originally published 3/1/2012

Theologian Norman Wirzba examines the relationship between food and faith. He begins by discussing the changes in the meaning of the word “culture” in the past two centuries: from expressing the link one has to the land and the process of deriving one’s life from that land with its other inhabitants, to expressing an individual’s consumption of products divorced from their earthly origins. That is, consumption in the modern world is increasingly distanced from the myriad processes that generate the goods to be consumed. Bread, for example, is reliant on many communities and cultural practices for it to be made and enjoyed. Eating depends on life and death in the world in profound ways, and modern practices can obscure the connections and significance of this truth. Wirzba turns to Genesis 2 to describe human interdependence with the very soil of Creation and man’s vocation as caretakers of the garden and of the animals originally presented to Adam. Rather than working out that vocation, he believes modern people have given themselves over to the idols of control, efficiency and convenience and created institutional structures and systems in the image of those idols that, ironically, undermine life.

24 minutes

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In 2012, Ken Myers interviewed Fred Bahnson, co-author (with Norman Wirzba) of Making Peace with the Land: God’s Call to Reconcile with Creation (InterVarsity Press). Today’s Feature is an extended cut of that conversation, in which Bahnson describes how (in the words of his book) “when we garden well, we do not only grow food for our bodies and flowers for our tables; we share in and extend God’s feeding, healing, and sustaining ways with the world.”

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