Christianity and the Survival of Creation
Wendell Berry argues that Christianity’s failure to resist the destruction of the natural world has made it appear culpable in that destruction, and that this charge is often justified by the conduct of Christian institutions. Priests, missionaries, churches, and professed Christians have too often accompanied conquest, exploitation, industrial economics, and the devastation of traditional cultures and Creation itself. Yet he rejects the anti-Christian environmentalist habit of dismissing the Bible without reading it closely. Christianity, as the native religion of many people, must survive and renew itself, for the survival of Creation may depend upon that renewal. Reading the Bible in the light of Creation, Berry finds that humans do not own the earth but live as God’s guests and stewards. Creation includes not only what humans approve but every creature, and God’s love for the world establishes its inherent goodness. The world is not a discarded product of a past act of creation: all creatures continually participate in God’s being through His breath and spirit. Therefore the destruction of nature is not merely bad stewardship or bad economics but blasphemy: contempt for God’s gifts. Humans may use nature to meet their needs, but have no right to waste, ruin, exterminate, or accumulate beyond responsible limits. Berry contends that modern Christianity has concealed this holiness by accommodating itself to an exploitive industrial and military economy. Religion cannot be meaningfully separated from economy, understood as the human household’s proper place within the household of nature. Christians must ask what practices of work, restraint, and livelihood can honor life, rather than accepting an economy that destroys the world as unavoidable. He also attacks the notion that holiness belongs chiefly to church buildings while homes, farms, shops, and workplaces are secular. Biblical teaching denies that God can be confined in structures made by human hands, and its decisive encounters occur in fields, deserts, mountains, waters, prisons, and ordinary human lives. Ritual is repudiated when it coexists with bloodshed and injustice. Religion must be practiced in the world. The Bible is an outdoor, “hypaethral” book, whose miracles become more intelligible amid the ordinary wonders of creation. Nature itself reveals God; reducing revelation to a written book alone encourages the reduction of creatures to mere material and legitimizes their abuse. Good work, Berry argues, honors God’s work. It uses materials, tools, creatures, and labor with respect, joining usefulness to beauty, pleasure to responsibility, and work to love. Shoddy, destructive work is blasphemous because it dishonors Creation and its maker. Biblical reverence for land, fruits, mountains, waters, and living things stands opposed to industrial contempt for nature. The deepest source of destruction is dualism: the division of Creator from creature, spirit from matter, religion from nature, worship from work, and especially soul from body. Berry reads Genesis as saying not that a human is a body plus a soul, but that dust animated by God’s breath becomes a living soul. The soul is the whole creature, not a spiritual possession trapped in a lowly body. To despise the body, dust, and earthly life is thus to despise God’s creation; to treat the world as mere material makes humans its arbitrary judges and destroyers. If people understand themselves as living souls among other creatures, free to do good or evil, every act acquires moral and eternal significance. Everyone is an artist in the broad sense, because every person’s work or failure to work changes other lives and the world. Art, craft, and labor should not be divided: the plowman and potter alike have a cosmic function. Traditional art joins religion, economy, skill, service, beauty, and reverence for materials. Gifts of talent, subject, and inspiration are not private possessions but gifts requiring competent and responsible use. Berry concludes that modern Christianity has cut itself off from nature, culture, serious art, and good work while measuring success by growth and concentrating on saving isolated souls. Allied in practice with the state, industrialism, militarism, empire, and technological “progress,” it has silently permitted the ravaging of natural and human households. Biblical religion, by contrast, corrects both rulers and ordinary people. Christ’s teachings affront established power, and the image of the crucified Christ amid war judges history and governments that pray to God while remaining willing to destroy His world.
By Wendell Berry · First published 2019 · Genre: Environmental Theology, Christian Ethics, Religious Nonfiction · 7,868 words
First lines
I CONFESS that I have not invariably been comfortable in front of a pulpit; I have never been comfortable behind one. To be behind a pulpit is always a forcible reminder to me that I am an essayist and, in many ways, a dissenter. An essayist is, literally, a writer who attempts to tell the truth. Preachers must resign themselves to being either right or wrong; an essayist, when proved wrong, may claim to have been "just practicing. " An essayist is privileged to speak without institutional authorization. A dissenter, of course, must speak without privilege.
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Christianity and the Survival of Creation is listed on Textopian as an essay by Wendell Berry, dated 2019 CE.
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- Work type: Essay
- Author: Wendell Berry
- Date: 2019 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Environmental Theology, Christian Ethics, Religious Nonfiction, Environmental Nonfiction, Essay
- Length: 7,868 words
- Structure: 1 section, 60 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Fairly Difficult (10th-12th Grade)
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- Work identity for Christianity and the Survival of Creation by Wendell Berry
- Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
- Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
- Readability and classroom-planning context
- Passage-specific claims should cite the exact /read/ URL for the relevant chapter or paragraph
Genres
- Environmental Theology — The work interprets Christian scripture and doctrine through humanity's moral relationship to Creation, arguing that ecological care is a religious obligation.
- Christian Ethics — Berry evaluates Christian conduct, stewardship, work, property, economy, and politics according to biblical moral principles.
- Religious Nonfiction — It is a nonfictional theological reflection on Christianity, the Bible, church institutions, and religious practice.
- Environmental Nonfiction — The central argument condemns ecological destruction and advocates reverence, restraint, conservation, and responsible dwelling within nature.
Tags
Christian ethics · environmental stewardship · ecology · faith and nature · creation care · agrarianism · sustainable agriculture · rural life · religion and environmentalism · social criticism · industrial agriculture · consumerism