Religious Congregations on the Land: New Models for the Church
Sister Kathleen Storms, SSND
Center for Earth Spirituality and Rural Ministry, Mankato, MN

As I was driving through the lush countryside of the Minnesota River Valley this summer, the words of an NPR commentator caught my attention: "The landscape looks like the mind of God." Out of what context had he made this statement? Was he speaking of the incredible beauty and orderliness of nature? Was he speaking about the dynamism of one community of life depending upon other communities of life that is so obvious in this farm and forest landscape? Or was he speaking about God’s weaving the web of all life in such a way that builds on dependency rather than isolation from each other? This statement evokes gratitude and awe-- a realization that I care deeply about this land we call home.

Our experience of the land – whether in mountain, desert, rainforest, river valley or farm field – allows us to tap into rich imagery about, a profound responsibility for, and a sense of interconnectedness with the Creator of all of life. Human beings throughout history have struggled to be in good relationship with the landscape. Questions of dominance, ownership and land rights are juxtaposed with stewardship, soil health and protection of the waters. All of us struggle with how to be in right relationship with the land. How does your landscape look like the mind of God?"

For religious communities of men and women who have owned monastery and motherhouse lands, this is a time like no other. These serene landscapes once at the edges of towns and cities are now surrounded by housing developments and four-lane highways. With aging sisters and diminishing resources, selling some of this land to the highest bidder seems to be the best solution to financially strapped communities. Getting rid of this land would help cut down on management, mowing and maintenance costs. On the other hand, religious communities cringe at that possibility because of time-honored commitments to steward the land, preserve contemplative space and act reverently toward all creation. Solutions that will benefit communities financially as well as preserve contemplative space are possible and need to be explored. But before we look for solutions, we need to lay the foundation for care for the land from a variety of perspectives.

1. Biblical Roots
From the unfolding human drama in the Genesis story of creation to present day theology of land, relationship with the land has been a key component. Who has the right to own land? In the Genesis story, "human beings, alone made in the Creator’s image, were put in charge, were to tend the garden, to multiply and flourish." For centuries this meant dominion over the land, to use and abuse the land in any way human beings decided. This jubilee year 2000 we have had many reminders of other biblical statements about relationship to land – "Land must not be sold in perpetuity. For the land belongs to me and to me you are only strangers and guests." (Leviticus 25: 23). Israel’s theory of land deeply rooted in the liberation traditions clashed with alternative theories and practices of the Egyptian Empire and Canaanite city-states. These city-states regarded land as a tradable commodity, not as a gift or trust or inheritance. Israel’s theory of land is designed to resist monopoly and the corresponding social displacement that is caused by monopoly. The orphan and the widow and other marginalized people are often excluded from ownership of land. In jubilee time land is to be returned to the rightful owners or in an urban society, everyone must have the social or economic equivalent of land. Everyone must have access to land.

2. Catholic Social Teaching
During the past 100 years of Catholic Social Teaching much of the focus has been on the great social problems of the day. "Foundational themes highlighting the centrality and the sacredness of human life, the human person, especially the poor person, in him/herself and in community, under all circumstances and in the face of immense social ills, are at the core of Catholic social teaching and have permeated its message." Pope John Paul II and Bishops throughout the world have in the past 20 years sounded a new cry of concern for the planet itself. "Conserve the land well, so that your children’s children and generations after them will inherit an even richer land than was entrusted to you." In Renewing the Earth, the Bishops of the United States say:

The option for the poor embedded in the Gospel and the Church’s teaching makes us aware that the poor suffer most directly from environmental decline and have the least access to relief from their suffering. Indigenous peoples die with their forests and grasslands. In Bhopal and Chernobyl, it was the urban poor and working people who suffered the most immediate and intense contamination.

The Christian community as a whole needs to awaken to a new level of awareness of and response to the evil confronting the planet today just as it deals with the evils confronting human beings in all its insidious forms.

"That is the relentless and ever-more powerful attacks by humans against the natural world, against the very life-support systems of the planet, day-by-day poisoning the air, water, and soil, altering the climate, denuding forests, destroying wetlands and wilderness, and driving countless species of plants and animals to extinction."

3. Basic Land Principles
In Strangers and Guests, Toward Community in the Heartland (1980), Midwest Catholic Bishops list ten basic principles for being in right relationship with the land:

1. The land is God’s.
2. People are God’s stewards on the land.
3. The land’s benefits are for everyone.
4. The land should be distributed equitably.
5. The land should be conserved and restored.
6. Land use planning must consider social and environmental impacts.
7. Land use should be appropriate to land quality.
8. The land should provide a moderate livelihood.
9. The land’s workers should be able to become the land’s owners.
10. The land’s mineral wealth should be shared.

4. The Great Work
Thomas Berry speaks of care for the earth as "The Great Work." For any life to survive into the future, human beings need to be concerned about the life of all else. For without a concern for the non-human, the human will perish.

"If the outer world is diminished in its grandeur then the emotional, imaginative, intellectual and spiritual life of the human is diminished or extinguished. Without the soaring birds, the great forests, the sound and coloration of the insects, the free-flowing streams, the flowering fields the sight of the clouds by day and the stars at night, we become impoverished in all that makes us human."

The Changing Roles of Religious Congregations
In a recent Review for Religious article entitled, "Returning to our Ancestral Lands," Michael Himes adds further reflection on the passage from Leviticus. He says no clan, no family, no group should be allowed to disappear from the land. To disappear is to leave behind the particular spark of a community as it was when it was new. St. Anthony began in the desert where individuals lived as hermits along side each other. Benedict and Scholastica founded communities of persons who pledged themselves to live a life of poverty and celibacy, a life of prayer and contemplation in community.

In the Middle Ages society was essentially rural. The produce of the land supported churches in this agricultural setting. The Monasteries thrived on the fruits of the earth. They became havens of learning and preservers of the culture. The verdant farms, orchards, apiaries and vineyards were replacing the bleak desert communities of the past. Monastery walls safeguarded great books and become centers of prayer and liturgy.

In the 12th century we see the emergence of the urban poor. Communities were founded to preach, teach, and nurse or whatever else was needed in these urban centers. Francis, Clare and Dominic inspired this new reason for gathering as communities. As the needs became greater in the multi-classed urban centers, communities specialized in apostolates of teaching, nursing and caring for the elderly. Theresa Gerhardinger, founder of the School Sisters of Notre Dame started her new congregation with education of women and children as her foremost apostolate. She believed that women were the guardians of society. Jesuits were founded by Ignatius of Loyola to teach and to deepen the spiritual lives of common people by seeing God in all things.

Today Himes says, "we have to look for communities of people who see themselves as personally called, called to a clear and decided mission, and who see themselves as in some way in contrast to the community around them, even in contrast to the church-at-large around them." Perhaps a new model of religious life will emerge in our time with a special mission to care for the earth. Or perhaps as religious congregations who were founded to care for some specific need will see their mission to people expanded to include the troubled earth. For religious reasons, rampant degradation of the earth cannot be ignored. For as Sally McFague says, "The world is our meeting place with God as the body of God, it is wondrously, awesomely, divinely mysterious." The monastery and congregational lands we have inherited from our forefathers and foremothers deserve a new response in our time. As the body of God for us, these lands call out to be honored and protected. These lands which have often in the past decades become burdens to worry about and care for can again become oases in the desert lands of urban development. They can become centers of learning a new relationship with creation. The sacred places for humans can become paradise homes to wildlife and people alike. They can become again the productive gardens feeding the hungry poor and landless. It is time for religious congregations to return to our blessed ancestral homes.

Returning to our Ancestral Homes
As we can see through this brief look at the history of religious life, men and women have been committed respond deliberately to a specific call of scripture. The beatitudes as well as the two great commandments to love God and our neighbor as ourselves have been foundational. Today as religious congregations look for ways to continue their specific mission they are also cognizant of a need to respond to the signs of the times. Many religious congregations are growing in their awareness of the earth as the new neighbor in need. Many have begun to care for their ancestral homes, their motherhouses, colleges and properties in new ways because they see the direct connection between the poverty of people they have served and degradation of the earth. Many congregations have committed themselves to "reverse those personal and communal choices, which exploit the earth and impoverish peoples."

Models of Care for the Land
In the following section we will see what religious congregations are doing to extend their mission to include care for the earth. These examples will hopefully stir other congregations to take appropriate actions, which would be specific to locale, the history of the land and charism of the congregation.

A. Land, Forest, Water and Energy Use Audits
Before changes can be initiated an audit of all holdings would give decision-makers base-line information. Key to an audit is a leadership team willing to implement changes, a clear mission statement about resource management, and a community willing to participate in the process of implementing changes personally and communally.

A variety of resources is available to do property and energy audits. Al Fritsch offers several in the Eco-Church Manual. Some congregations have worked with local environmental agencies or university environmental studies departments to do biological audits. The School Sisters of Notre Dame, Mankato, Minnesota worked directly with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to have a Woodland Stewardship Plan developed for our 148 acres. Besides helping us to understand the terrain and the unique environmental gifts of a pristine stand of northern hardwoods and several rare plant communities, we also gained a greater appreciation of the Native Americans who were the first human dwellers on this land. Several DNR staff people were able to help us better manage our hillside erosion problems, restore 40 acres of prairie grasses and wildflowers as well as develop an outdoor learning center for the local consolidated Catholic School system. We were encouraged to take advantage of Federal (Conservation Reserve Program) and State (Conservation Partnership Grants) Cost-Share programs to restore eroded ravines, return plowed fields to oak savannah and prairie ecosystems as well as erect an energized fence to exclude deer and other wildlife from our community gardens.

An audit allows congregations to develop long term action plans to care for aging building and eroding land. It plants the seed of good stewardship options. It helps a congregation broaden its ministry concerns to include global and planetary wellbeing as well as its outreach to human beings in need. A new awareness of our interconnectedness with all life opens doors to new partnerships with for profit and non-profit agencies with similar missions.

One such partnership is Sisters of the Earth. It began in 1994 as a means for sisters to unite with others to care for the earth. It has proved to be support system and clearinghouse of practical outreach measures. It currently has over 300 members, mainly women religious from the United States, Canada and Ireland. Members practice chemically-free housekeeping and gardening, work with the poor in inner-city gardens, sponsor ecology educational programs and promote spirituality that is in tune with ecology. They are very willing to share experiences and direct others to helpful resources.

B. Conservation Easements and the Trust for Public Lands
Million-dollar offers from developers to purchase land for new housing have often had the opposite effect for religious congregations. Instead of selling the land to the highest bidder, these congregations have stepped up their environmental practices by dredging lakes, restoring wetland and prairie on the property. The "green acres" they have preserved are a gift to the surrounding community. Apart from taking total responsibility for saving the land, there are several ways in which congregations can receive support and at times payment for protecting the land. These options can also ease concern over who will own and manage the land when congregations longer can. It can be preserved as a legacy of the congregation and its mission to care for the earth.

1. Conservation Easements
This is a legal agreement between a landowner and a land trust or government agency that permanently protects land and conservation values while the landowner continues to own it. It also allows you to sell or pass it on to heirs. When you donate a conservation easement to a land trust, you give up some of rights associated with the land. You may give up the right to build additional structures. But you might also continue to retain the right to grow crops or to protect a rare wildlife habitat or endangered plant species. An easement may apply to must a portion of the property and need not require public access.

In 1998 the Dominican Sisters of Calwell, New Jersey sold development rights for its 140 acres to Farm Land Preservation Program of the state of New Jersey. This property is home to Genesis Farm. —an Earth-Literacy Center and thriving community supported garden. They have recently been given a generous gift of 40 adjoining acres of undisturbed woodland and meadow.

Benedictine Sisters of St. Joseph, MN have valued the opportunity to live a reflective life and enjoy outside beauty. To insure others are able to have the same experience that they now enjoy, they have protected a 26-acre property in the heart of St. Cloud, MN. The property now owned by St. Cloud hospital is a remnant oak savanna, with a natural wetland and many 100-year-old oak trees. The property overlooks the Mississippi River and is surrounded on three sides by new developments. A six-acre portion of the land will eventually be deeded to the City for a park. This action stemmed from a Land Task Team position statement designed to guide future land discussion in the community. The process to turn this 26-acre property over the Minnesota Land Trust took 5-years of planning and was finally completed in 1999.

2. Land Donations
A land donation is one of the finest legacies a person or group can leave to future generations. If you do not wish to pass the land on to heirs; own property you no longer use; own highly appreciated property; have substantial real estate holdings or would like to be relieved of the responsibility of managing and caring for the land, this is the way to go. Besides an outright donation of the land you can continue to live on the land by donating a remainder interest and retaining a reserved life estate. This arrangement will allow you to live on and use the property until death or until you decide the land trust gains full title and control over the property. Donating a remainder interest may make you eligible for an income tax deduction when the gift is made. It is based on the fair market value of the donated property less the expected value of the reserved life estate. Nature Conservancy Organizations and State Land Trusts can assist you in choosing the best option for you.

3. Federal and State Conservation Programs
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has a number of federally funded programs to assist landowners to protect erodable land and unprotected waterways. If congregational land is classified as agricultural land, you may benefit from one or more of these short-term programs while you await more long term Conservation Easement or Donation decisions.
ß CRP (Conservation Reserve Program) Is a means to voluntarily convert cropland to permanent vegetative cover. Permanent cover options include grasses and legumes, tree plantings, and wildlife habitat. The Program offers leases for highly erodible cropland for 10-15 years if Landowners establish and maintain perennial vegetation and agree to leave the land idle for length of the lease.
ß CREP (Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program) and WRP (Wetland Reserve Program) restore and protect wetlands and riparian areas as well as assist landowners to manage forested acres. The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) administers these programs.
ß EQIP (Environmental Quality Incentives Program) provides technical, financial and educational assistance to farm owners to address significant natural resource concerns and objects.
ß DNR (Department of Natural Resources) is found in each state in differing versions. These state agencies offer a wealth of information on forestry management, prairie restoration, wildlife management and educational programs. Contact your local agents.



4. Alternative Models
Creative urban congregations have created mini-ecosystems on congregational land adjacent to colleges and retirement centers. After a land assessment, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet of St. Paul, Minnesota have restored a 5-acre prairie, removed invasive buckthorn hedges replacing them with native Ironwood bushes as food for birds. An old forest has been managed better and native wetland plants now surround a pond.

School Sisters of Notre Dame at Mankato, Minnesota have assessed the needs of immigrants in the Mankato area. Immigrants from the Ukraine, China, Japan, Mexico and the Sudan share a common bond with the sisters. All have rural roots and are used to growing their own foods. For the past five years the sisters have offered garden space not only to the immigrants and sisters but also to other local people in need. The community garden is a safe and nurturing haven for families and community alike to grow organic food for themselves and for the local food shelf. With the assistance of a Minnesota Extension Service horticulturist, experienced gardeners share secrets of success with first time gardeners. It is a true model of interdependence.

C. Sacred Space
Places with exotic names like Windridge Solitude (Lonedell, MO), Nature’s Spirit (Salem, SC), Shalom Hills Farm (Windom, MN), The Bridge-Between (Denmarck, WI), Clare’s Well (Annandale, MN), Shepherd’s Corner (Blacklick, OH) and Genesis Farm (Blairstown, NJ), to name a few, dot the countryside proclaiming sacred spaces for reflection and refreshment. Each of the sites uniquely touches the sacred, inviting human beings to become aware of their place in the web of life. The solitude, serenity and closeness to nature return us to paradise lost and evoke in us a passionate desire to claim wholeness for the planet. These places allow us to begin to shed the "stuff" of life that holds us captive to consumerism. These places are counter-cultural. Most of these places return the land to its original eco-system. In the words of Marion Honors, CSJ:

"The land is where we come from; the land is home; the planet is home. We have to start looking at how we as a [people are treating our home. The trend in the past was to believe we were created for heaven, and we discounted the importance of living on earth; it was just a temporary home. Now we are growing aware of our identities as Earthlings. Jesus became incarnate to teach us our responsibility as humans in this world.

The largest Benedictine community in America (220 members) at St. John’s Abbey, Collegeville, MN hosts an extensive biodiversity project which includes 132 acres of conifer woodlands, 150 acres wetland, savannah and prairie restoration and a native habitat arboretum. Their mission is to support St. John’s spiritual and aesthetic values through: (1) preservation, (2) restoration of habitat, and (3) managed forest. They have modeled collaboration by involving the monastic community, St. John’s University faculty and students, outside consultants and local land management groups in long-range plans.

All sizes of tracks of land can be protected and enhanced as sacred place. From 5-acre plots in urban neighborhoods to 2,500 acres, religious congregations are making deliberate, well-thought-out decisions that will be sustainable for generations to come.

D. Community/Church Supported Agriculture
One of the biggest changes for religious congregations over the past 20-30 years is food production. Most congregations could boast about huge convent gardens, orchards and farms that sustained them from meager beginnings, through the Great Depression and two World Wars up until the mid-1970’s or early 1980’s. One factor that led to an almost imperceptible change in our common life was a change in status of home service sisters and lay brothers in religious congregations. Vatican II renewal of religious life asked that there no longer be two classes of membership—those who serve the congregations and those who did ministry.

Those termed home service or lay served their communities through tireless running of kitchens and farms. They allowed monasteries and motherhouses to be self supporting as they raised chickens, tended vegetable gardens and berry patches, processed and stored winter supplies of apples, potatoes, carrots, squash and corn. With no new members joining to tend to our homes, the ranks of those who found great satisfaction and pride in providing for the community diminished in numbers and grew in age. With this change came a growing and steady stream of vendors with processed and packaged foods shipped from far away places. The land that once nourished communities and buildings, once housed chickens, hogs and cattle became abandoned fields and ghost-town-like structures at the edges of the property. We said, "it couldn’t be helped," as we grieved the loss.

In hindsight we should have made it possible for new members with an interest in caring for the land and growing food to receive the training and the blessing of acceptance and honor within the community. It is not too late to do just that.

With deliberate action plans and creative dreaming, changes are happening to return religious congregations to wholesome and healthy food. We are realizing we can contract with local growers who can provide our homes with seasonal, chemical-free and mineral-rich foods. Some of us have become members of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) ventures. The very brave have extended concern for good food to families and neighbors through the creation of a CSA. Michaela Community Farm of the Franciscan Sisters of Oldenburg, Indiana contract to grow vegetable, fruit and organic meat for their Motherhouse community adjacent to the farm. They now successfully also raise food for a number of families who financially support their efforts.

With a unique twist the same story takes place on a family farm of two blood sisters in western Minnesota. Kathleen and Annette Fernholz, both School Sisters of Notre Dame, have long held a dream to return to their rural roots. With a few acres on their parents’ farm, they provide 45 shares in their Earthrise Farm CSA. Madison, Minnesota is a very rural area without an adjacent metropolitan center. The sisters found out that rural people can be as removed from growing their food as urban people are. They raise their vegetables on 5 acres of land as their aging parents mentor and praise them for their creativity and commitment. As natural born teachers and community builders, they use every opportunity to connect the food their customers eat with stories of how they are helping to heal the web of life.

E. Involved Politically In Local Land Use Decisions
With burgeoning urban development comes an infrastructure of additional water and sewer lines, roads and mall developments. Wetlands are displaces, habitats are disrupted and already existing neighborhoods that are "in the way" are removed. Religious Congregations who often own property adjacent to these developments need to be aware of impacts on land and water that any development brings. It is imperative that neighbors and congregations dialogue with each other in order to make wise, informed and long term decisions.

By working with a neighborhood group adjacent to a small creek that flows into the Minnesota River, School Sisters of Notre Dame at Mankato, Minnesota were able to alter road construction plans to protect virgin forest on their property, guard Thompson Creek from increasingly destructive runoff and save the fragile ravine neighborhood from invasive traffic. This is no small thing when religious and their neighbors compete with a regional retail mall for the ears of local decision-makers.

In Conclusion

There are no recipes for success in taking action to protect, reclaim or restore land. The best decisions for religious congregations about land use seem to hold these common factors:

1. A love for our "home" land which cannot be separated from spirituality.
2. A sense of responsibility, justice and stewardship to care for land for future ages.
3. An ability to observe and to listen to the land to gain a sense of what is needed to care for it.
4. A deepening commitment to the mission of the religiuos congregation.
5. Commitments to protect, return or restore the ancestral home to its earlier beauty and health.
6. A commitment to be part of the sacred community of all life.
7. Endless creativity and a dogged determinism to see the dream of all being in right relationship with the earth become reality.


When the landscape for which we are responsible looks like the mind of God, then there will be no separation between God and us. We will be one. Protecting the web of life as best we can, will be as vital a mission as making a preferential option for the poor because we know they are interconnected. The integrity of all creation will be an all-consuming goal. Our landscape will be a Garden of Eden to which God invites us to return in the cool of the day.

{November 2000}



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