Skip to main content

The Wendell Berry Option

From the periodical Plough, a description of the significance of Wendell Berry:

Thus it is that a voice resolutely parochial and mundane has inspired so many readers.

The voice that the culture has needed to hear is "resolutely parochial and mundane". 

It is the parochial which delivers us from the deceitful, unhappy illusion that we are autonomous, disembodied entities, for the parochial roots us in flesh-and-blood communion, in the stability and physicality of place.

It is the mundane which opens us to the life-giving, grace-filled rhythms of day and night, seasons and years, feast and fast, labour and rest, work and prayer, delivering us from the grim, joyless tyranny of homogenized time, dominated by soulless work and entertainment.

Amidst a contemporary Anglicanism in which 'parochial' and 'mundane' are often words of criticism levelled at 'inherited church', we might propose the Wendell Berry Option - a joyful, confident, resonant living out of the parochial and the mundane.

Resolutely parochial and mundane: the Anglicanism of parish and Prayer Book. 

Comments

  1. Amanda McGill29 March 2019 at 00:29

    I appreciate this so much. For us, Anglicanism has been gloriously, refreshingly "parochial and mundane." Instead of the rhetoric at our Southern Baptist seminary (i.e. "The question of missions shouldn't be, "Why should I go?' but 'Why should I stay?'" I can't tell you how many times we heard that), we find the commitment to stability in parish life to be "countercultural," "missional," "radical" (to use the lingo). In one of my favorite Berry poems, he speaks of the "art of being here" and how "by it, I should instruct my wants." The "Wendell Berry Option" applies alike to family farms in Kentucky, city parishes, rural parishes... All of us seeking to live quietly, reverently. Thank you for these thoughts!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. laudable Practice4 April 2019 at 17:19

      Amanda many thanks for your comment and the encouragement. I love that final comment: "seeking to live quietly, reverently". A wonderful summary of the vision embodied in the BCP.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I support the ordination of women: a High Church reflection

A number of commenters on this blog have asked about my occasional expressions of support for the ordination of women to all three orders.  With some hesitation, I have decided to post a summary of my own views on this matter.  The hesitation is because I have sought on this blog to focus on issues and themes which can unify those who identify with or have respect (grudging or otherwise!) for what we might term 'classical' Anglicanism (the Anglicanism of the Formularies and - yes - of the Old High Church tradition).  Some oppose the ordination of women (and I have friends and colleagues who do so, Anglo-Catholic, High Church, and Reformed Evangelical).  Some of us support it (again, friends and colleagues covering a wide range of theological traditions). Below, I have organised my thinking around 5 points (needless to say, no reference to Dort is implied). 1. The Declaration for Subscription required of clergy in the Church of Ireland states: (6) I promise to submit ...
25 comments
Read more

How the Old High tradition continued

Charles Gore's 1914 letter to the clergy of his diocese, ' The Basis of Anglican Fellowship ', can be regarded as a classical expression of the Prayer Book Catholic tradition.  A key part of the letter - entitled 'Romanizing in the Church of England' - addressed the "Catholic movement", questioning beliefs and practices within it which tended to "a position which makes it very difficult for its extremer representatives to give an intelligible reason why they are not Roman Catholics".  Gore provides the outlines of an alternative account and experience of catholicity within Anglicanism, defined by three characteristics.  What is particularly interesting about these characteristics is their continuity with the older High Church tradition.  Indeed, the central characteristic as set out by Gore was integral to High Church claims over centuries: To accept the Anglican position as valid, in any sense, is to appeal behind the Pope and the authority of t...
19 comments
Read more

1928 practices and the 1979 book: unthinking conservatism or popular piety?

Those responsible for Earth & Altar - a new blog emanating from a group within TEC - are to be congratulated for an excellent contribution to wider Anglican discussion and debate. The commitment to "an expansively conceived credal orthodoxy as fully compatible with LGBTQ inclusion, gender equality, and racial justice" is an important part of a wider retrieval of creedal orthodoxy within what we might call the post-liberal generation. It is in this spirit that I want to respond to a recent post on the site by Andrew McGowan , Dean of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale and Professor of Anglican Studies at Yale Divinity School.  Against the background of another round of "ill-defined" liturgical revision in TEC, he understandably urges that a fuller reception of the 1979 BCP should occur before further reforms. In doing so, however, he takes aim at what he describes as "clinging to the ritual structures of 1928" while using the text of 1979.  We ...
2 comments
Read more