Do religions codify ecological principles? This paper explores empirically and theoretically the role religious beliefs play in shaping environmental interactions. I study African Traditional Religions (ATR) which place forests within a sacred sphere. Relying on the unique case of Benin where adherence is freely reported, I use an instrumental variable strategy by exploiting the variation in proximity to the Benin-Nigerian border. I find that one standard deviation increase in ATR adherence has a 0.4 standard deviation positive impact on the five year average annual change in forest cover. Ruling out social capital and fear as viable mechanisms, I find evidence of presence of a set of attitudes within adherents that reflect environmental stewardship and sustainability. Utilizing these results, I build a novel non-market interactions model of agents with heterogeneous religious adherence and its affect on the spatial density of the forest cover. The model shows how the potential scarcity of natural resources can characterize both individual and population extraction decisions, and the distribution of religious beliefs amongst the population can be a key driver of forest conservation. The model also characterizes the impact of peer effects and risk aversion vis-à-vis religious adherence on individual forest consumption policies.