Wendell Berry on Christianity and conservation

>responsibility of Christians to care for the natural world -

It works with a secular take too - it's stupid to sh*t in your own nest. I remember as a kid in the 60's being driven through towns in New England that stunk of tanneries. But that doesn't mean I'm for an Algore secular religious approach to the environment. I prefer a meat and potatoes practical scientific approach.

Having long ago exported the locus of all meaning and value extraterrestrially out of the biosphere, this "vale of tears", into the afterlife*, Christians and all the rest of us who have inherited the derivative, post-Christian, abstract-binary-value-only religion of hypercapitalism might have a bit more of an assymptotic, uphill climb than Berry's bucolic gospel would suggest.

The "churches" of this purely mathematical religion, hypercapitalism, that is, the multinational corporations, are already dismantling the political nation states and replacing them as the nexus (plural) of earthly power. By the same token, in the micro value-arena it's becoming increasingly impossible to both have a large family and not worship economically at the church of Wal*Mart: you can do one, or the other, but not both.

I applaud Berry's terrestrial ethos and think it is long overdue, I simply fear it might already be 100 years or so too late.

*a problem for any species, on any planet, around any star, not just Christians or other earthly religionists with equivalent values.

Great. Thanks for linking the article.

I thought that this was a very powerful essay. I don't know that people don't care about the destruction of nature, but we seem to value individual ownership and property rights over that of the larger community. In the last 2 places where I've lived(NJ and eastern PA), the community has been trying to preserve farmland and open space. It's hard to do because so many people think that people who own land should be able to do with their land what they want. There's a lot of discussion in NJ and eastern PA because the open land is becoming more and more scarce. When I lived in NJ, a developer received permission to put roads across wetlands so that he could build a house behind our home. I don't know who in the heck would want to live in a house surrounded by wetlands, but I'm sure that someone is the proud owner of the house in the swamp. I don't know, maybe it goes back to the idea of putting the individual & the right to profit over what's best for the community. I agree with Wendell Berry's assessment that those ideas aren't Biblical based. Christians should put the needs of God's creation(& that includes animals and plants)over the need to profit. So should Jews and Muslims.

Wendell Berry is truly a national treasure. One of the great writers of our time. The "Bible as outdoor book" is a very powerful image. He writes, "What the Bible might mean, or how it could mean anything, in a closed, air-conditioned building, I do not know. I know that holiness cannot be confined."

Amen. I have visited a number of mega-churches and I'm always amazed at the techno-gadgetry and the size of the HVAC systems required to cool these places. The Dallas News ran an article recently about "green" churches and Prestonwood Baptist's efforts to use less energy. I was "shocked" to learn that Prestonwood's average utility bill is over $250,000.

I'm glad Rod posted this one.