Should Christians be tree-huggers?

Many years ago, when I was working in Africa, I had wonderful opportunities to go on safari and see some amazing wildlife.

Lions, elephants, giraffes; all the creatures you would expect to see, and more. But at that time, one of the things that made me most homesick was a yearning to walk in an English wood in spring, among the bluebells and the birdsong. I’ve tried to do that every year since returning to the UK, although I missed it during last year’s lockdown: it’s one of the things I’m looking forward to as things open up again.

Deep cultural affinity

Maybe it’s just me, but I think that British people have a deep cultural affinity with trees, and that there’s something quite Christian about this.

Trees are everywhere in the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. It’s more than just the fact that trees are common and provide many human needs, like the cedars of Lebanon which provided timber for Solomon’s temple. For many of the Biblical writers, trees symbolise the life given by the Creator. In Genesis 1:12 they are not just ‘trees’ but ‘trees bearing fruit with seed in it’. In Psalm 1 the righteous person is compared to ‘a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither’. Eden’s tree of the knowledge of good and evil is replaced by the tree of life in Revelation 22, ‘yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations’.

Middle Earth

It’s notable how trees also suffuse the writings of Christian authors such as C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Trees that come to life in both Narnia and Middle Earth. The tree city of Lothlórien. Trees can have a darker side too, whether in the Old Forest or Mirkwood. But the evil orcs are tree-destroyers, and in Mordor no trees survive. At the close of Lord of the Rings, Sam brings healing to the Shire by planting a tree. Tolkien was probably influenced not only by Biblical imagery but by the destruction of the First World War and the urbanisation of the countryside around Birmingham, where he went to school.

To bring things up-to-date, the last few months have seen protests not far from Birmingham, and at Euston, as the building of High Speed 2 has destroyed ancient woodlands and veteran trees along its route. The Cubbington Pear Tree, for example, was around 250 years old when it was felled last year. Christians may have reservations about some of the tactics used by activists but it’s clearly something that people care deeply about.

In fact, it may surprise you that the UK is one of the least wooded countries in Europe. By land area, only 13% of the UK is wood or forest, and it’s only 10% in England. In the EU, the average is 35%. Only the Netherlands has less tree cover than the UK.

Perhaps our love for trees is a response to what we’ve lost over many generations, a recognition that we’ve got so little left that we must hold on to what we’ve got.

Restoring creation

I was once privileged to visit the cedars of Lebanon. The great forests of Solomon’s day are just clinging on in a handful of groves high up in the mountains, but there are now initiatives to restore them by planting thousands of new trees. In the UK, the government has pledged to massively expand tree-planting, which has all kinds of benefits for nature and the climate, provided you put the right tree in the right place.

Of course, we shouldn’t idolise trees or any other part of nature. But we can thank God for them and all the good things they provide for us and I, for one, am looking forward to hugging a tree this spring.