THE NEED FOR A NEW SIMPLICITY

'Without the pole-star of a new simplicity, it seems to me, civilization will continue by turns at deadlock or mad speed, like a machine out of control which bumps itself from one obstacle to another until it falls to pieces.'

Adrian Bell, The Cherry Tree, p.35.

THE GOOD IN TRADITIONALISM

'The most traditional farmer in the district had the healthiest soil.'
James Rebanks, English Pastoral, p.144.

ELEPHANTS AREN'T SEEKING TO SAVE HUMANITY

'In the whole known universe we are the only species that takes responsibility for the others; the only species that demonstrates the slightest interest in naming, tending, and conserving the others; that indeed is accountable for the stewardship of the others; and the only species that feels guilt (however fitfully and hypocritically) when its stewardship fails.' 

Andy Crouch in John G Stackhouse Jr., Why You're Here: Ethics for the Real World, p.23. 

ENVIRONMENTALISM TODAY

'The weird and unintentional pincer movement of the failed left, with its class analysis of waterfalls and fresh air, and the managerial, carbon-uber-alles brigade has infiltrated, ironed out and reworked environmentalism for its own ends. Now it is not about the ridiculous beauty of coral, the mist over the fields at dawn. It is not about ecocentrism. It is not about reforging a connection between over-civilised people and the world outside their windows. It is not about living close to the land or valuing work for the sake of the world. It is not about attacking the self-absorbed conceits of the bubble that our civilsation has become. 

Today's environmentalism is about people. It is a consolation prize for a gaggle of washed-up Trots and at the same time, with an amusing irony, it is an adjunct to hyper-capitalism; the catalytic converter on the silver SUV of the global economy. It is an engineering challenge; a problem-solving device for people to whom the sight of a wild Pennine hilltop brings not feelings of transcendence but thoughts about the wasted potential for renewable energy. It is about saving civilisation from the results of its own actions; a desperate attempt to prevent Gaia from hiccuping and wiping out our coffee shops and broadband connections. It is our last hope.'  

Paul Kingsnorth, Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist, p.78.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PLACE

'We have given up the understanding - dropped it out of our language and so out of our thought - that we and our country create one another; that our land passes in and out of our bodies just as our bodies pass in and out of our land; that as we and our land are part of one another, so all who are living as neighbors here, human and plant and animal, are part of one another, and so cannot possibly flourish alone; that, therefore, our culture and our place are images of each other and inseparable from each other and so neither can be better that the other.' 

Wendell Berry in John Inge, A Christian Theology of Place, p.134. 

DESPOILING CREATION

'...it is a sin to make ugly what God has created for the purpose of reflecting and sharing God's beauty.' 

Belden C Lane, Ravished by Beauty, p.172. 

UNITING CONSERVATIVES & LIBERALS AROUND GOD'S ORDER OF THINGS

'At present "conservative" Christians are often vociferous on issues like abortion and homosexuality while embodying a Western consumer lifestyle and laughing off global warming. Liberal Christians tend to take environmental issues more seriously but are more cautious on "sin" and tend to be pro-choice and in favor of blessing same-sex unions. A recovery of the biblical notion of creation order and its allied motif of the antithesis that runs through the whole of creation would go a long way toward challenging this polarity. God's order applies as much to marriage and sexuality as it does to how we care for the earth. So, just as it is important that Christians hold onto God's order for marriage and sexuality and thus refuse to affirms same-sex relationships as normative, and just as they uphold the sanctity of human life and refuse to condone most practice of abortion, so too Christians must be clear that environmental destruction and Western-style consumerism is downright sin.' 

Craig G Bartholomew, Where Mortals Dwell, p.312. 

EARLY ENVIRONMENTALISM

'The custody of the garden was given in charge to Adam, to show that we possess the things which God has committed to our hands, that being content with a frugal and moderate use of them, we should take care of what shall remain. Let him who possesses a filed, so partake of its yearly fruits, that he may not suffer the ground to be injured by his negligence; but let him endeavour to hand it down to posterity as he received it, or even better cultivated. Let him so feed on its fruits, that he neither dissipates it by luxury, nor permits it to be marred or ruined by neglect. Moreover, that this economy, and this diligence, with respect to those good things which God has given us to enjoy, may flourish among us; let every one regard himself as the steward of God in all things which he possesses. Then he will neither conduct himself dissolutely, nor corrupt by abuse those things which God requires to be preserved.' 

John Calvin in Craig G Bartholomew, Where Mortals Dwell, p.215. 

CHRISTIANITY & CULTURE

'In denying the holiness of the body, and of the so-called physical reality of the world - and in denying support to the good economy, the good work, by which alone the Creation can receive due honor - modern Christianity generally has cut itself off from both nature and culture. It has no serious or competent interest in biology or ecology. And it is equally uninterested in the arts by which humankind connects itself to nature. It manifests no awareness of the specifically Christian cultural lineages that connect us with the past.There is, for example, a splendid heritage of Christian poetry in English that most church members live and die without reading or hearing or hearing about. Most sermons are preached without any awareness of all that the making of sermons is an art that has at times been magnificent. Most modern churches look like they were built by robots without reference to the heritage of church architecture or respect for the place; they embody no awareness that work can be worship. Most religious music now attests to the general assumption that religion is no more than a vaguely pious (and vaguely romantic) emotion.'
Wendell Berry, 'Christianity and the Survival of Creation' in Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community, p.109. 

THE ENVIRONMENT & GENESIS 1:28

'...those who see in Genesis 1:28 the source of all our abuse of the natural world (most of them apparently having read no more of the Bible than that verse) are guilty of an extremely unintelligent misreading of Genesis 1:28 itself. How, for example, would one arrange to "replenish the earth" if "subdue" means, as alleged, "conquer" or "defeat" or "destroy"?' 

Wendell Berry, 'God and Country' in What Are People For? p.98.

THE PURPOSE OF CREATION

'That God created all this for for His pleasure, and that they continue to exist because they please Him, is formidable doctrine indeed, as far as possible both from the "anthropocentric" utilitarianism that some environmentalist critics claim to find in the Bible and from the grouchy spirituality of many Christians.'

Wendell Berry, 'Economy and Pleasure' in What Are People For?, p.138.

THE ENVIRONMENT

'The religion and the environmentalism of the highly industrialized countries are a bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something that they do not really wish to destroy. We all live by robbing nature, but our standard of living demands that the robbery shall continue.

We must achieve the character and acquire the skills to live much poorer than we do. We must waste less. We must do more for ourselves and for each other. It is either that or continue merely to think and talk about changes that we are inviting catastrophe to make. 

The great obstacle is simply this: the conviction that we cannot change because we are dependent on what is wrong. But that is the addict's excuse, and we know that it will not do.' 

Wendell Berry, 'Word and Flesh' in What Are People For?., p.201. 

SAVING THE PLANET

'The question that must be addressed, therefore, is not how to care for the planet, but how to care for each of the planet's millions of human and natural neighborhoods, each of its millions of small pieces and parcels of land, each one of which is in some precious way different from all of the pothers. Our understandable wish to preserve the planet must somehow be reduced to the scale of our competence - that is, to the wish to preserve all of its humble households and neighborhoods.'

Wendell Berry, 'Word and Flesh' in What Are People For?, p.200.  

THE FUTURE

'We do not need to plan or devise a "world of the future"; if we take care of the world of the present, the future will have received full justice from us. A good future is implicit in the soils, forests, grasslands, marshes, deserts, mountains, rivers, lakes, and oceans that we have now, and in the good things of human culture that we have now; the only valid "futurology" available to us is to take care of those things. We have no need to contrive and dabble at "the future of the human race"; we have the same pressing need that we have always had - to love, care for, and teach our children.' 

Wendell Berry, 'Feminism, the Body, and the Machine' in What Are People For?, p.188.