The Church Forests of Ethiopia

May 25, 2021 9:52 AM

When he decided to become a forest ecologist, Alemayehu realized that in order to study Ethiopia’s native forests, he would have to study the forests surrounding churches. Until roughly a hundred years ago, Ethiopia’s northern highlands were one continuous forest, but over time that forest has been continually bisected, eaten up by agriculture and the pressures of a growing population. Now the entire region has become a dry hinterland taken over almost entirely by farm fields. From the air it looks similar to Haiti. Less than three percent of primary forest remains. And nearly all of that three percent, Alemayehu discovered, was only found in forests protected by the church. “I was amazed to discover that,” he said.

Churches in the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition inherited many of their ideas of sacred space from Judaism. The center of their church, like the metaphorical center of the Jewish temple, is called the qidduse qiddusan, the Holy of Holies. In that center rests the tabot, a replica of the biblical Ark of the Covenant, another borrowed symbol. Only priests can enter the Holy of Holies. Enclosing this sacred center is a larger circle—the meqdes, where people receive communion—and outside that lies a still larger circle called the qine mehelet, the chanting place. All three spheres are contained under the round church roof, but those circles ripple outside the church itself.

Beyond the church building lies the inner wall, which forms a circular courtyard around every church. According to tradition, the proper distance this wall should stand from the church is the armspan of forty angels. During my visits to different churches, I watched many people enter these inner courtyards. Before crossing the threshold, they performed various gestures of piety—crossing themselves three times, dipping a knee, perhaps kissing the wooden doorframe. It was clear to everyone that when you crossed the inner wall, you were entering holy ground.

The brilliant move the priests made was to take the idea of the inner wall and replicate it. Using the same design, they built a second wall of dry-stacked stone just outside the forest boundary, thereby extending the invisible web of sanctity to include the entire forest. Suddenly the holy ground surrounding the church expanded from the size of a backyard to a vast tract of ten, fifty, or even several hundred hectares."

Fred Bahnson writes about the tiny forest preserves surrounding churches in the Ethiopian highlands, and the efforts of Dr. Alamayehu Wassie and Dr. Meg Lowman to protect and extend these important remnants. The essay features a companion film. More from Nature magazine.

posted by jquinby (3 comments total)

This was a cool article - both in subject matter and presentation. I loved the slow-pan drone shots of the forests. Thanks!
posted by Dmenet at 10:59 AM on May 25, 2021 [1 favorite]

I highly recommend the companion film. It's beautiful.
posted by timdiggerm at 11:18 AM on May 25, 2021 [2 favorites]

This was fantastic - elegantly, beautifully written, fascinating! Thank you so much for posting it.
posted by Occula at 1:18 PM on May 25, 2021 [1 favorite]