WAREHAM, Massachusetts (AP) – The stretch of shoreline owned by a Massachusetts religious order is a place where even the sounds add to the stillness. Bells jangle on buoys as birds chatter and the tide slides in a soft rush past scattered clammers seeking shellfish.

``It's a refuge of silence,'' said the Rev. Stan Kolasa, director of a retreat center on the Buzzards Bay property. ``It's holy. This is holy ground.''

It also is protected ground. Kolasa's Roman Catholic order, the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, sold development rights on 100 acres (40 1/2 hectares) of its property for $3.6 million. It now comprises a major piece of the Great Neck Wildlife Sanctuary, which opens to the public late this year.

Deals to buy religious land, or its development rights, are being made with the help of conservationists from Washington state and Colorado in the Western United States and New Jersey and Massachusetts in the East. In a tough economy, such land is a tempting asset for churches and religious orders to trade for solvency. Many are choosing to conserve it, however, sometimes accepting less money than private developers would offer.

``There's a rising consciousness among a lot of different religious groups that the environment is very important,'' said Kathy McGrath of the Religious Land Conservancy Project. Some, she said, ``think about land conservation as a spiritual activity.''

``We've recognized that we have more common ground than we ever knew we had,'' Kathy Sferra of Mass Audubon, which helped secure the Sacred Hearts' contract and will manage the sanctuary. But even with two willing parties, religious land deals are not easy.

It can take years to get consensus from a religious group, approval from various levels of government and funding from different private and public sources. With public funds for conservation land getting more scarce, it also is tough to seal any type of conservation purchase and the opportunities to buy do not last forever, said Joe Martens of the Open Space Institute, which has bought religious properties along the Hudson River.