I'm curious as to why environmentalism hasn't really taken hold within Christianity. Even within the progressive movement there is very little attention directed towards environmentalism.
Despite the overall conservative views of the Orthodox churches concerning human sexuality, the family, self-responsibility and so on, there is a very large environmentalist aspect in the Eastern, Oriental and Assyrian churches, and predates popular environmentalism. When Metropolitan Kallistos Ware was still serving as a monk on the Island of Patmos, at the Monastery of St. John, the abbot, who was also the only priest on the island authorized to hear confessions, unusually for an Orthodox confessor in my experience, would penance farmers who confessed, and the penance was always to plant a tree. And the abbot would inspect the trees as he travelled around the island, to make sure they were watered, and properly cared for.
At the time, the island was an arid desert, but now it is lush and verdant. Development on Mount Athos, the holiest site in Eastern Orthodoxy, is non existent, the focus being on preserving or repairing existing structures, there being many abandoned hermitages on the island. Every Orthodox monastery puts a premium on taking care of the land, and most grow their own foods, among other things. Easily half also lack modern conveniences in terms of plumbing and electrical lighting, and at most, these modern conveniences are limited to certain parts of the monastery.
Furthermore, many Orthodox hermitages and monasteries in the desert are sustained by natural springs. Orthodox saints, particularly hermits like Saint Paul the Hermit and Saint Seraphim of Sarov, are known for their love and friendship with, and even in the case of Paul the Hermit - their dependence, on wild animals.
Here is an article on Orthodoxy and Environmentalism by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware:
Incommunion » Through Creation to the Creator
My understanding is that those Orthodox Christians, especially those from the former Soviet Union (predominantly Russian Orthodox, Ukrainian Orthodox, Georgian Orthodox and Armenian Orthodox), were particularly traumatized by the extreme environmental abuse the Soviet government engaged in, which included detonating the most powerful nuclear bomb, draining the Aral Sea, which was one of the largest in the world, creating a lake filled with radioactive water, mining uranium in an unsafe manner, so the impoverished Kyrgistani town with its ageing pan-Soviet population, who are unemployed and have pensions that are impossibly small, are surrounded by toxic and radioactive runoff from cheaply built uranium mines, massive pollution from industrial coal, including coal chemical plants that released toxic material into the air and water (Filmimg such a plant for his science fiction epic
Stalker is believed to have given the celebrated director of films like
Solaris, Andrei Tarkovsky, cancer, which killed him just a few years after he was allowed to leave the Soviet Union in 1986), and in that same year, through improper design and incompetent technical leadership, blowing up reactor no. 4 at Chernobyl, the worst nuclear disaster in history, with many towns still uninhabitable, an incident orders of magnitude worse than Fukushima and infinitely worse than Three Mile Island, and numerous other abuses*, have traumatized the more devout Orthodox Christians and left some in a state of denial, just as I am in denial about the destruction of Paradise, California, a town I lived in as a child and always loved.
Capella Romana, the most famous Orthodox choir, recently recorded
A Time For Life, an environmental oratorio, composed by Robert Kyr, which is quite beautiful.
I am myself am inclined towards conservatism, although I remain politically neutral for purposes of pastoral care, except on issues that impact the church, for example, the ruling elders of my congregation and I have agreed that unrepentant abortionists and politicians who are not pro-life may not fellowship with us unless they repent. However, I do support public transport systems, safe new generation nuclear power plants (which are not vulnerable to the failure modes that destroyed TMI-2, Chernobyl* and Fukushima, namely, meltdowns due to loss of cooling, loss of control and power excursions, and loss of electrical power to drive cooling systems) and hydro-engineering projects in the form of vast networks of aqueducts to compensate for recent shifts in climate patterns and man made disasters resulting in chronic draughts, chronic flooding and the drainage of the Aral Sea. I am also interested in newer, larger tankers and container ships with solar power to supplement the diesel prime movers, and also possible nuclear merchant ships, following in the footsteps of the
Savannah the US demonstrated in the 1960s.
In that I care about these things, this is one point of agreement with the UCC, which I left because I feel they increasingly tolerate clergy who do care more about Earth Day than Easter. But the UCC as a whole would never agree with the technologies I advocate, particularly nuclear energy and aqueducts.
Historically, Congregationalists stood for individual freedom; we were called “the black robed regiment” during the Revolutionary War, and were strongly Abolitionist. I don’t think that the engineering problems we need to solve to protect the environment should impact the individual in any noticeable way.
I believe, for instance, that people should remain free to own sports cars, and maybe, if I might venture a partial jest, if we had much better public transport, combined with expensive gas and inexpensive, irresistibly fun and beautiful gas-guzzling cars, with faster speed limits on certain highways, that combination would result in people traveling in a much more efficient manner and enjoying themselves more.
Ultimately, prayer is the answer; we have an obligation for stewardship of this world God has given us, but so many things are beyond our control.
