What Wendell Berry meant to Christian farmers going green

Wendell Berry, the Kentucky farmer, writer and activist, died, and the news rippled through a network of farmers across the rural South and Midwest who had come to see him as validation for combining Christian faith with environmental stewardship.

An anthropologist who spent 16 months studying ex-conventional farmers found that many faced more resistance switching social circles than switching farming methods, particularly at church, where some were told caring for the earth was either fake Christianity or outright sin.

Farmers described being accused of prioritizing environmentalism over faith, or hearing that ecological damage doesn't matter because the world is temporary and will burn up anyway. The research links this pushback to a broader current of apocalyptic thinking that treats environmental degradation as a sign of imminent religious end times rather than a problem to solve.

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