Heirarchal Statements
Encylicals and statements from a range of Orthodox jurisdictions universally proclaim care for Creation intrinsic to the Church's theology and cosmology.
Father, Bless!
Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios >
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I >
The Primates of All The Canonical Churches >
Patriarch Ignatius IV of Antioch >
Patriarch Alexey II of Moscow and All Russia >
Patriarch Maxim of Bulgaria >
Pope Shenouda III >
Metropolitan Nicholas of Amisso >
Metropolitan Paulos Mar Gregorios >
Metropolitan Kallistos Ware >
Archbishop Anastasios of Albania >
Archbishop Demetrios >
Archbishop Lazar (Puhalo) >
HAH Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios >
Message on the Day of Protection of the Environment >
Acquire an ascetic ethos, bearing in mind that everything in the natural world, whether great or small, has its importance for the life of the world, and nothing is useless or contemptible. ... Regard yourselves as being responsible before God for every creature and treat everything with love and care.
The abuse by contemporary man of his privileged position in creation... 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, or in other forms.
In view of this situation, the Church of Christ cannot remain unmoved. It constitutes a fundamental dogma of her faith that the world was created by God.... In full consciousness of our duty and paternal spiritual responsibility, having taken all the above into consideration and having listened to the anguish of modern man, we, in common with the Sacred and Holy Synod surrounding us, declare the first day of September of each year a day on which, on the occasion of the feast of Indiction, is the first day of the ecclesiastical year, prayers and supplications are offered... for all creation -- to be the day of the protection of the environment.
We invite... the entire Christian world to offer prayers and supplications to the Maker of all...as thanksgiving for the gift of creation and as petitions for its protection and salvation. At the same time we urge all the faithful of the world to ...respect and protect the natural environment.
HAH Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I >
Sacrifice: The Missing Dimension >
Symposium on the Arctic: “The Mirror of Life” >
Declaration on the Eve of World Oceans Day >
Sacred Gifts to a Living Planet >
Christian Belief on the Environment >
Scenic Hudson Environmental Organizations: Remarks >
Message on the Day of Prayer for Creation 1993 >
Message on the Day of Prayer for Creation 1994 >
Our sin toward the world, or the spiritual root of all our pollution, lies in our refusal to view life and the world as a sacrament of thanksgiving, and as a gift of constant communion with God on a global scale.
A good Christian is not permitted by conscience to destroy nature or the environment.... We are obligated to preserve rather than destroy the environment. Hence, any destruction of nature clearly constitutes sin.
We especially advise clergy and others in parish ministry to encourage love for nature, to care for trees and shrubs and the church properties....
It is only fitting that love for the environment must begin in the church compound which must be replete with greenery and flowers in bloom throughout... the year....
Our first [ecological] 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 as having a direct effect upon the future of the environment.
We are called to work in humble harmony with creation and not in arrogant supremacy against it.
We invite Orthodox Christians to engage in repentance for the way in which we have behaved toward each other and the world.
For humans to cause species to become extinct and to destroy the biological diversity of God’s creation... [to cause] changes in its climate..., [or] injure others humans with disease... for humans to contaminate the Earth’s waters, land, air and life with poisonous substances, these things are sins.
How we treat the earth and all of creation defines the relationship that each of us has with God.
We must be spokespersons for an ecological ethic that reminds the world that it is not ours to use for our own convenience.
Let us renew the harmony between heaven and earth, and transfigure every detail, every particle of life.
He who loves the Creator of the world, loves also his creation...
Keeping the environment clean... is an obligation of love toward our fellow persons... and a providential responsibility for the future of our... children.
We are to practice a voluntary self-limitation in our consumption of food and natural resources.
Sacrifice... is the missing dimension in our environmental ethos and ecological action.
We paternally urge everyone to come to the realization of their responsibility and do whatever they can to avert the increase of the temperature on the earth and the aggravation of environmental conditions.
So what we do to the oceans... we also do to God’s other creations, including ourselves.
As Orthodox Christians our greatest vulnerability is in the practice of our theory.
We invite you to join... in pledging to protect the oceans as an act of devotion....
If we love God, we must love His creation.
How many of our Orthodox clergy are prepared to assume leadership on issues of the environment?”
Climate change is much more than an issue
of environmental preservation.... It is a profoundly moral and spiritual problem
The Primates of All the Canonical Churches
The careless and self-indulgent use of material creation by humanity, with the help of scientific and technological progress, has already started to cause irreparable damage to the natural environment.
The Orthodox Church... invites all Orthodox to dedicate the first day of September of each year... to the offering of prayers and supplication for the preservation of God’s creation.
The Orthodox Church considers humankind to be a steward and not the owner of the material creation.
HB Patriarch Ignatius IV of Antioch >
The Responsibility of Christians >
A Theology of Creation >
Only the highest of forces, that of the spirit, and then that of spirit united with the heart, to use the language of the Orthodox tradition, can face up to the challenge of technology.
Christians will act by example, by showing the cultural, social and ecological richness of traditional ascetic values....
Asceticism is indispensable if we are to achieve that limitation of desires which will make it possible for us to respect better the earth and the life which belongs to it, and to bring into operation sharing on a planetary scale.
Christians must call upon humanity to come together in a united effort for the safeguarding of the earth and for its revitalization.
The universe is not simply a manifestation of the Godhead.... The universe springs from the hands of the living God, who sees that it is tov, that is, “good and beautiful.” Thus it is willed by God, it is the joy of his wisdom, and exults in that reverential joyfulness which is described in the Psalms and in the cosmic passages of the Book of Job....
The mystical way in Orthodoxy requires as a necessary stage the contemplation of nature, a vision of “the secrets of the glory of God which is hidden in beings and things,” to quote a great mystic who was both an Arab and a Christian, St. Isaac the Syrian. ...
Someone who sanctifies himself by practicing the contemplation of nature ceases to make an object of the universe through greed and blindness. His presence lightens and brings peace. ... Contemplation of nature transforms nature, not in the direction of Babel, but in the direction of the New Jerusalem.
If nature is not transfigured, she becomes disfigured. Today we are threatened by barbarism and by the suicide of all mankind. By barbarism... [I mean] the transformation of technology into destiny..., into an inevitable, death-like fatality. The fatality of doing all that we can, without first questioning the consequences.... As for the suicide of mankind, we are beginning to realize that it is possible, what with Chernobyl and the determination of the great financial organizations to destroy the forests of the Amazon.... Only the highest of forces, that of the spirit, and then that of spirit united with the heart, to use the language of the Orthodox tradition, can face up to the challenge of technology.
We need to recover, with a view to the transfiguration of nature, the three traditional forms of asceticism: fasting, chastity and vigilance. ... Fasting, that is to say the voluntary limitation of one’s requirements, makes it possible for us, at least in part, to free desire, so that it can recover its original character as desire for God and love of neighbor. ... The spirit of fasting, which today should be diffused throughout the whole of our civilization, involves a change from an exploitive relationship with nature to one which is modeled on the Eucharist.
Let us summon humanity to a common task, drawn by our love of man as the image of God and of the universe, and as the creation of God.
It will be a common task if all Christians take part in it and share their experience and their hope, those of the West and those of the East, those of the North and those of the South. [This is] an immense and concrete task of a renewed ecumenism, in which... I hope the World Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic Church will collaborate.
Christians will act by giving a cosmic dimension to their prayer, to their hearing of the Word, to their sacramental life, and to their asceticism. Christians will act by example, by showing the cultural, social and ecological richness of traditional ascetic values when they open out onto history: here I am thinking above all, I repeat, of the voluntary limitation of our needs and of a profound sympathy for all life. ...
This work of common vivification will provoke a spiritual revolution, the repercussions of which will gradually be inscribed in social and economic life. ...
Asceticism is necessary in order to fight against the instinct of possession, of blind power and a flight into hedonism.... Asceticism therefore is indispensable if we are to achieve that limitation of needs which will make it possible for us both to respect better the earth, its rhythms and the life which belongs to it, and to bring into operation the necessary sharing on a planetary scale.
HB Patriarch Alexey II of Moscow and All Russia >
The care of Creation... is our practical task but also a spiritual and religious duty, a fulfillment of the commandment of God.
We must understand the need to work together for the transfiguration of this wonderful... land...
Solutions to the environmental crisis are to be found in the human heart, not in the economy, technology or politics.
The transformation of nature... begins with the transformation of the heart and soul. According to Saint Maximos the Confessor, man can turn the earth into paradise only if he carries paradise within himself.
HB Patriarch Maxim of Bulgaria >
We should hand [the material world] on to the generations that come after us... enhanced and with greater capacity for supporting life.
HH Pope Shenouda III >
Coptic Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria
The life of our Church not only encourages an appreciation of nature, but places a duty upon all people to protect the environment...
HE Metropolitan Nicholas of Amisso >
Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Church
There certainly is an Orthodox Christian ecological ethic.... [This ethic] is not optional for Orthodox faithful... [for it] proceeds directly from our doctrine.
We in the Orthodox Church see Creation as the foundational concept by which we understand all environmental issues.
The Orthodox ecological ethic calls... the ecologist to pursue the spiritual life.
The Orthodox ecological ethic testifies that the legacy of the ecological curse can be stopped [and] ...things... put right again when a Christian thanks God for every gift, and prays so that its use may be true to grace. In this way, man can be a blessing, and not a curse.
HE Metropolitan Paulos Mar Gregorios >
Indian Orthodox Church
When the objectifying and alienating technological relationship of humanity to nature is overemphasized, humanity loses the capacity for...self-giving mutual love between God and the universe, this love which constitutes human nature. ...This loss to our proper humanity caused by our technological civilization is greater than all the harm it has done through pollution, resource depletion, and all the rest.
Every crisis is a judgement, a call to see where things have gone wrong and to seek to set matters right, both within our consciousness and in society. The environmental crisis, the economic crisis, the crisis of justice, the crisis of faith, the employment crisis, the monetary crisis, the crisis of militarism — all these are symptoms not only that humanity has to yet become what it has to be, but also that we are on the wrong track.
We should regard our human environment as the energy of God in a form that is accessible to our senses.
Christians cannot say that nature is to be worshiped. Christians would say that the created order, not nature, is to be respected as the order that has given birth to us, sustains us, and will still be the framework for our existence when the whole process of creation-redemption has been consummated. We respect the created order both because it comes from God and is sustained by him, and because it is the matrix of our origin, growth and fulfillment as human beings. But we do not worship the creation. We have to tend the creation, use it for our own sustenance and flourishing, but we also have to respect it in itself as a manifestation of God’s creative energy and cooperate with God in bringing out the full splendor of the created order as reflecting the glory of the Creator.
HE Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia >
Safeguarding the Creation for Future Generations >
Through Creation to the Creator >
In all our ecological work, never let us lose our sense of urgency
The Transfiguration reveals the Spirit-bearing potentialities of all material things.
There can be no transformation of the environment without self-denial, no renewal of the cosmos without voluntary sacrifice.
We cannot save what we do not love. There can be... no true wisdom without love; and equally there can be no cosmic transfiguration without love.
HB Archbishop Anastasios of Albania >
A passive attitude or indifference toward ecological issues is wrong...
One of our tasks is to make people who come to church more... appreciative of the integrity of creation, in other words, the integrity of God’s work.
HE Archbishop Demetrios >
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America
Message on the Day of Protection of the Environment >
We bear a special obligation towards protecting the natural environment and raising ecological awareness
The commitment of our Orthodox Church to protecting the environment must also be a part of the local ministry of our parishes.
HG Archbishop Lazar (Puhalo) >
Orthodox Church in America
The Earth Is the Lord's and the Fulness Thereof >
While most of us are aware of the ecological crisis, 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.
We will all live in the new world order of consumer capitalism and secularism. We will all partake of the benefits of consumer capitalism and enjoy its positive aspect. But as Christians, we will also have to face the moral challenges of its negative side. It is urgent for us, as moral human beings, to recognize that future generations will pay a terrible price for the excess and overindulgence of our era.
