On Earth as it is in Heaven

Ginia César Bontempo

• Publisher: Regnum
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781912343928
• eBook ISBN: 9781913363062
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

On Earth as it is in Heaven presents concrete experiences of social environmental action in churches in Brazil. Representing a diversity of styles and contexts, coming from different regions of the country, what these experiences and actions have in common is taking a divine principle of 'as in heaven' and putting it into practice. This is a challenging read, which will move people into collective action, brining God's Kingdom to Earth.

1. FROM MARABÁ TO THE WORLD

Elías da Silva Albuquerque, Patrícia Marques Almeida and Carlos Eduardo da Silva

The journey begins with a ‘substantial cure’. The project to restore the Grota Criminosa was first publicised in 2005 at the ABU Marabá holiday course. However, the idea itself was born one year earlier, when the students of the Pará Federal University (UFPA) felt compelled to fight for the restoration of a stream, known as the Grota Criminosa, near the University.

The spirit of struggle generated a series of actions affecting the university in the city of Marabá. In the years following the publicising of the project, the students undertook research which included the use of sociological and environmental data on the Grota Criminosa.

In the history of the stream, it was understood that intensive urbanisation, after the decade of the 1970s, gave rise to various problems. A Vale S.A. [a registered company] was prominent as one of the human agencies in the locality. The construction of the Carajás Estrada de Ferro [a major railway line] with the purpose of transporting iron ore was responsible for the burying and degradation of part of the vegetation on the banks of the stream, located at Kilometre 7 of the Trans-Amazonian Highway, in the Nova Marabá District. In the absence of any plans for housing for families which had arrived looking for work, the entire infrastructure in the area was compromised. Houses were built in the area and sewage was released along the whole of the stream; the local ecosystems gave way to rubbish, and consequently to environmental degradation.

The history of the stream led the president of ABU, Elias Albuquerque, at the time an agronomy student, to propose to the members of ABU Marabá the study of the problem through visits and interviews in the local communities.

Elias undertook the responsibility of elaborating his work at the conclusion of his course based on the situation, widening the research and taking into account local environmental laws. The purpose was to achieve restoration, or – in the words of Francis Schaeffer – a ‘substantial cure’, of the Grota Criminosa, a response to the pollution and contamination of the water.

We understand that everyone is responsible for this substantial restoration, because each individual is an agent of transformation in the place where they live, leaving each one responsible for defining their own ways of interacting with it.

During the period the data was collected, we were able to verify that amongst the residents there were distinct opinions in relation to the grota:

Residents/ Grota	Description	Usage	Public Administration	Legislation
Previous	Place where there was clean water, animals, and various species of fish, as well as vegetation on the banks	Washing clothes, fishing, water for drinking	Previous administrations preoccupied with cleanliness	Did not know it
Recent	Dirty water causes flooding and illnesses	Discharge for drains – for some this is of no use	More recent administrations do the cleansing – older ones do not	Do know it; others have only heard about it

According to those who were interviewed, the Marabá local authority had a part in the compaction of the soil when it covered part of the grota. With this infilling some of the margins were diminished, along with aeration of the soil.

The mobilisation, supported by prayer and by commitment to integral mission, had an effect on the students and generated various benefits. In 2007, Carlos Eduardo and Elias travelled to the Rio Grande farm in Paraná for a training session of the Integral Aid and Development Centre (CADI). Taking home what they had learned, they set up the Coram Deo project, with the purpose of promoting community development in Marabá. They managed to form a team of eight people, with the support of the leadership of churches from the Assemblies of God, the Christian Evangelical Church and the Bible Baptists.

A New Ally Emerges

At the end of 2007, Carlos Eduardo heard about the FALE network, which was promoting environmental sanitation in Brazil, and at the national conference of the network, in November that year he presented the proposal that the campaign should embrace a local element. Since then, the battle which had been local became national: ‘FALE: For Environmental Sanitation in Marabá’.

Motivated by the good outcome of the campaign in the municipality, in March 2008, the ABU group and the FALE network in Marabá led the Free Conference for Young People – an event whose purpose was to discuss, nurture and propose public policies for young people – to encourage churches to discuss socio-environmental matters. The list of invited speakers included the municipal Secretary for the Environment, Antonio Rosa de Macêdo Rodrigues (environment desk), Councillor Júlia Rosa (political desk) and the coordinator of Portas Abertas [Open Doors] – which works for the protection of vulnerable children – Ebenézer Barros (social programmes desk). The members of the FALE Marabá group promoted the event in various churches. Some of them were received with joy; others with suspicion, while one church did not welcome them. In that church, the members of the group heard a deacon, with whom they spoke at the door of the church, saying, ‘Brothers, the world is going to end in fire; we have to concentrate on saving souls.’

The event did not achieve its purpose. In spite of the conference being held in a church, the evangelical community did not attend, frustrating the hopes of the group and leaving the speakers surprised by this fact. However, after this supposed failure, the group did not give up on the local churches.

From Marabá to the World

In January 2009, the national meeting of the FALE network took place in Marabá and Belém. In Marabá, FALE, Pará posters were distributed. They looked like petitions and gave information about socio-environmental problems in the region. People from FALE networks in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Espírito Santo, Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraná and Pará, distributed the posters among people who lived on the banks of the Grota Criminosa. These were very good times in which the local residents spoke about their lives and showed contentment at living on the banks of the grota. The older ones gave poetic testimonies about the stream’s past. The target of the campaign was the president of VALE S.A. The poster asked for the firm’s support for actions to restore the grota and to involve the local population in environmental education.

As well as mobilising the local residents and churches, these actions won the support of public sectors. Councillor Júlia, president of the local Council, Liliam Carvalho de Oliveira, representative of the municipal Department for the Environment, expressed public support for the network’s actions in the municipality. Members of the FALE Marabá and Belém went to the capital of Pará and gained the support of Senator Flexa Ribeiro.

In Belém, one of the most important moments of the campaign took place. The FALE network took part in the Global Social Forum, leading three desks in the debate. In one of them, about environmental sanitation and human rights, they discussed the case of Marabá. Thus the world came to know about the problem of the municipality, and also how that God was concerned about it. On that day Elias reported, ‘I sensed the presence of God in a special way in that place, and it gave me the desire to shout out loud, “Glory to God”.’

After the event, as soon as he returned to Marabá, Elias invited the members of ABU and the FALE network to create an NGO. So it was that ELITES (Team Leader in Ecological and Social Works) emerged – made up of students and professionals in different areas of qualification: social sciences, pedagogy, geology, literature, agronomy, agro-industrial technology and human resources [personnel management]. The main purpose of ELITES is to rescue concepts starting with relationships through the working out and execution of socio-environmental projects. This organisation substituted the Coram Deo project. When we speak of the rescue of concepts we are referring to the need to restore the real and practical meaning of words which have been worn down by over-use. As an example, we have the word ‘preserve’ (from the Latin prae + servare), to free from some form of evil, to maintain free from corruption, danger or damage, to conserve, to free and to defend; to ‘defend’ comes from the Latin defendere, to give help or support, to protect, to assist.

After two years of the campaign, VALE S.A. did not take any position in relation to the letters it had received from us, nor had it expressed itself in relation to the campaign, in spite of contacts via email and telephone.

In the light of this, the FALE group, including Marabá, decided to organise a demonstration in December 2010, in front of the VALE S.A. building in Rio de Janeiro, with the purpose of being heard by the community and the company. Before this action took place there was first some feedback from the company.

The VALE S.A. Public Relations Coordinator, Antônio Venâncio, contacted the FALE-Marabá group inviting it to a meeting together with ELITES, in order to discuss possible solutions for the Grota Criminosa problem. FALE and ELITES presented the town hall with a proposal for the grota, a proposal which would be mediated by VALE S.A. This was one of the biggest victories won by the group.

The FALE network and ELITES work together in the restoration of the grota. What had previously been a campaign to raise awareness and to mobilise it had been consolidated as a project which was not only environmental, but principally one of communitarian development.

Today, the groups, in partnership with the Pará Federal University, develop a social inclusion project called CIPLI (an English course to aid the development of professional skills), which offers English language lessons to lower-income people. These classes, offered on university premises, are given by ELITE and FALE network members.

In response to VALE S.A. and the Municipal Administration [Town Hall], we have begun work on the details of the socio-environmental project which involves the grota and the residents of the community on the banks of the stream, dividing the participants into two teams: sociological and environmental.

The sociological team is responsible for seeking a more direct relationship with the community on the banks of the river, to develop educational and environmental activities and surveys which include new residents who, because of this invasion, occupy areas near the sources of the stream which were buried to enable the installation of a railway track.

The environmental team is responsible for the analysis, evaluation and collection of data about the stream in relation to its physical state, its course and water flow, as well as the nature of the soil, a study of the vegetation and animal species, and the registering of co-ordinates along the whole length of the stream, for later processing of the information.

We intend to complete this project in 2011 and will submit it for the consideration of the local government and the community in a public gathering of the Town Council in Marabá.

Amongst the principal obstacles to the restoration of the grota are political disputes, electoral speculation and the apathy of the local churches. The politicians always promise to solve the problem, but the proposals go against the current local environmental laws. One example is the routing of the residents’ drains to the stream, which can compromise the quality of the water and of the aquatic species which are able to survive the contamination and pollution of the water.

Apart from this, the municipal environmental and public works departments do not work in conjunction with each other, and there are no studies beyond the one undertaken along the banks of the grota by the FALE and ABU-Marabá groups.

The ones who suffer most are the less well-off part of the population who live in areas remote from the river. Children fall ill, families lose their belongings in floods, and the assistance given to residents is precarious.

The project for the restoration of the grota works in different phases. At first, the ABU-Marabá group mapped and diagnosed the problem. Then there was the setting out of a plan of action – education and communitarian development in the region, which has still not been put into action. The FALE network began the third phase with a national campaign which brought visibility and called on the authorities to look to their responsibility in relation to the population and to the environment. We are in the fourth phase of the project. The NGO ELITES, ABU-Marabá and FALE network have joined forces on various fronts with a common purpose: substantial environmental restoration.

We discovered that the most important resource a project could possibly have is people. In addition, however well qualified and experienced the team may be, the success of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. From Marabá to the World Elías da Silva Albuquerque, Patrícia Marques Almeida and Carlos Eduardo da Silva
• 2. One Company and Many Communities João Carlos de Souza Matos and Ulisses Matiolli Sabará
• 3. The Gospel in Action in the Sertão Wostenes Luiz L. dos Santos
• 4. Healing Our Land Hernani Ramos and Maria Eugênia Barrientos
• 5. The Rubbish-Dump Church Siméa Meldrum
• 6. Sowing Ecological Awareness through Art Carlinhos Veiga
• 7. Planting Good Seeds Elisa Ribeiro da Cunha
• 8. God’s Gardeners, Friends of the Park Éser Pacheco
• 9. Camping in Nature Marcelo Renan Santos
• 10. Reconciling Ourselves with Creation Larissa Tiemi Nakano
• 11. Caring for Creation Bebeto Araújo
• 12. The Future is in the Past Claudio Oliver
• 13. Small Seeds, Large Actions Andrea Ramos Santos and Raquel Arouca
• Notes
• Contact Details
• Contributors
• Back Cover