November 6

Today marks the birthday, in 1909, of Liu Liangmo, a Chinese evangelist and peace activist who resisted the Japanese invasion of China through mass singing and whose death we noted on August 8. 

In 1217, ten-year old Henry III, under the regency of William Marshal, enacted The Charter of the Forest, which gave to common people rights to forage, pasture animals, and collect firewood on royal land. After centuries of restricting more and more land use to the aristocracy, this major land reform gave communities access to the land’s abundant natural resources for human survival. This event is a reminder that environmental justice and economic justice are two parts of the same whole.  

Today is also the United Nations’ International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict.  

Reflection: 

Liu Lianmo was good friends with singer and civil rights activist Paul Robeson. Liu Liangmo wrote:

“I traveled in Georgia and Kentucky last week. Their hometown papers are filled with pictures and news of their boys who fought and died on the battlefronts. They fight and die in Europe to crush the Nazi system which believes in enslaving the people and discriminating against the Jewish people. They fight and die in the Pacific arena to crush the Japanese imperialistic system which believes in enslaving and discriminating against all non-Japanese people. Yet back in their home towns down in the South, there still exists the same system of enslaving and discriminating against the colored people in the form of Jim Crowism. The whips of the K.K.K. are ever present in Nazi Germany and all over occupied Europe. How can we win the war and win the peace if Jim Crowism still exists in the South?”

Liu Liangmo

Since today is both the anniversary of the Charter of the Forest and the U.N.’s day against waging war on the planet, I think it is appropriate to share one of the earliest biblical laws against waging war against the environment: 

Now if you have been attacking a city for some time, fighting against it and trying to conquer it, don’t destroy its trees by cutting them down with axes. You can eat from those trees; don’t cut them down! Do you think a tree of the field is some sort of warrior to be attacked by you in battle?

(Deuteronomy 10:19-20)

Three-thousand years ago, the biblical authors observed the horror of what human war does to the more-than-human world. God’s own law spoke against the environmental costs of war. 

Prayer: Author of Life, we are often blind to injustice close at hand. Help us to see all life, human and more-than-human, as sacred to you. Amen.