Wendell Berry is known as an agrarian, a simple Kentucky farmer. He is regarded as a pacifist and environmental activist. He also collected accolades and awards as a writer, who was at times a bit punchy.
Berry described himself as “a person who takes the Gospel seriously.” He identified himself as “a Christian, albeit of an eccentric kind.” He held the modern church at arm’s length because his views on the sacredness of the material world were rather intense. His 1993 essay, “Christianity and the Survival of Creation,” takes Christians to task for not preventing, even participating in “the destruction of the natural world.”
I will not quibble over his Biblical hermeneutics, even though his conclusion – that Creation’s survival depends on Christianity’s “renewal” – strikes me as a non sequitur. Much more contemplative are his observations about what you see outdoors. There, he says, miracles are the “common mode of existence.”
Berry makes his point with this challenge: “Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air, and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances, will hardly balk at the fuming of water into wine – which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water is fumed into grapes.”
In God’s creative care, rainwater becomes grapes. He brings something from nothing and order from chaos, thermodynamic laws notwithstanding. Into non-life He breathes life. He imprints reason and morality into our material brains. These are but a few of the ongoing and ordinary miracles of creation.
I agree with Berry that God still reveals Himself through ordinary, outdoor miracles. The Bible says, “Since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made” (Rom. 1:20).
Berry forever left his Kentucky farm, family, and writing as of August 2026. The soul of this “eccentric kind” of Christian who “takes the gospel seriously” is in his Creator’s hands. He was 92.