Ecospirit: Religions and Philosophies for the Earth

Felling Sacred Groves:Appropriation of a Christian Tradition for Antienvironmentalism

 Felling Sacred Groves: Appropriation of a Christian Tradition for Antienvironmentalism N I C O L E A . R O S K O S In the midst of an awestruck crowd, (St. Boniface) attacked with an axe one of the chief objects of popular veneration, Donar’s sacred oak, which as the first blows fell upon it, the huge tree crashed, splitting into four parts, and the people who had expected a judgment to descend upon the perpetrators of such an outrage acknowledged that their gods were powerless to protect their own sanctuaries. From that time the work of evangelization advanced steadily. —alban butler, The Lives of Saints This story from Butler’s Lives of the Saints initiates The Cross and the Rainforest by Robert Whelan. This latter, more recent book builds its polemic against contemporary environmentalism on the historical Christian precedent of cutting down trees in order to save pagan souls. It represents a corporate-funded Christianity that now implicitly champions, in its support for the globalized economy, deforestation in the name of this ancient , saintly practice of felling the sacred trees. Before examining this modern fusion of anti-environmentalism with the enduring Christian fear of paganism, let us first consider the history and context of this mandate to eradicate sacred groves. Hebrew Scripture describes the worship of the fertility goddess Asherah in 2 Kings 17:10: ‘‘They set up for themselves pillars and Asherim [plural] on every high hill and under every great tree.’’ Despite Judith Hadley’s thorough study, The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah, which uncovers archaeological and textual evidence of the existence of 484 兩 e c os p i ri t the goddess Asherah, it remains unclear whether an Asherah actually was a sacred wooden pillar, a stylized tree-of-life, a tree, an image of the female goddess, or was encountered through some or all of these various forms. Archaeological evidence from el-Qom dated to the ninth century bce confirms that Yahweh was (at least occasionally) worshipped with Asherah. Since the Hebrew Scriptures do not record any specific prophetic condemnation of Asherah worship, some scholars suggest that such worship was at one time generally accepted in Israelite society.1 One might speculate about a form of Asherim present in Hebrew Scripture when Abraham and Jacob built altars to the Lord under trees. At Shechem, Abraham built an altar under the oak of Moreh and received a message from God saying, ‘‘I will give this land to your offspring’’ (Gen. 12:6–7). Joshua made a covenant with the people and ‘‘set up the stone under the oak in the sanctuary of the Lord,’’ also at Shechem (Josh. 24:25–26). Hadley notes a critical turning point for the translation and interpretation of Asherah happening in later periods. From the third century bce, the Septuagint, or first Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures, translates Asherah as ‘‘grove,’’ and this was taken up in the King James Version (KJV; circa 1611 ce). Hence, Hadley and others conclude that ‘‘by the time of the Mishnah (the first few centuries of the Common Era), Asherah has lost even its distinction of a humanly made cultic object, and has become any type of living tree.’’2 This later translation of ‘‘grove’’ in the Septuagint and the KJV impacted the Christian extermination of sacred groves that were honored by Europeans.3 The KJV was translated after much of the initial encounter between Christians and indigenous European groups. Clearly, the command to fell cultic pillars has much more limited scope than a command to fell groves of trees. D E F O R E S TATI O N T H R O U G H TH E E M P I R E S Although Christian history abounds with the cutting of sacred groves, this practice did not solely originate within Christianity or Judaism. The Romans cut down sacred groves as a tactic to conquer other peoples at the time of Nero. The historian Tacitus gives an account of the Roman takeover of the island of Mona, a Celtic place of pilgrimage for British Druids. Tacitus describes ‘‘Druides praying and cursing, and women . . . n i co l e a. r o sk o s 兩 485 dressed in . . . black, with torches in their hands and hair wildly flowing.’’4 The Romans ‘‘cut down their sacred groves, and broke the altars.’’5 Nor did elements of...