In a time of climate change, environmental degradation, and social injustice, the question of the value and purpose of human life has become urgent. What are the grounds for hope in a wounded world? This Sacred Life gives a deep philosophical and religious articulation of humanity's identity and vocation by rooting people in a symbiotic, meshwork world that is saturated with sacred gifts. The benefits of artificial intelligence and genetic enhancement notwithstanding, Norman Wirzba shows how an account of humans as interdependent and vulnerable creatures orients people to be a creative, healing presence in a world punctuated by wounds. He argues that the commodification of places and creatures needs to be resisted so that all life can be cherished and celebrated. Humanity's fundamental vocation is to bear witness to God's love for creaturely life, and to commit to the construction of a hospitable and beautiful world.

This refreshing work offers a distinctly agrarian reframing of spiritual practices to address today’s most pressing social and ecological concerns. For thousands of years most human beings drew their daily living from, and made sense of their lives in reference to, the land. Growing and finding food, along with the multiple practices of home maintenance and the cultivations of communities, were the abiding concerns that shaped what people understood about and expected from life. In Agrarian Spirit, Norman Wirzba demonstrates how agrarianism is of vital and continuing significance for spiritual life today. Far from being the exclusive concern of a dwindling number of farmers, this book shows how agrarian practices are an important corrective to the political and economic policies that are doing so much harm to our society and habitats. It is an invitation to the personal transformation that equips all people to live peaceably and beautifully with each other and the land. Agrarian Spirit begins with a clear and concise affirmation of creaturely life. Wirzba shows that a human life is inextricably entangled with the lives of fellow animals and plants, and that individual flourishing must always include the flourishing of the habitats that nourish and sustain our life together. The book explores how agrarian sensibilities and responsibilities transform the practices of prayer, perception, mystical union, humility, gratitude, and hope. Wirzba provides an elegant and compelling account of spiritual life that is both attuned to ancient scriptural sources and keyed to addressing the pressing social and ecological concerns of today. Scholars and students of theology, ecotheology, and spirituality, as well as readers interested in agrarian and environmental studies, will gain much from this book.

In a time of climate change, environmental degradation, and social injustice, the question of the value and purpose of human life has become urgent. What are the grounds for hope in a wounded world? This Sacred Life gives a deep philosophical and religious articulation of humanity's identity and vocation by rooting people in a symbiotic, meshwork world that is saturated with sacred gifts. The benefits of artificial intelligence and genetic enhancement notwithstanding, Norman Wirzba shows how an account of humans as interdependent and vulnerable creatures orients people to be a creative, healing presence in a world punctuated by wounds. He argues that the commodification of places and creatures needs to be resisted so that all life can be cherished and celebrated. Humanity's fundamental vocation is to bear witness to God's love for creaturely life, and to commit to the construction of a hospitable and beautiful world.

Food - how it's grown, how it's shared - makes us who we are. This issue traces the connections between farm and food, between humus and human. According to the first book of the Bible, tending the earth was humankind's first task: "The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed" (Gen. 2:8). The desire to get one's hands dirty raising one's own food, then, doesn't just come from modern romanticism, but is built into human nature. The title, "The Welcome Table," comes from a spiritual first sung by enslaved African-Americans. The song refers to the Bible's closing scene, the wedding feast of the Lamb described in the Book of Revelation, to which every race, tribe, and tongue are invited - a divine pledge of a day of freedom and freely shared plenty, of earth renewed and humanity restored. In the case of food, the symbol is the substance. Every meal, if shared generously and with radical hospitality, is already now a taste of the feast to come. Also in this issue: poetry by Luci Shaw; reviews of books by Julia Child, Robert Farrar Capon, Peter Mayle, Albert Woodfox, and Maria von Trapp; and art by Michael Naples, Sieger Koeder, Carl Juste, Andre Chung, Angel Bracho, Winslow Homer, Raymond Logan, Sybil Andrews, Cameron Davidson, and Jason Landsel. Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus' message into practice and find common cause with others.

How does Christianity change the way we view the natural world? In this addition to a critically acclaimed series, renowned theologian Norman Wirzba engages philosophers, environmentalists, and cultural critics to show how the modern concept of nature has been deeply problematic. He explains that understanding the world as creation rather than as nature or the environment makes possible an imagination shaped by practices of responsibility and gratitude, which can help bring healing to our lands and communities. By learning to give thanks for creation as God's gift of life, Christians bear witness to the divine love that is reconciling all things to God. Named a "Best Theology Book of 2015," Englewood Review of Books "Best Example of Theology in Conversation with Urgent Contemporary Concerns" for 2015, Hearts & Minds Bookstore

It has become a commonplace that Biblical religion bears a heavy share of responsibility for our past negligence towards the environment. In this provocative book, Norman Wirzba argues that the Biblical doctrine of creation actually holds the key to a true understanding of our place in the environment and our responsibility toward it. Wirzba contends that an adequate response to environmental destruction depends on a new formulation of ourselves as part of a larger whole, rather than as radically free individuals. Drawing on the work of biblical scholars, ecologists, agrarians, philosophers, theologians, and cultural critics, Wirzba presents a compelling vision of a new religious environmentalism.

This book provides a comprehensive theological framework for assessing the significance of eating. Drawing on diverse theological, philosophical, and anthropological insights, it offers fresh ways to evaluate food production and consumption practices as they are being worked out in today's industrial food economy. Unlike books that focus primarily on vegetarianism and hunger-related concerns, this book broadens the scope of consideration to include the sacramental character of eating, the deep significance of hospitality, the meaning of death and sacrifice, the Eucharist as the place of inspiration and orientation, the importance of saying grace, and the possibility of eating in heaven. Throughout, eating is presented as a way of enacting fidelity between persons, between people and fellow creatures, and between people and Earth. Food and Faith demonstrates that eating is of profound economic, moral, and spiritual significance. Revised throughout, this edition includes a new introduction and two chapters, as well as updated bibliography. The additions add significantly to the core idea of creaturely membership and hospitality through discussion of the microbiome revolution in science, and the daunting challenge of the Anthropocene.

God is reconciling all things in heaven and on earth. We are alienated not only from one another, but also from the land that sustains us. Our ecosystems are increasingly damaged, and human bodies are likewise degraded. Most of us have little understanding of how our energy is derived or our food is produced, and many of our current industrialized practices are both unhealthy for our bodies and unsustainable for the planet. Agriculturalist Fred Bahnson and theologian Norman Wirzba declare that in Christ, God reconciles all bodies into a peaceful, life-promoting relationship with one another. Because human beings are incarnated in material, bodily existence, we are necessarily interdependent with plants and animals, land and sea, heaven and earth. The good news is that redemption is cosmic, with implications for agriculture and ecology, from farm to dinner table. Bahnson and Wirzba describe communities that model cooperative practices of relational life, with local food production, eucharistic eating and delight in God's provision. Reconciling with the land is a rich framework for a new way of life. Read this book to start down the path to restoring shalom and experiencing Jesus' kingdom of shared abundance, where neighbors are fed and all receive enough.

"Here is a human being speaking with calm and sanity out of the wilderness. We would do well to hear him."--The Washington Post Book World
Art of the Commonplace gathers twenty essays by Wendell Berry that offer an agrarian alternative to our dominant urban culture. Grouped around five themes--an agrarian critique of culture, agrarian fundamentals, agrarian economics, agrarian religion, and geo-biography--these essays promote a clearly defined and compelling vision important to all people dissatisfied with the stress, anxiety, disease, and destructiveness of contemporary American culture.
Why is agriculture becoming culturally irrelevant, and at what cost? What are the forces of social disintegration and how might they be reversed? How might men and women live together in ways that benefit both? And, how does the corporate takeover of social institutions and economic practices contribute to the destruction of human and natural environments?
Through his staunch support of local economies, his defense of farming communities, and his call for family integrity, Berry emerges as the champion of responsibilities and priorities that serve the health, vitality and happiness of the whole community of creation.

What is the proper relationship between human beings and the more-than-human world? This philosophical question, which underlies vast environmental crises, forces us to investigate the tension between our extraordinary powers, which seem to set us apart from nature, even above it, and our thoroughgoing ordinariness, as revealed by the evolutionary history we share with all life. The contributors to this volume ask us to consider whether the anxiety of unheimlichkeit, which in one form or another absorbed so much of twentieth-century philosophy, might reveal not our homelessness in the cosmos but a need for a fundamental belongingness and implacement in it.

This refreshing work offers a distinctly agrarian reframing of spiritual practices to address today’s most pressing social and ecological concerns. For thousands of years most human beings drew their daily living from, and made sense of their lives in reference to, the land. Growing and finding food, along with the multiple practices of home maintenance and the cultivations of communities, were the abiding concerns that shaped what people understood about and expected from life. In Agrarian Spirit, Norman Wirzba demonstrates how agrarianism is of vital and continuing significance for spiritual life today. Far from being the exclusive concern of a dwindling number of farmers, this book shows how agrarian practices are an important corrective to the political and economic policies that are doing so much harm to our society and habitats. It is an invitation to the personal transformation that equips all people to live peaceably and beautifully with each other and the land. Agrarian Spirit begins with a clear and concise affirmation of creaturely life. Wirzba shows that a human life is inextricably entangled with the lives of fellow animals and plants, and that individual flourishing must always include the flourishing of the habitats that nourish and sustain our life together. The book explores how agrarian sensibilities and responsibilities transform the practices of prayer, perception, mystical union, humility, gratitude, and hope. Wirzba provides an elegant and compelling account of spiritual life that is both attuned to ancient scriptural sources and keyed to addressing the pressing social and ecological concerns of today. Scholars and students of theology, ecotheology, and spirituality, as well as readers interested in agrarian and environmental studies, will gain much from this book.

Words of Life is the sequel and companion to Phenomenology and the "Theological Turn," edited by Dominique Janicaud, Jean-Francois Courtine, Jean-Louis Chretien, Michel Henry, Jean-Luc Marion, and Paul Ricoeur. In that volume, Janicaud accuses Levinas, Henry, Marion, and Chretien of "veering" from phenomenological neutrality to a theologically inflected phenomenology. By contrast, the contributors to this collection interrogate whether phenomenology's proper starting point is agnostic or atheistic. Many hold the view that phenomenology after the theological turn may very well be true both to itself and to the phenomenological "things themselves." In one way or another, all of these essays contend with the limits and expectations of phenomenology. As such, they are all concerned with what counts as "proper" phenomenology and even the very structure of phenomenology. None of them, however, is limited to such questions. Indeed, the rich tapestry that they weave tells us much about human experience. Themes such as faith, hope, love, grace, the gift, the sacraments, the words of Christ, suffering, joy, life, the call, touch, listening, wounding, and humility are woven throughout the various meditations in this volume. The contributors use striking examples to illuminate the structure and limits of phenomenology and, in turn, phenomenology serves to clarify those very examples. Thus practice clarifies theory and theory clarifies practice, resulting in new theological turns and new life for phenomenology. The volume showcases the work of both senior and junior scholars, including Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Yves Lacoste, Kevin Hart, Anthony J. Steinbock, Jeffrey Bloechl, Jeffrey L. Kosky, Clayton Crockett, Brian Treanor, and Christina Gschwandtner-as well as the editors themselves.

This collection of ground-breaking essays considers the many dimensions of prayer: how prayer relates us to the divine; prayer's ability to reveal what is essential about our humanity; the power of prayer to transform human desire and action; and the relation of prayer to cognition. It takes up the meaning of prayer from within a uniquely phenomenological point of view, demonstrating that the phenomenology of prayer is as much about the character and boundaries of phenomenological analysis as it is about the heart of religious life.The contributors: Michael F. Andrews, Bruce Ellis Benson, Mark Cauchi, Benjamin Crowe, Mark Gedney, Philip Goodchild, Christina M. Gschwandtner, Lissa McCullough, Cleo McNelly Kearns, Edward F. Mooney, B. Keith Putt, Jill Robbins, Brian Treanor, Merold Westphal, Norman Wirzba, Terence Wright and Terence and James R. Mensch. Bruce Ellis Benson is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College. He is the author of Graven Ideologies: Nietzsche, Derrida, and Marion on Modern Idolatry and The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue: A Phenomenology of Music. Norman Wirzba is Associate Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Georgetown College, Kentucky. He is the author of The Paradise of God and editor of The Essential Agrarian Reader.

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." (Gen. 1: 26) It has become a commonplace
that Biblical religion bears a heavy share of responsibility for our destruction of the environment, and this passage from the King James version of the Bible exemplifies what is generally believed to be the Biblical attitude toward the earth.
In this provocative book, however, Norman Wirzba argues that the doctrine of creation, when understood as a statement about the moral and spiritual meaning of the world, actually holds the key to a true understanding of our place in the environment and our responsibility toward it. Wirzba contends
that an adequate response to environmental destruction depends on a new formulation of ourselves as part of a created whole, rather than as autonomous, unencumbered individuals. Drawing on the work of biblical scholars, ecologists, agrarians, philosophers, theologians, and cultural critics, Wirzba
develops a comprehensive worldview that grows out of the idea that the world is God's creation. While the text of Genesis has historically encouraged a vision of persons as masters of creation, a more theologically and ecologically sensitive rendering, he says, would be to say that we are servants
of creation. Our present culture, Wirzba believes, results from a denial of creation that has caused modern problems as diverse as rootlessness, individualism, careerism, boredom, and consumerism. The recovery of the meaning of creation can lead to a renewed senseof human identity and vocation, and
happier, more peaceful lives. He concludes by offering practical advice for individuals who wish to begin the work of transformation and renewal.
Moving beyond the usual political debates, The Paradise of God presents a compelling vision of a new religious environmentalism.

This book provides a comprehensive theological framework for assessing the significance of eating. Drawing on diverse theological, philosophical, and anthropological insights, it offers fresh ways to evaluate food production and consumption practices as they are being worked out in today's industrial food economy. Unlike books that focus primarily on vegetarianism and hunger-related concerns, this book broadens the scope of consideration to include the sacramental character of eating, the deep significance of hospitality, the meaning of death and sacrifice, the Eucharist as the place of inspiration and orientation, the importance of saying grace, and the possibility of eating in heaven. Throughout, eating is presented as a way of enacting fidelity between persons, between people and fellow creatures, and between people and Earth. Food and Faith demonstrates that eating is of profound economic, moral, and spiritual significance. Revised throughout, this edition includes a new introduction and two chapters, as well as updated bibliography. The additions add significantly to the core idea of creaturely membership and hospitality through discussion of the microbiome revolution in science, and the daunting challenge of the Anthropocene.

Words of Life is the sequel and companion to Phenomenology and the "Theological Turn," edited by Dominique Janicaud, Jean-Francois Courtine, Jean-Louis Chretien, Michel Henry, Jean-Luc Marion, and Paul Ricoeur. In that volume, Janicaud accuses Levinas, Henry, Marion, and Chretien of "veering" from phenomenological neutrality to a theologically inflected phenomenology. By contrast, the contributors to this collection interrogate whether phenomenology's proper starting point is agnostic or atheistic. Many hold the view that phenomenology after the theological turn may very well be true both to itself and to the phenomenological "things themselves." In one way or another, all of these essays contend with the limits and expectations of phenomenology. As such, they are all concerned with what counts as "proper" phenomenology and even the very structure of phenomenology. None of them, however, is limited to such questions. Indeed, the rich tapestry that they weave tells us much about human experience. Themes such as faith, hope, love, grace, the gift, the sacraments, the words of Christ, suffering, joy, life, the call, touch, listening, wounding, and humility are woven throughout the various meditations in this volume. The contributors use striking examples to illuminate the structure and limits of phenomenology and, in turn, phenomenology serves to clarify those very examples. Thus practice clarifies theory and theory clarifies practice, resulting in new theological turns and new life for phenomenology. The volume showcases the work of both senior and junior scholars, including Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Yves Lacoste, Kevin Hart, Anthony J. Steinbock, Jeffrey Bloechl, Jeffrey L. Kosky, Clayton Crockett, Brian Treanor, and Christina Gschwandtner-as well as the editors themselves.

Distinct practices of eating are at the heart of many of the world's faith traditions -- from the Christian Eucharist to Muslim customs of fasting during Ramadan to the vegetarianism and asceticism practiced by some followers of Hinduism and Buddhism. What we eat, how we eat, and whom we eat with can express our core values and religious devotion more clearly than verbal piety. In this wide-ranging collection, eminent scholars, theologians, activists, and lay farmers illuminate how religious beliefs influence and are influenced by the values and practices of sustainable agriculture. Together, they analyze a multitude of agricultural practices for their contributions to healthy, ethical living and environmental justice. Throughout, the contributors address current critical issues, including global trade agreements, indigenous rights to land and seed, and the effects of postcolonialism on farming and industry. Covering indigenous, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish perspectives, this groundbreaking volume makes a significant contribution to the study of ethics and agriculture.

Sabbath is one day a week when we should rest from our otherwise harried lives, right? In "Living the Sabbath," Norman Wirzba leads us to a much more holistic and rewarding understanding of Sabbath-keeping. Wirzba shows how Sabbath is ultimately about delight in the goodness that God has made--in everything we do, every day of the week. With practical examples, Wirzba unpacks what that means for our daily lives at work, in our homes, in our economies, in school, in our treatment of creation, and in church. This book will appeal to clergy and laypeople alike and to all who are seeking ways to discover the transformative power of Sabbath in their lives today.

This collection of ground-breaking essays considers the many dimensions of prayer: how prayer relates us to the divine; prayer's ability to reveal what is essential about our humanity; the power of prayer to transform human desire and action; and the relation of prayer to cognition. It takes up the meaning of prayer from within a uniquely phenomenological point of view, demonstrating that the phenomenology of prayer is as much about the character and boundaries of phenomenological analysis as it is about the heart of religious life.The contributors: Michael F. Andrews, Bruce Ellis Benson, Mark Cauchi, Benjamin Crowe, Mark Gedney, Philip Goodchild, Christina M. Gschwandtner, Lissa McCullough, Cleo McNelly Kearns, Edward F. Mooney, B. Keith Putt, Jill Robbins, Brian Treanor, Merold Westphal, Norman Wirzba, Terence Wright and Terence and James R. Mensch. Bruce Ellis Benson is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College. He is the author of Graven Ideologies: Nietzsche, Derrida, and Marion on Modern Idolatry and The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue: A Phenomenology of Music. Norman Wirzba is Associate Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Georgetown College, Kentucky. He is the author of The Paradise of God and editor of The Essential Agrarian Reader.

Norman Wirzba, Bruce Ellis Benson, and an international group of philosophers and theologians describe how various expressions of philosophy are transformed by the discipline of love. What is at stake is how philosophy colors and shapes the way we receive and engage each other, our world, and God. Focusing primarily on the Continental tradition of philosophy of religion, the work presented in this volume engages thinkers such as St. Paul, Meister Eckhart, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger, Ricoeur, Derrida, Marion, Zizek, Irigaray, and Michele Le Doeuff. Emerging from the book is a complex definition of the wisdom of love which challenges how we think about nature, social justice, faith, gender, creation, medicine, politics, and ethics.