This week some of the crew of Rector’s Cupboard has been on a road trip. We have been in and around Calgary, Alberta visiting various farms. Those who run these farms are participating in what is called, “Regenerative Farming”. This is a type of farming that aims to be more than simply sustainable. The idea is that the farming of the land and the keeping of animals will make things better for the ecosystem.
Each of the three operations that we have visited are run by people who have in some way been formed and informed by Christian faith. Each of the three have also faced some kind of complicated relationship with the church. They each spoke of the importance of faith in their lives and in what they are doing, but they clearly do not fit an evangelical mold.
Christian faith in this part of Canada is associated more with “F*ck Trudeau” signs and bumper stickers than it is with organic, sustainable and regenerative farming. When we drove through the town of Sundre to get to the yak farm which we visited today, there was a sign in the town centre that listed many (I assume not all) of the churches in the area. There were a lot of churches. It is a small town. Sundre is also where, during a recent parade, there was a float which consisted of a tractor driven by a caricature of Justin Trudeau, pulling a manure spreader on which there was a racialized caricature of Jagmeet Singh. When asked about it, those who put the float together said that it was not racism or hatred, simply political satire.
The regenerative farmers that we met in the area are aware that their view of the land and of politics and particularly of faith is not the prevailing view in the region. They also make note that some of the people who work with them and partner with them in this demanding vocation are much more typically evangelical than they are, but that some of this is lost in simply working together and in actually getting to know one another.
I was thinking, as we spoke at length with these regenerative farmers, as we talked about faith and salvation and hope and future and climate change, something that has been in my mind a fair bit lately. Maybe the future of the church is not the church, at least not as we have known it. I have written about how many churches have seen a lot of decline in attendance and participation before and then especially after the height of the pandemic. As I hear from people like those we have met on this trip I am reminded that Christian faith in history has been repeatedly renewed and re-imagined by people outside of the walls of the church. Centuries ago it was people who became known as “Desert Fathers” (and mothers too) who moved away from a power and state dominated church to imagine something different. During the Crusades, St. Francis was a tiny, counter-voice to the order of the church, a light in the darkness of militarism and political land and power grabbing.
I know many pastors, friends included, who lament the apparent disinterest in the local church. I understand their complaint, but I see also the perspective of people like those we met on this trip, who clearly take up their work as a vocation of Christian faith. None of these three could be accused of not participating in the church. In fact, they have largely given their lives to church work, missions, education, learning and service. They have led church programmes and contributed financially and otherwise. They have been the ones who have seriously listened and completed degrees in universities and theological schools. It is this very seriousness and admirable earnestness that has, in some ways, brought them to the place of hoping that there is something so much more and better than they have experienced in evangelicalism. I hope so, too.
One of the farmers spoke to us theologically and spiritually about how close life and death are, how death is a part of life everyday on the farm. He said that he is asking what it means that the sting of death is removed and that death is defeated in Christ. One of the farmers, a person who for years was on staff at a well known Baptist Seminary, came to life when talking about soil. There was some doom in his voice in regards to how soil is being degraded around the world, but there was also true hope and even joy in his description of how the immigrant and indigenous communities with which he works in urban farming engage in renewal of the soil. He spoke of the soil of being truly, “the least of these”. The third farmer, who we visited just today, spoke of the yak on his farm and the bees that he gleefully discovered one day while cutting the long grasses as a part of the world that is being saved, being renewed. He is also an educator, a professor, and he knows the evangelical understanding of “personal salvation” more than most pastors. Clearly he sees salvation as a lot better than simply personal. He told us that in his caring for his market garden and his yak herd, he realized that he could participate in what God is doing in the world. He finds the invitation to be meaningful and life-giving.
Somehow, the farmers we met seemed to embody something that I had heard in a recent Charles Marsh memoir, “Evangelical Anxiety”. Marsh mentions that Dietrich Bonhoeffer helped him to see that life with Jesus leads disciples toward the world, not away from it.
He quotes Bonhoeffer:
“It is only when one loves life and the earth so much that, without them, everything seems to be over, that one may believe in the resurrection and a new world. Confidence in the gospel can and should permeate the self, so that Christians might relate to the world out of thoughtfulness, courage and humility, not out of dread.”
We are blessed to have met these three people, and members of their communities and families who are engaged in work that shows a much more expansive view of salvation than has often been propagated in the evangelical church. This kind of faith might be part of a hopeful renewal of Christian theology and of the church itself. Meanwhile, the amount of work to be done on the farm is simply breathtaking.