember with shame that in the past we have exercised the high dominion of man with ruthless cruelty so that the voice of the earth, which should have gone up to thee in song, has been a groan of pain.

God has poured the rains on a land tilled by avaricious hands; He has given the sun to keep the seeds warm, and to multiply the fruit through His productivity. Things of this kind are from God: the fertile land, moderate winds, abundance of seeds, the work of the oxen, and other things by which a farm is brought into productivity and abundance.... But the avaricious one has not remembered our common nature and has not thought of distribution.

Let us glorify the Master Craftsman for all that has been done wisely and skillfully; and from the beauty of visible things, let us form an idea of Him Who is more than beautiful; and from the greatness of these perceptible bodies let us conceive of Him Who is infinite and immense and Who surpasses all understanding in His power. For even if we are ignorant of things made, yet, at least, that which we observe is so wonderful that even the most acute mind is at a loss as regards the least of the things in the world, either in the ability to explain it worthily or to render due praise to the Creator, to Whom be all glory, honor and power forever.

He magnifies the Lord who observes with a keen understanding and most profound contemplation the greatness of creation, so that from the greatness and beauty of creatures he may contemplate their Creator. The deeper one penetrates into the reasons for which things in existence were made and were governed, the more he contemplates the magnificence of the Lord and, as far as it lies in him, magnifies the Lord.

Some people, in order to discover God, read books. But there is a great book: the very appearance of created things. Look above you! Look below you! Note it. Read it. God,whom you want to discover, never wrote that book with ink. Instead He set before your eyes the things that He had made. Can you ask for a louder voice than that? Why, heaven and earth shout to you: "God made me!"

Kevin is known as one of the first advocates of wilderness preservation when he refused an angel's offer to level the land around his collection of crude huts to build monastic facilities. By this act, he demonstrated that human pursuit of the holy does not destroy the rest of God's created order. Because Kevin would not expand his congregation’s holdings if it meant leveling the mountains as God created them, he demonstrates the importance of respecting the natural features of the land as a priority above development.

His care for animals was legendary, even in his own time, and early artists depicted him with his hand out-stretched and an egg on the flat of his palm which a bird laid while he was in the ecstasy of prayer. He is said to have held the egg until it hatched. Numerous legends survive, but few of his writings.

While praying in the rugged Wicklow mountains, about thirty miles from Dublin, an angel appeared to Kevin and offers to make his life more comfortable. The angel says, "I would sweep away these hills and crags and rocks and wooded dells where little grows and no one dwells; I'll give you pastures lush and green for kine to graze, a winding stream, and gentle fields to grow your grain in place of this uncouth domain."

Kevin declines this offer, replying, "I pray you humbly, let them stand, the rugged hills, the broken land. For I do love like any child the hunted creatures of the wild; and every bird that climbs the sky is free to wander just as I, or dwell in peace beside the lake, to make them homeless for my sake would grieve me sorely night and day."

A poet, prophet and monk of royal Irish lineage, Columba went to Scotland to evangelize the Pict tribes. Adamnan, his earliest biographer, writes, "Angelic in appearance, elegant in address, holy in work, he would never spend the space of even one hour without study or prayer or writing." He radiated a divine and celestial light, and is known for the power of his voice, and for his amazing authority over the winds and seas and all the natural world.

He had such a deep love for the woods and for all of God's creation that he made sure that his monastery was built without a tree being cut down. The Irish king Aedh on one occasion gave Columba a piece of land in a place called Doire.

And he [Columba] had so great a love for Doire, and the cutting of the oak trees went so greatly against him, that he could not find a place for his church the time he was building it that would let the front of it be to the east, and it is its side turned to the east. And he left it upon those that came after him not to cut even a tree that fell of itself or was blown down by the wind in that place to the end of nine days, and then to share it between the people of the townland, bad and good, a third of it to the great house, and a tenth to be given to the poor. And he put a verse in a hymn after he was gone away to Scotland that shows there was nothing worse to him than the cutting of that oakwood: “Though there is fear in me of death and of hell, I will not hide it that I have more fear of the sound of an axe over in Doire.”

In one of his poems, St. Columba writes that he is more afraid of the sound of an axe in Derrywood, a nearby forest, than he was of hell itself. The character of the monasticism which he built was marked by a commitment to community and keen appreciation for the natural world which was seen as “the vesture of the Holy Spirit.”

Creation is a bible whose letters and syllables are the particular aspects of all creatures and whose words are the more universal aspects of creation. Conversely, Scripture is like a cosmos constituted of heaven and earth and things in between; that is, the ethical, the natural, the theological dimension.

St. John lived among the early Islamic people of Damascus in what is modern Syria. His work is likened within the Eastern Church to what Thomas Aquinas is in the Western Church.

It is possible to understand by every tree the knowledge of the divine power derived from created things. In the words of the apostle, The invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by things that are made.

Love all of God's creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light! Love the animals. love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will soon perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.

St. Nikephoros lived on the small Aegean Island of Chios all his life and never once left it for the Greek mainland. As a youth he was sickly with a chronic debilitating condition, and in an effort to find healing, his parents vowed to God that if he would be healed of what appeared to be a fatal illness, he would be dedicated into God's service at a local monastery.

As a monk, Nikephoros saw that trees were a source of health and wealth to the people. Many had been cut down for firewood or timber, and the people were impoverished by the conversion of cedar, olive and other fruit trees to immediate use.

All of his life, he lived close to the land, and he used every opportunity to teach that trees are a primary source of future community wealth. He spent much of his life planting trees of many kinds. When his parents died, he sold his entire inheritance to assist in tree planting throughout the island.

Theophan was one of the first nineteenth century religious figures to discern how an exclusive concern for empirical sciences degenerates into blindness towards the spiritual world and spiritual life.

He teaches the ancient Christian practice of seeking the spiritual meaning of every living thing, which leads to the awakening of spiritual sight and experiences of the sacred everywhere in creation. Most of his works exist only in Russian.

Everything in creation, without exception, is a source from which you can distill a higher and more celestial knowledge that is valid and useful. Yet this understanding will alter from one person to another, depending upon their power of penetration, their faith and devotion....

When we can perceive in this way successfully, the world will be like a holy book filled with uncountable and wonderfully different paragraphs; then any fixed object, any changing event, will refer us to God, so that our thoughts will be directed toward Him. ...

This text is fertile beyond anything we can conceive. If everything in daily life can be spiritually reinterpreted, it is because everything is a symbol of the invisible realm, but reflected in time and space. This is why it is said that whatever exists on earth is modelled on an archetypal essence that is actually present on another plane of God's creation.

The following article is excerpted from Tim Allen-Rowlandson, “Ethiopian Church sets its Sites on Trees,” The New Road: Bulletin of the WWF Network on Conservation and Religion , Geneva, Switzerland, September, 1988.

Any visitor to rural Ethiopia cannot fail to notice the occasional patch of trees atop a nearby hill. Closer inspection will invariably reveal a church or other holy site such as a shrine or cemetery. These wooded hilltops, often in an otherwise tree-less landscape, are mostly in the Ethiopia’s northern highlands, home of the Ethiopian Orthodox, called Tewahido, which is an Amharic term meaning united Church.

The northern highlands are also the home of settled agriculture. Here disproportionately high human densities have led to increased pressure on natural resources and widespread degradation of the environment, making the sight particularly uncommon.

Drought conditions in Ethiopia have been recently magnified by extensive deforestation due to fuel-wood gathering and land cleared for human settlement over much of the highland areas. Realizing the current need for more active conservation measures, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (EOC) through its Development and Inter-Church Aid Department (DICAD), has embarked on extensive programs of reforestation in an effort to reverse the current trend.

These development activities were initiated when technicians were trained in nursery management in consultation with the Ministry of Agriculture. A total of 21 nursery centers have been established to date, mainly in the northern provinces of Tigre, Wollo, Gojam and Gonder, where more than 2.6 million seedlings of 19 different species have been raised. These seedlings are distributed free of charge to rural communities, farming cooperatives and peasant farmer associations.

The local church tries to provide these local communities with species appropriate to their location and choice, and because imported trees generally have faster growth rates than indigenous ones, there has been a greater demand for imported or foreign species such as eucalyptus. Several indigenous trees however, including scented thorn, apple-ring, thorn tree, wild olive and cordia, are raised in the nurseries. The Ethiopian Church has also established more than 300 small plantations, most of which are near church grounds. These are tended by the clergy; many of the priests are also being trained in development activities and act as teachers, farmers and agricultural laborers as well as spiritual leaders.

In addition to these new afforestation efforts, the Church continues to uphold the centuries-old tradition of planting and maintaining trees around church yards and cemeteries. Trees within the grounds of these churches are considered sacred by members of the Ethiopian Church and are also respected by locals following other forms of religion.

This is particularly obvious in the Merto Lemariam district of Gojam Province, which has the third oldest church in Ethiopia. There is a chronic shortage of trees for fuelwood and construction in this region. Despite this pressure for wood, existing tree stands within church grounds remain untouched. Consequently many of the trees associated with churches are very old, and may include juniper, wild olive, and other indigenous species as well as older imported trees such as cypress and gum.

The trees provide an important focal point for local gatherings as well as shade where members of the community can meditate and pray. An added and vital benefit, which was probably not understood in earlier times, is that this vegetation promotes soil and water conservation by trapping rainfall and preventing water run-off and consequent soil erosion. The vegetation also provides food, shelter and cover for several species of wildlife such as monkeys, small antelope and rodents, as well as roosting and nesting sites for various bird species. All forms of wildlife are given the same status as trees on church grounds, and are therefore protected on purely religious grounds.

An example of this protection can be seen on Lake Tana in the northwest of the country. It is Ethiopia’s largest lake and the source of the Blue Nile. Its 37 islands shelter more than 20 monasteries and churches (where several emperors are buried), and are important aquatic, wooded and forest habitats for subsequent colonies of birds, including spoonbills, herons, ospreys, hornbills, hoopoes and weavers. It is claimed that the birds on one island, Dega Stefanos (Saint Stephen), are so tame that they can be fed by hand.

Such passive forms of conservation have probably been practiced since Ethiopia became the first Christian country in Africa with the establishment of the EOC at the ancient city of Axum around 327 AD. Today, the EOC, sometimes incorrectly called the Coptic Church, which implies an association with the Egyptian Church, has over 20,000 parish churches spread throughout much of the country, with more than 25,000 clergy and a membership in excess of 25 million, approximately 57% of Ethiopia’s estimated population of 44 million.

The country’s other major religions are Islam with 9 million members, Evangelical Protestant with 900,000 members, Roman Catholic with 220,000 members and Judaism with 34,000 members. Trees and other vegetation surrounding mosques, churches and other hallowed sites is generally preserved, but may only be a token single tree in a cultivated field marking the burial site of a prominent Muslim and no active form of worshiping is continued there. Similarly certain tree species or individual trees are held in high esteem by between 5% and 15% of the population that follow animist rites and ceremonies.

The church’s primary objective in providing and planting trees, both in nurseries and in sacred grounds is to promote the conservation of soil and water resources in the northern highlands and to complement the efforts of the nation in environmental rehabilitation.

A second and more long-term objective is to provide fuel and construction timber from eucalyptus species, which are not considered a sacred species in church grounds, on a sustained yield basis, where any tree that is cut down is immediately replaced. This form of harvesting will, over time, provide a source of revenue which can be directly paid back into the afforestation programme (a condition that is not always met in other wildlife utilisation programmes).

Finally, the afforestation programme intends to motivate people, by increasing awareness and providing training, to participate more fully in the life of their communities and to take an active part in their own development and ecological restoration. This is vital if the reforestation programme is to succeed and will clearly elevate this programme above many other afforestation schemes in the country. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church’s activities will undoubtedly strengthen the alliance of religion and conservation which has existed in Ethiopia for many centuries.

The following summary lists only a few of the major public pronouncements by Orthodox leaders on a theology of creation. Significantly every canonical Orthodox jurisdiction has issued formal statements about the importance of caring for creation.

The abuse by man of his privileged position in creation and of the Creator’s order to him “to have dominion over the earth” (Genesis 1.28) has led the world to the edge of apocalyptic self-destruction, either in the form of natural pollution which is dangerous for all living beings, or in the form of the extinction of many species of the animal and plant world.... Scientists warn us of dangers, which threaten the life of our planet, such as the “phenomena of the greenhouse” whose first indications have already been noted. In view of this situation, the Church of Christ cannot remain unmoved.

In full consciousness of our duty and our paternal spiritual responsibility, having taken all the above into consideration..., we have come to the decision, in common with the Sacred and Holy Synod surrounding us, to declare the first day of September of each year a day on which is the first day of the ecclesiastical year, prayers and supplications are offered in this holy center of Orthodoxy for all creation — to be the day of the protection of the environment.

Therefore, we invite through this our Patriarchal Message the entire Christian world, to offer together with the Mother Great Church of Christ (the Ecumenical Patriarchate) every year on this day prayers and supplications to the Maker of all, both as thanksgiving for the great gift of creation and as petitions for its protection and salvation. At the same time we paternally urge all of the faithful of the world to admonish themselves and their children to respect and protect the natural environment, and on the other hand all those who are entrusted with the responsibility of governing the nations to act without delay, taking all necessary measures for the protection and preservation of natural creation.

Care of the environment constitutes a most urgent question for each and every human person. With every passing day [the fact of] the danger threatening life on this beautiful planet proves to be yet more clear....

[From this, we conclude that] ... To commit a crime against the natural world is a sin. For humans to cause species to become extinct and to destroy the biological diversity of God’s creation... for humans to degrade the integrity of Earth by causing changes in its climate, by stripping the Earth of its natural forests, or destroying its wetlands... for humans to contaminate the Earth’s waters, its land, its air, and its life, with poisonous substances, these things are sins.

Our first task is to raise the consciousness of adults who most use the resources and gifts of the planet. Ultimately it is for our children that we must perceive our every action in the world as having a direct effect upon the future of the environment. ...

There is also an ascetic element in our responsibility toward creation. This asceticism requires a voluntary restraint in order for us to live in harmony with our environment.

For humans to cause species to become extinct and to destroy the biological diversity of God's creation, for humans to degrade the integrity of the Earth by causing changes in its climate, stripping the forests, or destroying its wetlands...for humans to contaminate the Earth's water, its land, its air, and its life with poisonous substances-these are sins. To commit a crime against the natural world is a sin.

Today the maternal sea is polluted, the heavens are rent, the forests are being destroyed and the desert areas are increasing. We must protect creation. Better yet, we must embellish it, render it spiritual, transfigure it. But nothing will be done unless there is a general conversion of men’s minds and hearts. Nothing will happen unless our personal and liturgical prayer, our sacramental life, our asceticism regain their cosmic dimension. If nature is not transfigured, she becomes disfigured.

In our self-imposed haste, let us ask our Lord Jesus Christ to help us put on the brakes, and remember our priorities, and recover our sense of stewardship of creation.

One of our tasks is to help the people who come to church to become more aware that this passive attitude or indifference toward ecological issues is wrong, and that they should become more appreciative of the integrity of creation, in other words, the integrity of God’s work.

While most of us are aware of the ecological crisis around us, few of us realize that our Orthodox faith is profoundly concerned with ecology on the highest order. Indeed, if we actually tried to live our faith, we would be the foremost ecologists as well.

For a 40-page collection of the statements of the Orthodox Patriarchs and Hierarchs on issues of ecology and creation care, please write the RCFC, 409 Mendocino Avenue, Suite A, Santa Rosa, CA, Please remit $6 for copying, postage and handling.