The Stewardship of Creation
A special Earth Day newsletter
Author’s Note: this is part of an occasional series of writings on topics that have a particular interest to me and which further the spirit of my work at West of 98. Have you listened to the newest Rural Church and State podcasts? We have two: an episode on evaluating politics as a rural voter and a primer on Wendell Berry.
I’m writing this on Earth Day, April 22. The truth is that I have had a “big” Earth Day post planned for two years now. It is intended to be a thesis of everything I believe about the land, agriculture, stewarding God’s resources, and a path towards rural prosperity that is both deeply in-tune with rural values and the antithesis of partisan shouting about the environment and the climate. Last year, I got about 8 pages deep of handwritten notes on my yellow pad. I knew there was no way to get it all wrangled into a cohesive newsletter, so I pinned my hopes on April 22, 2024. Then all this (gestures wildly at a substantial amount of frantic chaos of my life) happened. On April 22, 2024, I am mentally closer to having that thesis prepared but the pen hasn’t moved across the paper nearly as much as I would like.
If there’s anything I’ve learned in trying to simultaneously be a spouse, parent, lawyer, mayor, and a few other things, it’s that sometimes you simply cannot get everything done as fast as you’d like. You can only prioritize your limited time and let things happen in the right timing. It’s something I’m working on. I’m figuring out how to better prioritize the people and pursuits that truly matter the most to me. I doubt I will ever get it perfect, but I can see a path ahead that is an improvement in that regard.
If you’ve read more than a few of my words, you know that I deeply admire Wendell Berry (hence the plug at the outset for my new podcast that just talks about reading his work). Wendell has helped coalesce my faith, my love for agriculture, and my concern for rural places and rural people in a manner that I perhaps didn’t realize was fully possible. I don’t think I am breaking any major news on this point, but the American political landscape has been chaotic for the better part of a decade (although the circumstances leading to this chaos have been building for many years). Those of us who care about politics and policy have all dealt with it different. Some have embraced the chaos, for better or worse. Others have exited the conversation. I dove more deeply into Wendell’s writing. It has pushed me away from political and religious mainstreams, but it has left me more confident in my faith and more passionate about rural America than I was before. I am grateful for these words and the right timing with which they have impacted me.
Ultimately, it is not enough to merely regurgitate Wendell Berry’s words. I think a decent number of readers have enjoyed learning about Wendell through me or learning about his impact on me. A few have been encouraged to check out his work. But if folks want to read Wendell Berry, they need to read his writing and not just the Cliffs Notes distilled through a West Texas prism. I have not spoken to Wendell about the matter (although my wife and a few friends have encouraged me to write him a letter sooner than later) but I feel confident that he would also tell me to find my own voice. Wendell Berry did not just wake up one day and become WENDELL BERRY. His voice came from his own experiences and was shaped by his influences like Thoreau, Dante, Tolstoy, Aldo Leopold1, and Wallace Stegner2.
And so, this unintentionally multiyear project is partly my quest to find and crystallize my own voice on this topic. This has pushed me to better understand our relationship with God’s creation and how we are called to oversee it and live within it. I have written/rambled/tweeted on this point more than a few times (I encourage you to read this in particular), because the discourse around this topic maddens me. I cannot abide a climate change discourse which views rural people as an obstacle, grazing livestock as our foremost problem, and technocratic boondoggles as the solution for it all. Rural people cannot survive with a head-in-the-sand mentality that refuses to engage the idea that humans impact the climate and the environment. This mentality can be a well-meaning effort to resist activists with bad-faith intentions, but it merely hands those activists the loudest (and often only) megaphone that the crowd can hear, leaving us worse off and more marginalized than before.
In my studies, one of my favorite books on the topic is Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible. Author Ellen F. Davis is a professor and Old Testament scholar at Duke University Divinity School. She dives deeply into the meaning of the original Hebrew to better understand God’s instruction to man with regard to care for Creation. Genesis 2:15 is a verse with deep importance in this regard: “Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.” Professor Davis clearly demonstrates that the intended language of the original text was not an instruction to merely extract resources from the land for man’s benefit, but a call for stewardship in a lasting and careful manner. “Regenerative” is a buzz word in agriculture these days. Much of that conversation is good and well-meaning, focused on working with (rather than against) nature, even if there are always people trying to make a quick profit off a trendy marketing opportunity.3 One can only read Professor Davis’s deep dive into Genesis and conclude that God’s instruction for care of the land is the original call for regenerative practices of land stewardship.
The climate conversation will continue to rage whether I finish my long-planned Earth Day thesis or not. In the meantime, I will continue writing, thinking, learning, and striving to build my own voice. It will be a voice that is informed by Berry and Leopold, but also by the likes of Allan Savory,4 Gabe Brown,5 and Will Harris.6 I don’t have all the answers, but I do know a few things that I believe deeply to my core. I believe that God’s creation—and all its plants, animals, fungi, deserts, mountains, grasslands, forests, oceans, and more—is something awe-inspiring. I believe that every moment spent learning about, appreciating, and enjoying that creation that we call “nature” will make us a better human. I believe that man is charged with a great responsibility in tending and keeping that creation and we should be both humbled and honored by that responsibility. We often fall short and will never master it this side of Heaven. Nevertheless, we must keep trying, learn from our mistakes, and get better every day. I believe that the two greatest commandments (love God, love neighbor) underscore the importance of this job. We honor God by caring for His creation and we love our neighbor by caring for the place that we share together and in which our activities impact one another.
One day, I will have my ideas worked out. But every day, I learn a little more, I care a little more, and I become ever more appreciative of the land for the responsibility of stewardship with which we have been entrusted.
James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and the Rural Church and State and West of 98 podcasts. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to him wherever podcasts are found.
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In 2021, Nick Offerman (yes, Ron Swanson!) wrote “Where the Deer and the Antelope Play: The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American Who Loves to Walk Outside” as his own quest to better understand land stewardship in part because of a conversation with Wendell Berry in which Berry tells him to study the words of Aldo Leopold. I cannot recommend Leopold’s “A Sand County Almanac” highly enough if you have never read it. Leopold is argued by many to be the most important figure to conversation in the 20th century and I’m not sure it’s even arguable.
Stegner’s Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West is one of the most important books ever written about the West, but Stegner’s contributions as a writing professor at Stanford cannot be understated. The man tutored Berry, Larry McMurtry, Edward Abbey, Thomas McGuane, and many, many others. Writing about the West and the environment looks very, very different without Wallace Stegner’s teaching.
If you’re more interested in the regenerative conversation, I recommend the “Doomer Optimism,” “Where Hope Grows,” and “Mind Body & Soil” podcasts. “Mountain and Prairie” is not a regenerative agriculture podcast but Ed Roberson has hosted so many important conversations and built so many connections on the topic. He’s also a good human and a fine friend.
Savory’s “Holistic Management” is a detailed textbook of land management, but his TED Talk entitled “How to Green the World’s Deserts and Reverse Climate Change” is the best jumping off point into his research and perspective. His views are extraordinary enough that activist scientists have worked for years to undermine him, lest he successfully defeat their anti-livestock activism.
The climate/regenerative conversation in agriculture gets heavily centered around livestock, but Brown is a North Dakota farmer who has undertaken revolutionary management principles as a farmer.
Will Harris is a Georgia rancher whose story of regenerative transformation has not only been revolutionary on his ranch but on the entire economy of his small town. His appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast was extremely important and eye-opening to audiences who have not previously been involved in these conversations.
Bravo, Mayor! Thank you for sharing even before your tome is complete. We are too weighed down in choosing our team, and hating the other. It's time for more voices to break down the wall. You are one of those voices. Keep it up. Please.