At Ecumenical Conference, Christian Orthodox Theologian Equates Pollution With Sin

By Michael Howard

Last September a group of pilgrims sailed from Istanbul across the wine-dark seas of the Mediterranean to Patmos, a small, arid island in the Greek Aegean Sea where 1,900 years earlier St. John the Divine recorded the Book of Revelation. Their mission, to mark the anniversary of the final book of the New Testament by considering, in a lavish seminar, the relevance of St. John's apocalyptic visions to the impending ecological crisis.

On board a giant car ferry, or "latter-day ark" as it was dubbed by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholemew I of Constantinople, primus inter pares of the national Orthodox church leaders, was a colorful group of clerics, politicians, scientists, industrialists and environmental activists. Although not present, Britain's Prince Philip, in his capacity as president of the World Wildlife Fund, co-sponsored the gathering designed to break down the barriers between science and religion and to offer glimpses of redemption for a new heaven and a new earth.

The symposium, which took as its paradigm the plight of the sea, and the Mediterranean in particular, was also intended to thaw the frosty relations between Aegean neighbors Greece and Turkey and provide an issue around which the diverse ethnic and religious communities in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East—where the majority of the Orthodox faithful reside—can unite.

Entitled "Revelation and the Environment," the conference, which called at Athens and Ephesus in Turkey, also had the backing of Nobel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Aga Khan, U.S. Vice President Al Gore and Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali of the United Nations.

A Broad Church

The ferry proved a broad church. Between conference sessions, over smoked salmon and petits fours, a white-bearded Orthodox priest discussed eschatology and factory fishing with a similarly white-bearded environmentalist. To their side, a high-chieftain from Western Samoa complained to a British Euro-MP about French nuclear testing while a Zoroastrian from India denied being a fire-worshipper to an Anglican bishop.

But it was in the conference proper that the difficulty of drawing together the disparate forces of science, religion and philosophy to save the environment became apparent. In his opening address, the Ecumenical Patriarch talked of how, with the creation of the atomic bomb, scientists had managed to unravel some of the forces which lie at the heart of creation, giving mankind the power to destroy itself. But he also warned of the danger to the planet from pollution. "It may be that the choice between life and death always being put to us by the spirit is in our day being translated into a choice between one world or none. Theology and science should be partners in this work." However, he added, many have doubts about the possibility of traffic between the world view expressed in modern science and the visionary material in the Book of Revelation. "How can the Revelation's vision of hope, sustained in the midst of passages portraying terrible destruction, be distinguished from a rather unconvincing whistling in the dark to keep the spirits up in a time of danger or change?" the Patriarch asked.

Other delegates from the secular world inveighed against society's rigid adherence to scientific materialism. "Environmentalists need to appeal to moral values, to give their arguments a spiritual dimension," said Herman Daly of the University of Maryland and a former World Bank economist.

Robert Cox, president of the Sierra Club, America's largest environmental lobby group, welcomed the symposium as a much-needed attempt to build bridges between the environmental movement and the church. "The message of sustainable development and biodiversity may be crystal clear to the scientists and lobbyists, but to get the message through to the majority of people, it is the damage being done to creation which is increasingly being emphasized," he said. He noted the irony that at a time when the so-called conservatives of the church were pushing to "conserve" the earth, the conservatives of the U.S. Congress were doing their best to dismantle most of the environmental protection legislation of the last two decades.

Timothy Wirth, U.S. undersecretary of state for global affairs, echoed the sentiments. He decried the lack of a mandate for environmental protection from Congress and urged governments around the world to "enlist and engage the sensitivity, enthusiasm and creativity that grass-roots groups offer.

"The world is desperately in need of a new set of global values," he said. "Common purposes grounded in ethical principles of justice and stewardship."

Buddhist philosopher Robert Thurman made an appeal to reclaim the "positive" view of the apocalypse from the "negative" version adhered to by Christian fundamentalists who read the Book of Revelation as justifying the destruction of the environment. "Through the ultimate poignant confusion, these pious, well-intentioned though rigidly self-righteous people are totally caught up in the imagery of God's destruction of the old world of Babylon, and have fantasized themselves as those who are earning the new Jerusalem by serving as the horsemen of the apocalypse, assisting in the purificative acts of destruction," Thurman told the meeting.

The symposium was a continuation of the efforts by the Orthodox Church to include the problem of ecology and environmental protection in the ecclesiastical life of the 300 million or so Orthodox Christians around the world. But the presence of most of the world's major faiths at the symposium signaled the Patriarch's desire for ecumenical dialogue on the issue.

In 1988, at the initiative of the late Patriarch Dimitrios, Sept. 1—the start of the Orthodox year—was claimed the Environment Day, while in 1992 an inter-Orthodox meeting on ecology was convened on the island of Crete.

The theology of the Greek Orthodox Church fits well into the green message, imbued as it is with love of all creation and not just the human part of it. The spiritual significance and intrinsic sacredness of the earth is central to the Orthodox belief; protection of the earth is as much a moral responsibility as it is a material responsibility.

The Patriarch pointed out that the Orthodox Church is particularly well represented in parts of the world where "the earth has been hurt," he said, taking a phrase from the Book of Revelation. "In a perversion of science, would-be God-slayers have laid waste to great tracts of territory," he thundered, drawing attention, in particular, to the former Communist world, the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Other religious figures highlighted the great changes that have taken place recently in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East and said that now was the time for religions to work together on issues as vital as the preservation of the environment.

"Let's make this peace a green peace," said an Orthodox priest from the West Bank.

Perhaps the biggest step to be taken at the symposium—at least as far as the Christian church was concerned—was the declaration that pollution and environmental damage should be considered a sin.

"A Sin Against Nature"

"We are used to regarding sin mainly in social terms. But there is also a sin against nature," said Metropolitan John of Pergamon, a leading Orthodox theologian. "Repentance is needed if catastrophe is to be avoided.

"The Book of Revelation unveils before us the ultimate solidarity of the human race and urges us to common action for the protection of the natural environment regardless of national, racial, and social differences. In the end we shall all be one. This morality still waits to find its place in our Christian consciences."

Meanwhile the participants urged the Orthodox Church to continue to put environmental issues at the top of its agenda. Establishing an environmental management program for all church property and land, and considering the canonization of environmental activists were just two of the suggestions put forward from the many informal workshops that took place on the sidelines of the main event.

As well as providing a rallying point for the forces of Orthodoxy, the symposium also was seen by some as a means of rapprochement between Greece and Turkey. Relations between the two Mediterranean rivals have been icy. Disagreements over the Balkan crisis, Cyprus, and the delimitation of Greek territorial waters in the Aegean Sea have all contributed to the tension. But despite the presence on board of leading Turkish industrialist Rahmi Koc—who has just founded the Turkish Marine Environmental Protection Association (Turmepa)—and the former vice president of the ruling True Path Party, Mehmet Dulgar, many Turks stayed away, heeding the criticism of the Turkish right that the symposium was a vehicle for the Patriarch, whose links to Greece and presence in Istanbul are an irritant to Turkey's nationalists and its rising fundamentalist movement.

Critics said that allowing the Patriarch to raise his profile breached the treaty under which the Patriarchate is allowed to stay in Istanbul by the Turkish authorities. The "pope" of the Orthodox Church is supposed to steer clear of politics.

The speech of Istanbul University lecturer Mehmet Aydin on the Islamic approach to environmental issues had to be read out on his behalf by Mehmet Dulger. The lecturer had declined to turn up after criticism in the Turkish press.

Dulger, though, was unrepentant about attending the gathering. "Despite what the fundamentalists say, the environment is an issue too great to put up barriers," he said. "Greece and Turkey, Orthodoxy and Islam, as well as the other religions should all work together. This is our common future we're talking about."

Dulger said the health of the Mediterranean was vital to the survival and well-being of all countries which border on it. Of particular concern to Turkey, he said, is the ecology of the Bosphorous Straits, the narrow channel linking the Black Sea to the Mediterranean and one of the world's most congested shipping routes.

And as more oil emerges from the Caspian Sea and is shipped through the Bosphorous in supertankers, the potential for major disaster increases. "This is an area where we must work together," said Dulger.

The senior Turkish figure expressed disappointment that there was not more representation from other Muslim countries of the region such as Egypt and North Africa. However, Dulger hoped that his presence would at least help the Turkish people focus attention on the environmental issue.

The Patriarch hoped, too, that the green issue would be a banner under which the 15 Orthodox churches could unite. But bilateral disputes with the Moscow Patriarchate meant that Russia, with the largest Orthodox population in the world, and whose environmental well-being has reached crisis point, was not represented, while the Patriarchs of Jerusalem and Antioch were unable to attend for health reasons.

Michael Howard is editor of the Middle East Times, a regional English-language weekly published in Cairo, Egypt.