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Wirzba finds his answer in agrarian culture. Agrarianism, as represented in The Essential Agrarian Reader and The Paradise of God, is nothing less than a call for cultural revolution and nothing more than the honest search for a good life. It is both critical and practical, based on careful work and discipline rather than lobbying and the rattling of talking heads. The Paradise of God exhibits this sensibility by ending what is essentially a book of theology and social criticism with practical suggestions on how to begin living out the ideas put forward in the book, suggestions such as becoming a gardener, supporting local economies, unplugging the media, and developing Sabbath rituals.

These are the habits and values that would flow from a culture and economy that recognized its dependence upon the grace of the land and soil as God's gifts. But our economy has not incorporated such an understanding of gifts. It has set a fixed value on what is invaluable. As Wendell Berry says in The Essential Agrarian Reader, "all economies begin to lie as soon as they assign a fixed value to land." The value of land is an immeasurable thing, "It is worth what food, clothing, shelter, and freedom are worth; it is worth what life is worth."

Agrarians seek to live in an economy of honest accounting. They ask us to consider the true costs of our industrial byproducts, of our mounting waste, of our culture abstracted from its dependencies. They say that we must begin to live according to limits and according to standards that are set by our dependencies rather than our desires. As Maurice Telleen writes, we must learn to say, "Enough is enough." Wendell Berry says that this agrarian standard "is local adaptation, which requires bringing local nature, local people, local economy, and local culture into a practical and enduring harmony."

The Essential Agrarian Reader is a guidebook for beginning to live with and think with this standard. The contributors include novelists and geneticists and economists, academics and sheep farmers. Through and through it is a book of hope, bypassing the political dichotomies of our age. It moves from novelist Barbara Kingsolver's beautiful foreword through essays on land-law reform, globalization, and grass. While Wirzba's The Paradise of God is a careful and sustained reflection on our place and responsibilities as creatures, The Essential Agrarian Reader is an exhilarating collection of ideas and possibilities. Its essays are full of wisdom that we would all do well to consider with the same care with which they are put forward. Agrarianism is a subject of concern to anyone who eats food, drinks water, and lives someplace. If you read The Essential Agrarian Reader or The Paradise of God, it will change the way you eat and shop and live.

Ragan Sutterfield teaches high school at Little Rock Christian Academy and is an apprentice sheep farmer.

Copyright © 2003 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

The Paradise of God and The Essential Agrarian Reader are available from Amazon.com and other book retailers.

A previous Books & Culture Corner, "Agrarians of the World, Unite!" discusses Wendell Berry's agrarian vision, and how Christians should respond to it.

Books & Culture Corner appears every Monday. Earlier editions of Books & Culture Corner and Book of the Week include:

The Troubled Conscience of a Founding Father | An Imperfect God examines George Washington and slavery. (Oct. 27, 2003)

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