Changing Perspective and Practice: Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and Environmental Awareness

By Fr. John Chryssavgis

A paper given at the Climate Summit at St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Washington DC, 4/23/12.

i. Initiatives and Activities; Seminars and Symposia

The environmental initiatives of the Orthodox Church date to the mid-1980s. At a Pan-Orthodox Conference in Geneva (1986), representatives voiced concern about pollution; the emphasis was on leaving behind a better world. Several Inter-Orthodox consultations followed, one on the island of Patmos (1988) to mark the 1900^th anniversary since the writing of the Book of Revelation. Delegates there recommended that the Ecumenical Patriarchate designate a day of prayer for the environment.

The following year, Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios published the first encyclical letter on the environment, proclaiming September 1st – the beginning of the church year – as a day for all Orthodox Christians to offer prayers for God’s creation. Since then, an encyclical is published annually. The church’s foremost hymnographer, Monk Gerasimos, composed a service of supplication for the environment. Whereas in the past Orthodox prayed for people to be delivered from natural destruction, now they prayed for the planet to be delivered from human degradation.

Just one month after his election in 1991, Patriarch Bartholomew organized an environmental gathering in Crete, forging a close bond with the World Wildlife Fund and its international chairman, the Duke of Edinburgh. A month later, he convened an unprecedented meeting of all Orthodox Primates, the first of five to date and an historical expression of unity, inviting Orthodox leaders to inform congregations about the urgency of global warming. In June 1994, a seminar was held at the Theological School of Halki, the first of five successive annual summer seminars, hitherto unparalleled in the Orthodox world, to consider the ecological dimensions of Religious Education, Ethics, Communications, Justice, and Poverty.

Convinced that any response to climate change involve dialogue with every Christian confession, religious faith and scientific discipline, in 1994 the Patriarch created the Religious and Scientific Committee (RSE). Chaired by distinguished theologian Metropolitan John of Pergamon, RSE hosted eight symposia from 1995 to 2009 – under the joint auspices of the European Commission or the United Nations – to reflect on our planet’s waters. These sea-borne symposia assembled in the Mediterranean and Black Seas, on the Danube and Amazon Rivers, on the Adriatic and Baltic Seas, in the Arctic and along the Mississippi River.

What is generally characteristic of the Patriarch’s initiatives is that he sees the larger picture. He recognizes that he stands before something greater than himself, a legacy that long predates and will long outlast him.

ii. Another Spirituality; A Different Vision

Not long ago, my elder son and I paid a routine visit to the optometrist. Alex isn’t as meticulous as he should be with his eye care. So  upon receiving his new prescription, I overheard his reaction: “Wow! That’swhat I’m supposed to see?” When we look at our world, I wonder what we see? For the way we view our planet reflects how we relate to it. We treat our planet in a godless manner precisely because we perceive it as “god-forsaken.” Unless we change the way we see the world, then we shall simply be dealing with symptoms, not their causes. Ultimately, then, our struggle against climate change is a battle over how we imagine our world; it is a crisis of differing – even conflicting – worldviews.

In his now classic article, “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis,” medieval historian Lynn White, Jr. (1907-1987), already suspected this truth – although neither he nor subsequent scholars elaborated on it:

The Greek saint [he wrote] contemplates; the Western saint acts. … The implications of Christianity for the conquest of nature would emerge more easily in the Western atmosphere.^[2]

Often, we are convinced that solving the ecological crisis is a matter of acting differently, more effectively, more sustainably. Let’s not forget, however, that it is our very actions that led us in the first place to the mess we’re in. Paradoxically, ecological correction may in fact begin with environmental in-action, with proper vision and awareness.

For Patriarch Bartholomew, it is all a matter of truthfulness to God and honesty with the world. This is why he condemns environmental abuse as a sin!^[3] Only a radical reversal of our values and ways – what an early Apostolic text calls “a great understanding” – can provide any solution to the impasse. The environment is not only a political or a technological issue; it is, as the Patriarch underlines, primarily a religious and spiritual issue. In nature, survival and salvation coincide.

Martin Parry, former co-chair of the IPCC, once observed: “We are all used to talking about these impacts coming in the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren. Now we know that it’s us.”^[4] So the problem lies in how we define reality: physics and chemistry demand radical cuts in carbon emissions; political realism tells us to advance slowly. In this battle, there is only one choice: economic tax codes and legislative regulations can be amended; the laws of nature cannot. Seeing clearly and candidly is the only way of countering political denial. The race is desperate. Politics is chasing reality, and the distance between them isn’t closing nearly fast enough.

(iii) The Role of Religion; The Way Forward

It will take no less than a high-profile crusade by religious and civic leaders to force change among our political leaders, a movement as critically urgent and as morally imperative as any campaign for fundamental human and civil rights. Such a movement demands global involvement and personal sacrifice. We all need to see the world differently, to learn to change our habits – from what we want to what the world needs.

It is not just a matter of pursuing alternatives, whether political (like cap-and-trade) or personal (like carbon offsets). These solutions resemble  medieval “indulgences,” resulting neither in a radical response to the challenge at hand nor in any real change of lifestyle. They just create a sense of self-complacency and promote a sense of self-sufficiency.

And here, I think, lies the heart of the problem. For we are unwilling – in fact, violently resist any call – to adopt simpler lives. If we are guilty of relentless waste in our world, it may be because we have lost the spirituality of simplicity and frugality. The challenge is: How do I live in such a way that promotes harmony – not division? How do I live in such a way that communicates gratitude or generosity – not greed or arrogance?

And when we begin to understand that climate change is not just one in a long list of problems confronting politicians, then we gain new insight, a new sense of sight through which to perceive our world. When we peer through this lens, foreign policy looks very different; threats to security can be met by shipping technology to China, rather than by shipping weapons to China’s enemies. When we peer through this lens, the economy too appears radically different; we abandon the urge for unbridled expansion and focus on the sustainability we so desperately need.

Some years ago, Larry Summers – who served as Bill Clinton’s secretary of the treasury, as World Bank economist, and as Barack Obama’s director of the national economic council – declared he “cannot and will not accept any ‘speed limit’ on American economic growth.”^[5] Have we become so addicted to fantasies about riches without risk and profit without price?

What religious and civic leaders must persistently remind political leaders is that there is no way of endlessly manipulating our environment that comes without cost or consequence. We are – as we now know well and as mystics have taught through the ages – intimately and inextricably bound up with the history and destiny of our world.

Economy and technology are toxic when divorced from our vocation to see the world as God would see it. And if God saw the world as “very good” on that sixth day of creation, then we too can begin to sense in our world the promise of beauty and to see the world in its unfathomable interrelatedness. Then, we shall hear the grass grow and feel the seal’s heart beat. To paraphrase the Psalmist: “All things look to God. When God sends forth his breath, then creation happens all over again; and the face of the earth is renewed.” (Psalm 103 [104]. 27-30)

Fr. John Chryssavgis is environmental advisor to the Ecumenical Patriarch and a member of the OFT Steering Committee.