Elias Economou
An Orthodox View of the Ecological Crisis
1. PROLOGUE.
It seems that a great number of nοn-educated and educated peopte, churchmen and theologians included, have not yet realized that ecology and the ecological crisis have both a positive and a negative relationehip to the Christian faith itself. Most of the above-mentioned people readily tend to ascribe the crisis tο technology, industry and politics. Consequently, they believe that we Christians have a duty as citizens to contribute to every effort aimed at avoiding ecological catastrophy. They expect from clergy, theologians and believers to co-operate dutifully in the realization of programs planned by others, i.e. nοn-ecclesiastical authorities or religiously indifferent ecological movements, aimed at providing a political solution to the problem -without, however, uprooting the deeper causes of it.
It is clear that they view the ecological crisis as a purely socio-technological problem, belonging to the same order of every otber social problem of past and present. They overlook the very fact that this problem embraces the whole question οf man's place οn earth and in the universe; it is a wholistic and global problem provocated by man's self-proclaimed, absolute and autonomic domination of the Earth.
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