Tag: Wendell Berry

What do such conservatives wish to conserve?

The curious thing is that many agriculture specialists and “agribusinessmen” see themselves as conservatives. They look with contempt upon governmental “indulgence” of those who have no more “moral fiber” than to accept “handouts” from the public treasury – but they look with equal contempt upon the most traditional and appropriate means of independence. What do such conservatives wish to conserve? Evidently nothing less than the great corporate blocks of wealth and power, in whose every interest is implied the moral degeneracy and economic dependence of the people. They do not esteem the possibility of a prospering, independent class of small owners because they are, in fact, not conservatives at all, but the most doctrinaire and disruptive of revolutionaries.

Wendell Berry, “Margins” in The Unsettling of America

I’ve written in this vein before, and I’m glad to get some confirmation of this feeling from Wendell: today’s conservatives are anything but conservative, in terms of the policies and priorities they put forth. There is nothing conservative about wanting to radically tear down or alter institutions and programs. Many so-called conservatives today are instead radicals, driven by an ideological commitment to capitalism and nationalism. In fact, as I wrote recently, everyone is a radical now, on all sides. And there are a few of us, moderately inclined (tempermentally) who are taking up the task identified by William F. Buckley half a century ago of standing athwart the on-going social media fights and political games, yelling “stop!”

On a unrelated note, this is the last of my posts recently detailing the things I wanted to pull from Wendell Berry’s What Are People For? and The Unsettling of America. Onward to new obsessions!

The rural church as a dumping ground

…I want to speak of…the practice…of using the rural ministry as a training ground for young minsters, and as a means of subsidizing their education. No church official, apparently, sees any logical, much less any spiritual, problem in sending young people to minister to country churches before they have, according to their institutional superiors, become eligible to be ministers. These student ministers invariably leave their rural congregations that have sponsored or endured their educations as soon as possible once they have their diplomas in hand. The denominational hierarchies, then, evidently regard country places in exactly the same way as “the economy” does: as sources of economic power to be exploited for the advantage of “better” places. The country people will be used to educate minsters for the benefit of city people (in wealthier churches) who, obviously, are thought more deserving of educated ministers. This, I am well aware, is mainly the fault of the church organizations; it is not a charge that can be made to stick to any young minister in particular: not all ministers should be country ministers, just as not all people should be country people. And yet it is a fact that in the more than fifty years that I have known my own rural community, many student ministers have been “called” to serve in its churches, but not one has ever been “called” to stay. The message that country people get from their churches, then, is the same message they get from “the economy”: that, as country people, they do not matter much and do not deserve much consideration. And this inescapably imposes an economic valuation on spiritual things. According to the modern church, as one of my Christian friends said to me, “The soul of the plowboy ain’t worth as much as the soul of the delivery boy.”

Wendell Berry, “God and Country” in What Are People For?

Wendell Berry wrote these words almost 40 years ago, and I don’t think a lot has changed on this front with the church. I saw this dynamic at play during my time in seminary, and experienced it myself in the brief time I was in the ordination process with the United Methodist Church. Rural churches are one of two things: training grounds, or dumping grounds. Letting young ministers flounder along and learn, or stashing undesirable or troublesome ministers somewhere where they won’t have much influence. In the church, there are “elite” church settings, and there is a striving upward, a hierarchy of status which is shown by the congregations one has had the chance to “serve.” It’s just another way much of the church has accepted the assumptions and practices of modernity and a capitalist system.

Rural churches used to be part of the foundation of small towns, and while I don’t think there is a direct cause-and-effect relationship, I do think the destruction of small town America is exemplified in some ways by the disregard many larger denominational bodies have for rural and small town churches. These churches are peopled by Christians who may not offer the national church much in the way of money or material resources or clout, but, I ask again, is significance and productivity the end we are looking for as Christians? Small churches should be nurtured, cared for, and called upon because of their identity as fellow siblings in Christ, not for what they can offer us in terms of a return on investment.

Excerpt #30: old Chinese landscapes

Old Chinese landscape painting reveal, among towering mountains, the frail outline of a roof or a tiny human figure passing along a road on foot or horseback. These landscapes are almost always populated. There is no implication of a dehumanized interest in nature “for its own sake.” What is represented is a world in which humans belong, but which does not belong to humans in any tidy economic sense; the Creation provides a place for humans, but it is greater than humanity and within it even great men are small. Such humility is the consequence of an accurate insight, ecological in its bearing, not a pious deference to “spiritual” value.

Wendell Berry, “The Body and the Earth” in The Unsettling of America