Soon after his election to the throne of Ecumenical Patriarch in
1991, Bartholomew of Constantinople made clear that he saw his task not
only as safeguarding the unity of the Orthodox Church but also doing all
that he could to protect the world and its people in a period of
extreme environmental peril. He quickly began to enlarge an initiative
taken in 1989 by his predecessor, Patriarch Dimitrios, who had invited
all Orthodox churches to begin the church year, the first of September,
with prayer for all creation and for its preservation. In the years
since, Bartholomew has repeatedly declared that “crimes against the
natural world are sins…. Creation care — the preservation of nature and
the protection of all people — emanates from the essence of our faith….
The world is not ours to use for our own convenience. It is God's gift
of love to us and we must return his love by protecting it and all that
is in it. All human beings should draw a distinction between what we
want and what we need.”
Bartholomew quickly became known as “the green patriarch.”
“The
patriarch is a man of courage,” said Archdeacon John Chryssavgis, an
adviser to Bartholomew on environmental issues. “For years he was going
against the current of a significant segment of the Church, but little
by little his work in this area has been recognized as prophetic. I see
much of the work the patriarchate has been doing as a way of informing
and educating our own.”
Not content to make speeches and issue
written appeals, in 1995 Bartholomew launched a series of ship-borne
floating conferences, involving not only theologians but also
scientists, economists, jurists, political and business leaders,
journalists, and men and women from other professions, that focused on
environmental degradation. Sites chosen in the past have included the
Black Sea, the Aegean, the Adriatic, the Baltic and the Danube as
providing local examples of grave damage to the planet as whole.
The
latest of these events, the ninth, took place in Attica, the region of
Greece that has Athens at its center and includes the Saronic Islands.
Two-hundred people took part in a four-day symposium, “Toward a Greener
Attica.” It began June 5 in the lecture hall of the Acropolis Museum, on
the southeastern slope of the Acropolis hill. Just a short walk from
the museum is the Theater of Dionysus where the plays of Aeschylus,
Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes were first performed 25 centuries
ago. Being in the shadow of so ground-breaking a civilization put our
proceedings in a challenging historical context, as if Aristotle,
Socrates, Plato and the Apostle Paul were invisibly present.
“The
ecological crisis has revealed that our world constitutes a seamless
whole, that our problems are universally shared,” Bartholomew said at
the opening session. Highlighting the ecological problems of the
surrounding region, he pointed out that “much remains to be done in
order to reduce the trash in the surrounding mountainside of Attica with
its deplorable landfills and to resolve all the plastic in the
surrounding sea that threatens marine life.” He also spoke of the
urgency of responding to the “forced migration [of many thousands of
refugees] from the Middle East and Northern Africa.”
Pope Francis,
in a message to the symposium read aloud by Cardinal Peter Turkson of
Ghana, said: “The care of creation, seen as a shared gift and not as a
private possession, always entails the recognition and the respect of
the rights of every person and every people. The ecological crisis now
affecting all of humanity is ultimately rooted in the human heart, that
aspires to control and exploit the limited resources of our planet while
ignoring the vulnerable members of the human family. The violence
present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms
of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all
forms of life. We cannot ignore the ubiquitous and pervasive evil in
today’s situation, where sin is manifest in all its destructive power in
wars, the various forms of violence and abuse, the abandonment of the
most vulnerable, and attacks on nature. The duty to care for creation
challenges all people of good will and calls upon Christians to
cooperate in offering an unequivocal response.”
The following
morning, June 6, we travelled by ferry to the auto-free island of
Spetses where the conference continued its discussions, this time at the
local cinema, the Titania.
The lead speaker was Hans Joachim
Schellnhuber, founder and director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate
Impact Research, professor of theoretical physics at the University of
Potsdam, member of the German government’s Advisory Council on Global
Change and member of the Pontifical Academy of Science. There was no
doubt, Schellnhuber said, that the human race has had and is having a
massive impact on the world’s environment, a phenomenon known as
“dangerous anthropogenic interference.” Unless dramatic steps are taken
very quickly to reverse damage to the atmosphere and oceans, we can only
expect rising temperatures with the result of melting ice-caps and a
dramatic rise in water levels that will submerge shoreline areas,
including island nations and coastal cities, producing millions of
refugees and triggering massive social instability. But he insisted,
late though the hour is, reversal is still possible. “Our problem,” he
said, “is that we have a lot of knowledge but very little wisdom. We are
like the passengers on the Titanic. Having hit an iceberg, we need to
stop thinking about what’s missing on the menu or what the ship’s
orchestra should play next and instead focus on the rip in the ship’s
hull.”
At the same session Raj Patal, a research professor in the
Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in
Austin, raised the haunting question, “What sort of ancestor do you
want to be? Will we be seen as the generation which ignored all warnings
and failed to prevent catastrophe or the generation that changed
course?” The environmental crisis, he continued, dwarfs all other crises
of the present moment.
The following morning the focus shifted to economics, philosophy and theology.
The
first speaker of day was Jeffrey Sachs, bestselling author, professor
of sustainable development at Columbia University as well as advisor on
sustainable development to UN Secretary-General António Guterres. Sachs
pointed out that a basic shift in economic ethics occurred in the 16th
and 17th centuries. Until that time the basic model was Aristotelian,
based on the model of the family and household economics: handle your
wealth with prudence and self-restraint. But for such men as Thomas
Hobbes, Bernard Mandeville and Adam Smith, social good was achieved not
through restraint but the pursuit of self-interest. Putting theory into
practice, the Dutch and British East India Companies developed the
concept of limited liability — the investor profited without
responsibility for any damages caused by his investment. “In effect,
companies were invited to misbehave — they were given the right to
pillage and even the right to make war. Thanks to limited liability,
greed was unleashed and to his day remains the driving force of the
modern economy…. A basic shift in our thinking is needed if we are to
decarbonize by 2050. Meanwhile campaigns are needed to challenge our
politicians, to boycott companies causing environmental harm, and to
call on shareholders to divest the oil, gas and coal industry.”
Maude
Barlow spoke at the same session. She is honorary chairperson of the
Council of Canadians and chairs the board of Washington-based Food and
Water Watch. Her latest books are Blue Future: Protecting Water for People and the Planet Foreverand Boiling Point: Government Neglect, Corporate Abuse, and Canada’s Water Crisis.
Barlow emphasized the growing number of water-stressed and desertified
areas on the planet, pointing out that it’s not only climate change that
accounts for this calamity but the commodification of water (plastic
bottles of water, for sale or discarded, were everywhere to be seen in
Greece) plus the use of vast quantities of water in manufacturing.
Meanwhile all over the world major corporations are competing for
control and ownership of water. Our job, said Barlow, is to work for
recognition of water as a sacred trust that must be protected as an
essential part of the eco-system belonging to all. Campaigners need to
focus on water as a human right and public trust.
The well-known Orthodox theologian, Metropolitan John Zizioulas of Pergamon, author Being as Communion, concentrated
on the transformed spiritual life that undergirds care of the
environment. He is currently visiting professor at the University of
Geneva and the Gregorian University in Rome. Zizioulas stressed that the
role of the heart was even more important than that of the mind. It is a
mistake to try to solve our problems with the unaided intellect.
Dealing with climate change is more than a matter of education. Our
ecological problems arise from neglect of the heart, he said, and it is
in the heart, where the will resides, that they will be solved. We must
purify our hearts. Conversion is needed. As St. Maximos the Confessor
taught, selfishness — putting one’s own interests above all others — is
the source of all our problems, while care of the other is rooted in the
heart. The way of the heart is the way of asceticism — the way of
restraint and sobriety. The way ahead requires sacrifice of our
self-interest and eucharistic gratitude for the world as a gift from
God.
Elizabeth Theokritoff, a research associate and lecturer at
the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge and
co-chairwoman of the Religion and Science group in the International
Orthodox Theological Association, stressed that the word “creation” is
not a synonym for the environment but rather that creation comprises
everything. “Creation is not something outsideof us. We are part of creation. Creation is not what we are deputed to care for; it is what we are.”
Following
lunch, we went by ferry to the nearby island of Hydra where, with
church bells ringing, much of the local population turned out to welcome
the patriarch.
The symposium’s next session, held in a conference
hall provided by the local church, focused on the refugee crisis — the
migration of a tidal wave of reluctant migrants who are escaping war,
environmental destruction and destitution.
Philippe Leclerc, UN
High Commissioner for Refugees, explained that many myths surround the
refugees, not least in Europe and America. “In fact, most refugees are
not dreaming of a life in Europe or the United States. The vast
majority, 85 percent, are being hosted in the south. For example, today
one-third of the population of Lebanon is made up of refugees.”
Mohammed
Abu-Nimer, professor of international peace and conflict resolution at
the School of International Service of American University, emphasized
that war is the main source of refugees. “These are not people who want
to leave their homeland, in fact it’s just the opposite. They are
running for their lives. Those seeking to respond to the refugee crisis
need to become peace builders, but peace building takes much longer than
making war. Signing peace agreements is only the beginning.”
Vandana
Shiva, a physicist, founded the Research Foundation for Science,
Technology and Ecology and also Bija Vidyapeeth, an international
college for sustainable living. She has become a leading advocate for
organic food production. Her work has demonstrated that harvests can be
increased by up to 300 percent by using organic farming methods, in
contrast, to using products made by the “poison cartel” involving such
companies as Monsanto and Bayer. The global system of growing food is
killing people, she said; she estimated that 75 percent of all chronic
disease is linked to current methods of global food growing. Our task,
she insisted, is to see food as sacred. Her comment that “all bread
should be seen as a sacrament” brought a nod of agreement from the
patriarch.
The last speaker of the session on Hydra was himself a
refugee, Mohammad Vahedi. With great difficulty he had made his way from
Iran to Greece sixteen years ago when he was fifteen. There was no one
to welcome him — no accommodation centers or organizations to support
unaccompanied young refugees arriving in Greece. It took Vahedi a decade
before he was finally recognized as a refugee. He is now pursuing
postgraduate studies while working for the SOS Children's Villages in
Greece with a program hosting unaccompanied minors. He spoke movingly of
failed attempts to cross the Aegean Sea before reaching the Greek
coastline. “No one wants to be a refugee,” he said.
Our ferry back
to Spetses that afternoon was attended by a pod of playful dolphins. We
took their presence as a sign of support for all efforts to promote
living more lightly on our small planet.
Returning by ship to Athens the next morning, there was an on-board final session of the symposium.
One
of the speakers was John Cardinal Olorunfemi Onaiyekan, Archbishop of
Abuja in Nigeria, who is credited with saving Nigeria from dictatorship.
In 2012 he was named Pax Christi International’s Peace Laureate.
Cardinal John spoke of his appreciation for Pope Francis’s encyclical, Laudato Si,
a document several other speakers had especially recommended. “We are
called,” Cardinal John said, “to listen both to the cry of creation and
the cry of the poor.” Laughing, he commented that no one speaks these
days of the death of God — “the Death-of-God theologians have died.”
“God is with us,” he added. “Faith and grace can change the human
heart.”
Rabbi Avraham Soetendorp from Amsterdam, a founding member
of the Islam and the West dialogue group of the World Economic Forum,
remarked that many people today look toward the future with despair. He
recalled how in 1943, during the German occupation of the Netherlands,
he had been rescued by a Catholic family who were ready to risk their
lives in order to save his. “We are wood that has been plucked from the
fire,” he said. “How can we ever despair? With compassion we can
confront the truth without compromise. Let us seize the moment!”
Patriarch
Bartholomew had the last word. “Dear friends,” he said, “we have come
to the conclusion of our gathering but a long journey lies before us. We
have heard some inspiring presentations. Now it remains for us to
practice what we preach. Now we must begin the long and difficult way
from the mind to the heart. There is so much more we can do to change
attitudes if only we work with one another. May God in his abundant
mercy guide you in your service to his people.”
During several
sessions of the conference the two of us sat near Patriarch Bartholomew.
We were impressed not only at his continuous presence but at how
attentive he was, often nodding his head in assent when a speaker made a
suggestion for action.
In the discussion period at the first
session on the island of Spetses, a participant made the comment that
the speeches being given were all well and good but a waste of time —
“this symposium is a case of pastors preaching to the choir.” In fact,
as became clear in discussions, a significant number were definitely not
of one mind or singing from the same hymn book. Even for those who had
similar convictions and analyses and thus might be seen as members of an
environmental crisis “choir,” choristers sometimes burn out. Each of us
needs renewed inspiration to reach further into the minds and hearts of
those who have, in the past, turned an indifferent or even hostile ear.
Our sense is that most who took part in the symposium, whatever their
differences, left not only freshly challenged but with revitalized hope.
* * *
Photos:https://www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/albums/72157697358703214
Web site of the symposium:
https://www.patriarchate.org/events/greenattica