The relevance of Anglican agrarianism

Spending time connecting with the natural world is the perfect antidote to the pressures of modern life. Getting close to nature – and especially listening to birdsong – doesn’t just bring us physical benefits – it also helps improve our mental and emotional health, happiness and wellbeing. And this isn’t just some warm, fuzzy feeling.

Scientists at the University of Surrey have been studying the “restorative benefits of birdsong”, testing whether it really does improve our mood. They discovered that, of all the natural sounds, bird songs and calls were those most often cited as helping people recover from stress, and allowing them to restore and refocus their attention.

So said a Guardian article on Saturday, ahead of International Dawn Chorus Day on Sunday.  It is another reminder that criticism of the Anglican imagination being shaped by agrarian experience is itself now a rather dated and woefully narrow understanding.  Rachel Mann, for example, has criticised the "Anglican Imagination" for being chiefly defined by "non-industrial and pre-industrial settings", in which "industry is essentially concealed".

Such an agrarian imagination - pastoral, ecclesial, liturgical, artistic - is what is needed in the contemporary Church amidst the various environmental crises now faced.  An Anglican Imagination rooted in agrarian experience challenges the assumptions which underpin, and the behaviour which gives expression to, contemporary urban, consumerist, technological culture.

To again quote from the article:

But as we contemplate what has happened to Britain’s birdlife over the past half century, can we really be sure that they will still be singing in 50 years’ time? I’m not sure that we can.

In such a context, how can it be a weakness that the Anglican Imagination is shaped by an agrarianism which leads us to value nature, wildlife, and landscape, and to desire rhythms and patterns of life more in harmony with the natural environment?  As Professor Sandra Diaz - a co-chair of the recent report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services - has said:

We need to change the way we think about what a good life is, we need to change the social narrative that puts an emphasis on a good life depending on a high consumption and quick disposal.

The agrarianism of the Anglican Imagination offers a response to this call, a response weakened and undermined if that agrarianism is held to be a cause of ecclesial embarrassment, rather than a gift to be shared.

Close to the beginning of his A Sand County Almanac (1949), the great US naturalist and conservationist Aldo Leopold stated:

There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm.  One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.

The agrarianism of the Anglican Imagination can - through its rhythms and patterns, experiences and artistic expressions - help us both recognise and address such "spiritual dangers".  It can recall us to an experience of the created order, the natural environment, as gift; of what it is to live in harmony with this gift of the Creator; and of the vocation to be good stewards of the created order.  In other words, the agrarianism of the Anglican Imagination is deeply contemporary, profoundly relevant.

As philosopher and New Agrarian writer Norman Wirbza has said:

Our practical separation from the sources of life - photosynthesis, humus, earthworms, bees, chickens, communal memory and tradition, family nurture, neighborly support - is of immense theological significance because what is at issue is our separation from the ways of God at work there.

To call for the Anglican Imagination to be less agrarian is to compromise the Church's response to, and its mission in, an age of threatening ecological catastrophe.  Rather than abandoning such agrarian rhythms, patterns, and experiences, it is a time to renew, deepen, and more fully live out Anglican agrarianism.