Who Should Own the Earth?
What is the rightful basis of claim to the earth’s land and natural resources?
Territorial rights in most places on our planet are complex historical weavings that assert land rights due to discovery, military conquest, purchase, constitutional law, custom, length of residency and prior claim (“we were here first!”).
Declaring that The Earth Belongs to Everyone as a fundamental truth that is deeper than any other claim can awaken one to the quintessential question - Who made the Earth?
Astrophysics has given us detailed theories as to how the cosmos unfolded, such as after the Big Bang. However, the human mind is incapable of perceiving “from whence cometh the Big Bang?” Many postulate that there is an unknowable Primal Force, a Creator, in essence, God that launched the Creation.
What we know for certain is that human beings did not make the earth. It somehow formed out of the Great Mystery.
What do the Bible and the early Christian leaders have to say about the God, Human, Planet relationship? Here are some quotes:
The land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is Mine; you are but strangers resident with me. - Lev 25:23
The profit of the earth is for all. - Eccles 5:9
Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place. - Isaiah 5:8
Restore, I pray you, to them even this day, their lands, their vineyards, their olive yards, and their houses. - Nehemiah 5:11
Here are a few Patristic period (the first 400 years of Christianity) quotes on land ownership that Charles Avila compiled in his book Ownership: Early Christian Teachings:
St. Ambrose (Bishop of Milan): How far, O ye rich, do you push your mad desires? Shall ye alone dwell upon the earth? Why do you cast out all the fellow sharers of nature and claim it all for yourselves? The earth was made in common for all. Why do you arrogate to yourselves, exclusive right to the soil?
St. George the Great (Pope) rebuked the Romans when he said: They wrongfully think they are innocent who claim for themselves the common gift of God.
St. Clement of Alexandria (missionary theologian to the Greeks): (The functions of property) -"to be shared," "to minister to" and serve "the welfare of all"; "not for personal advantage as being entirely one's own" but "for thos e in need"; "to achieve autarkeia" (self-sufficiency) and "to foster koinonia" (community)- constitute the very essence of Clement's view of property.
St. John Chrystostom (Archbishop of Constantinople): God in the beginning did not make one man rich and another poor; nor did he afterwards take and show to anyone treasures of gold, and deny to the others the right of searching for it; rather he left the earth free to all alike. Why then, if it is common, have you so many acres of land, while your neighbor has not a portion of it?
St. Augustine (Bishop in Roman North Africa): He (according to Avila's research) saw that the poor are poor because they have been deprived by the propertied few of the wealth that should belong to all. He laid the blame for this unjust situation squarely on the doorstep of an absolutist and exclusivist legal right of private ownership. He reminded his audience that they were all "made from one mud" and sustained "on one earth" under the same natural conditions, having the same essence and called to the same destiny. He rejected the legalized status quo as inappropriate for human living. Holding that legal arrangements of property rights were of human origin, he asserted that they should be changed, in theory and in practice, in function of a faith-informed ethic based on the true meaning of ownership.
St. Basil the Great (Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia): He saw that a privileged few were exceedingly rich, ostentatious, and powerful, inasmuch as wealth, particularly the wealth-producing resource, land, was concentrated in the hands of the few. He taught a philosophy of ownership based on the view that God was Father and giver and Provider for all, and that therefore a few must cease stealing the food-producing resources that God had destined for the use of all.
Basil admits a certain right of laborers to the product of their labor but asks the landlords by what right they exercise ownership over their vast estates: Which things, tell me, are yours? Whence have you brought them into being? Whatever you have produced, or brought into being, may justly be yours. However, it is land that has made the landlords rich, and land is not something they have brought into being.
Speaking to the rich Basil said:
You are like one occupying a place in a theatre, who should prohibit others from entering, treating that as one's own which was designed for the common use of all.... If each one would take that which is sufficient for one's needs, leaving what is in excess to those in distress, no one would be rich, no one poor. Did you not come naked from the womb? Will you not return naked into the earth?
It is clear from scripture and early Christian teachings that the Judeo-Christian view recognizes that the earth is God’s gift as a birthright of all people.
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For an action group working for policy in Baltimore based on this land ethic see:
