Church Grounds and the Garden of Eden
Churches should have better gardens.
When I was 10, my family lived for several months in an apartment in the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham, England. We didn’t have a car, so the only way we could get around was by taking the train or walking. That region of the city is old and very developed, so there was only one green space within walking distance; the square around St Paul’s Church. On sunny days in the summer, the lawns in the church square would be covered by people picnicking. Mistle Thrushes and blackbirds fed in the lawn and nested in the trees in the square. In the midst of the chaotic and lifeless roads and buildings of the city, the church square was a paradise.
Church gardens, and beautiful churches in general, have indirect benefits by making church grounds more attractive both for visitors and for regular members. However, when funds are limited they will tend to be allocated to where they can be used for more direct and practical benefits. In my experience, modern churches can often be simple and generic, with clean unwelcoming lawns and driveways and small sterile gardens planted with foreign shrubs, mirroring the suburbs that their members drive from. If walking on my neighbour’s front lawn is taboo, why would I want to walk (or picnic) on my church’s?
At one point in Pollution and the Death of Man, Francis Schaeffer’s classic book on Christian attitudes towards the environment, Schaeffer describes the contrast of a neo-pagan Bohemian community across a ravine from a Christian school he is visiting. He describes beauty of the pagans’ farm and laments the comparative ugliness of the Christian school, without even any trees around the building. While this also applies to the churches I described above, this critique would not apply to much historical Christian architecture, nor even in many places around the world today. For most of us, the magnificent gothic cathedrals of western Europe come to mind. However, what particularly intrigues me is the tradition in the Eastern Orthodox church of church grounds symbolizing the Garden of Eden.
In 2019, a National Geographic article brought to worldwide attention an ancient tradition in rural Ethiopia of preserving an area of forest around community churches. Due to the climate and farming practices in that region, most of the land looks like a desert. The green of the church grounds make a stark contrast with this landscape. These church grounds preserve the last remaining forest in many areas, along with their associated forest biodiversity. Only 4% of the historical Ethiopian forest cover remains today, and almost all of it exists only because it is protected in church grounds. They have no legal protections; they are protected only by the religious beliefs of the surrounding communities.
“The forest remnants have been rightly described as a genetic “Noah’s Ark” for the hopes of re-greening the degraded lands of Ethiopia with native, drought-tolerant species, and for restoring critical ecosystem services needed in traditional subsistence agriculture. Put simply, preserving these forests and reforesting denuded landscapes promote both ecosystem resilience and food security in this drought-prone nation.” - David Goodin
The people who attend these churches and preserve the forest around them do so because they believe they are sacred. The presence of God in the church recalls his presence in the Garden of Eden; since the churchyard represents the perfect Garden, it is not to be altered from its natural state. The forests also provide a home for nomadic monastics; revered holy people who survive primarily off of forest resources. Priests and nuns are buried on the church grounds, inspiring additional reverence for these places.
Churches are, like both the Garden of Eden and the temple, “thin places” where the presence of God is more intensely felt. The tabernacle and the temple were full of symbolic references back to the Garden. The connection between churches and the temple is quite explicit in the Ethiopian Orthodox church, where they have a strong affinity for the Ark of the Covenant in part because of the belief that it has long resided in Ethiopia. Ethiopian Orthodox churches also keep a replica of the Ark, called a Tabot, in their churches, and it is an important component of their regular practices. The Ark is a symbolic representation of God’s presence among his people, making it and the building it resides in holy spaces. Although more subtle, the symbolism of Western churches also contains references to the temple. In post-temple Christianity, where God dwells in the hearts of his followers rather than in the temple, church buildings are still where they gather together. The presence of God is particularly emphasized during the sacrament of communion. However, in our rituals and sacraments we experience only a hint of the presence and communion that Adam and Eve experienced with God in the Garden of Eden, and which we hope to return to when Creation is renewed.
Natural beauty has always inspired awe and a feeling of connection with the transcendent in us. Some of the most awe-inspiring aspects of church architecture evoke natural imagery, such as columns resembling towering trees or domes like the night sky. If churches are supposed to bring us closer to God, and we know that natural beauty has the power to do that, why don’t we surround our churches with it?