Sex, Economy, Freedom

                             SEX, ECONOMY, FREEDOM & COMMUNITY

Author WENDELL BERRY

Publisher PANTHEON

ISBN 0-679-42394

Wendell Berry is a prolific novelist, poet and essayist.  For many years he has written searching and challenging articles.  He describes himself as someone who takes the Gospel of the Lord Jesus seriously and although not expressly writing on Christian doctrine he looks at war, the creation, its misuse by a greedy, politically and economically motivated mankind and cannot but look at such matters from a Christian perspective.  This particular book was published in 1992 and brings together eight essays.  The longest of these is one entitled Christianity and the Survival of Creation and another of almost sixty pages becomes the title of this volume.  175 pages in total, everything he writes packs a real punch.  He is not afraid to challenge the Church and its record as to the Creation, all that is made.  He reckons that Christianity has been blighted with a dualism by which it has evaded its responsibility to God and every creature both animate and inanimate.  A native of Kentucky, born into a farming family and still farming as he moves into his eighties, he is committed to the fact that man is born to occupy a geographical place, is to live as part of that community, to serve, to love, to bless those around about and also to steward the land for God and for the generations to come.  Environmentalist?  Yes, that, and much more.  Indirectly, as he sets forth the primacy of family and children as being the bedrock of community, he deals with the aberrations that are being peddled in our day as alternatives to husband, wife and children.  I do think that Wendell Berry is perceptive, relevant, is vital reading for Christians and leaders in particular.  He makes us think, takes us out of the ‘worms eye view’ and lifts our sights to our calling.  He pierces through the stupidities and hypocrisy of many in government and business.  Few will take much notice of him.  They will think of him as a Luddite.  A relic trying to bring back a rural and simple lifestyle.  It all goes against the grain of the myth of the ongoing development of our urban and global mind set.  He hits hard against rampant industrialisation, the worship of education and militarism.  Amen, amen and amen is all that we should say though.  He hits the nail on the head relentlessly and I commend his writings to those willing to be provoked and face issues normally avoided as too controversial by many avowedly Christian writers.  There is a grace about him, a refreshing honesty and courage, these three things are not found together so much in writers nowadays.  

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