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11

Our Agricultural Krísis
Sketches of a Missional Response

Matthew Anslow

Abstract

In Australia, and indeed across the world, we are experiencing 
the effects of a broken food system, such that we face the possibil-
ity of a serious agricultural crisis. Current hopes for a resolution to 
this impending crisis are generally pinned to technology, despite 
the various problems associated with the use of agricultural tech-
nologies over recent decades. Such a situation demands a Chris-
tian missional response—an agriculturally-conscious missiology. 
This paper argues that farming and food production constitutes an 
aspect of Christian mission. The NT notion of krísis (judgment) 
is an as opportunity for repentance, applied to suggest that our 
agricultural crisis is a missional opportunity for the Church since 
it has spiritual, practical, and traditional resources necessary for a 
new agricultural paradigm. In light of these resources, the paper 
makes some provisional suggestions, directed at “consumers,” re-
lated to three missiological categories: relationship, contextualiza-
tion, and participation. Each contributes to a way of thinking that 
Ellen Davis has called “agrarianism.”



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Introduction

Wendell Berry, in his essay, “Nature as Measure,” makes the 
following observation about the state of food production in the 
United States:

For many years . . . we have asked our land only to pro-
duce, and we have asked our farmers only to produce. 
We have believed that this single economic standard not 
only guaranteed good performance but also preserved 
the ultimate truth and rightness of our aims We have 
bought unconditionally the economists’ line that compe-
tition and innovation would solve all problems. . . . But 
the solution has been extravagant, thoughtless, and far 
too expensive. We have been winning, to our inestimable 
loss, a competition against our own land and our own 
people. At present, what we have to show for this “vic-
tory” is a surplus of food. But this is a surplus achieved 
by the ruin of its sources. (Berry 2009, 5)

Thirty years ago, pronouncements of such a pessimistic kind were 
unfashionable. They have, however, become more regular as the 
state of the global environment deteriorates more quickly than 
most could have imagined.

In the Central West of New South Wales, Australia, the east-
ern edge of which I call home, we have witnessed the severe effects 
of drought that continue to ravage the landscape. Drought has 
long been a feature of this land, but the effects of changing weather 
patterns have increased its regularity, duration, and severity. Our 
family knows multiple others within a fifteen-minute drive of our 
property that have been forced to either temporarily or perma-
nently close their market gardens. Destocking has become com-
monplace. These losses of food production are a result of both 
mismanagement and environmental deterioration.

Such deterioration is widely, and rightly, associated with 
climate change, though this is only one aspect of the problem. 
Humans currently oversee such signs of the impending collapse of 
the worldwide food system as global soil degradation and topsoil 
loss, desertification of forests and farmland, heavier reliance on 



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genetically modified organisms and chemicals in agriculture, the 
reduction and loss of seed diversity,1 catastrophic bee death (as 
well as ongoing losses of other important insects), the pollution 
and diminution of our water sources, and so forth.

Such effects are only a handful of those that could be named. 
We could, in addition, point to various ethical, economic, and 
geopolitical issues that stem from the social and ecological crises 
that, according to Ched Myers, have “been stalking human civili-
zation for centuries, and [have] now arrived in the Anthropocene 
epoch” (Myers 2016, 2). My focus here, however, is on the possible 
impending agricultural crisis we face, though there will of course 
be overlap with other concerns. After all, those most likely to suf-
fer the consequences of shortfalls in global food production and 
distribution will be the world’s poor.2

Current hopes for a way beyond this impending crisis gener-
ally lie in technology. In 2016, The Economist published a piece 
pointing to the UN estimate that, by 2050, agricultural production 
will need to increase by 70 percent over 2009 levels in order to 
meet global demand. This is despite the fact that most arable land 
is already being farmed, while staple crops like rice and wheat have 
plateaued in terms of yields (Carr 2016). The solution? Accord-
ing to The Economist, the application of technology, including in 
forms such as “smart farms” and genomic tinkering, is vital. This 
hope, derived from our continued trust in the Enlightenment sto-
ry of progress, ignores that the UN also reports that we currently 
lose or waste one-third of all produced food (Gustavsson et al. 
2011). Further, crop yields have plateaued despite the application 

1. USDA listings of seed varieties showed that between 1903 and 1983, 93 
percent of all varieties had been lost (Fowler and Mooney 1990, 63–67).

2. Just in this decade, there have been at least two major famines in East 
Africa alone. The 2010–2012 famine on its own was responsible for up to 
260,000 deaths. See Associated Press 2013; Checchi and Robinson 2013. The 
2008 food crisis, in which wheat, corn, and rice prices spiked dramatically, 
led to millions of people being unable to access food, thirty riots across three 
continents, and seventy-six million people suffering from starvation. Some 
even argue that this was the precipitating event that sparked the Arab Spring 
(Cornford 2016a, 79).



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of technologies such as synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and pow-
ered machinery. We have, in fact, worn out in a few generations 
land that took countless millennia to form. It is, of course, likely 
that technology will play a significant role in the future of agricul-
ture. However, such a technocratic model as that espoused by The 
Economist would further subject global agriculture to control by 
large-scale agribusiness, and this is a questionable outcome given 
the track record of multinationals like Monsanto (see Robin 2009; 
Shiva 2016). Technology, moreover, is unlikely to alter destructive 
human attitudes to the natural world or the dislocated relation-
ships between humanity and the rest of creation. Indeed, advanced 
technologies may exacerbate these disorders. As Patriarch Bar-
tholomew has said, “What is asked of us is not greater technologi-
cal skill but deeper repentance . . . which signifies fervent ‘change 
of mind’ and radical transformation of lifestyle” (Bartholomew I 
2012, 171). In short: we need a new narrative.

The connections between this agricultural crisis and Chris-
tian mission are not obvious, at least within the realm of Evan-
gelicalism in which I currently live and move and have my being. 
Some Evangelicals in Australia are more concerned to guard 
against what they call “green theology” than to develop a mean-
ingful, gospel-centered response to the current crises we face 
(e.g., Monk 2018). For others, at least in my experience, food and 
agriculture are not concerns worthy of theological reflection. My 
task in this paper, therefore, is a provisional exploration of a largely 
untouched area of missiology. I will sketch a Christian missional 
response to our current agricultural moment, one that I hope is a 
small blessing to the Church and world.

I should be clear: though my family lives on a farm, we are 
not farmers. Our efforts since we set up our farm have been largely 
limited to subsistence, with only extremely small-scale forays into 
market production. In truth, most of our economic activity is best 
described as bartering. In short, I am not attempting to solve our 
global agricultural crisis; I am not remotely qualified for this task. I 
am simply offering a sketch of an agriculturally-conscious missiol-
ogy, what could perhaps be called an earthy missional theology.



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Farming and Food as Mission?

Given that I am no missiologist, and also the uncommon connec-
tion I am drawing between mission and farming and food, it is 
appropriate that I give a cursory account of my understanding of 
mission.

In the opening pages of Transforming Mission, David Bosch 
(2011, 1–11) makes several critical points that are pertinent to my 
present exploration of mission. First, Christian use of the language 
of “mission” is relatively recent. Second, “mission” prior to the 
sixteenth century described the Trinity, specifically the sending 
of the Son by the Father and the sending of the Spirit by the Fa-
ther and the Son. Third, we should distinguish between mission 
and missions in order to differentiate between mission as a theo-
logical reality and missions as particular forms of participation 
in this reality. For Bosch, mission refers primarily to “the missio 
Dei (God’s mission), that is, God’s self-revelation as the One who 
loves the world, God’s involvement in and with the world, and the 
nature and activity of God, which embraces both the Church and 
the world, and in which the Church is privileged to participate” 
(Bosch 2011, 10). A simpler way of putting this is that mission is, 
first and foremost, what God is doing.

I recognize that this way of describing mission could be 
deemed overly flippant. It is vulnerable to our tendency to ret-
rospectively baptize our activities as divinely-willed. Who is to 
say what God is doing, anyhow? I am, however, also aware of the 
tendency to over-define mission. Indeed, Bosch notes: “Mission 
remains undefinable; it should never be incarcerated in the narrow 
confines of our own predilections” (2011, 9).

What, then, can we say about what it is that God is doing? 
The entirety of Scripture testifies that God’s mission entails the 
self-revelation of God and God’s ongoing redemptive activity in 
and for the whole of creation. From creation itself, to God’s call of 
Abram; from the redemption and call of Israel to the Incarnation; 
from Christ’s death and resurrection to the consummation of new 



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creation—God has been revealing Godself and working for the 
liberation of creation throughout the Scriptural narrative.

Soon after the inception of this narrative we encounter the 
primeval dislocation between humanity and God, self, others, and 
the rest of creation. This latter dislocation—between humanity and 
the rest of creation—takes numerous forms, as explored through-
out Genesis. Among the most immediate effects, however, is that 
the ground is cursed, such that agricultural efforts—which up to 
that point in the story had been unnecessary—are disordered:

Cursed is the ground because of you; 
    in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; 
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; 
    and you shall eat the plants of the field. 
By the sweat of your face 
    you shall eat bread 
until you return to the ground. (Gen 3:17–19)

Here Adam is condemned to a life of arduous agriculture, as op-
posed to hunter-gathering in God’s abundant garden. Indeed, he 
will eat bread, which is not natural food (Howard-Brook 2010, 28). 
This is symbolic of the toil that will be required. In other words, 
Genesis 3:17–19 paints a picture of agriculture itself as a product 
of this original dislocation, an activity that is both absent and un-
necessary in the era prior to this event. Agriculture is, after all, a 
human imposition on nature.

Though agriculture is absent in the period prior to disloca-
tion, the vocation of the Adam had been “to work it [‘abad] and 
keep it [šāmar]” (Gen 2:15), referring to the garden. There are at 
least two levels of meaning here: First, and most obviously, the hu-
man is to tend the soil in order to make it productive. Second, 
however, is the fact that these Hebrew terms are used to refer not 
to gardening, but to duties associated with the tabernacle (Num 
3:7–8; 8:26; 18:5–6). In other words, the Adam’s work in Genesis 2 
is liturgical in nature. Moreover, in Deuteronomy 5:12, “observe” 
[šāmar] is used to instruct the Israelites to keep or guard the sanc-
tity of the Sabbath. T. D. Alexander comments: “In all likelihood, 
Adam was commissioned to keep or guard the garden so that it 



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would remain holy. This was a normal task associated with any 
sanctuary” (2008, 26). This suggests the Adam is appointed as a 
guardian of sacred space and not simply to be a gardener. There 
is a deep connection between the man and the garden: adam, the 
human, is formed by God out of the adama (the soil). In short, 
there is an interplay here between working the land and guarding 
its sanctity, both of which constitute part of humanity’s vocation.

In addition to Adam’s role, Ellen Davis points out that Genesis’ 
first chapter is insistent on the place of seed and fruit in creation, 
and that God endowed creation with abundant fertility (Davis 
2009, 42–66; see also Cornford 2016a, 82). Moreover, humans are 
created possessing dignity befitting those made in God’s image, in 
contrast to the servitude implied in the Babylonian creation myth, 
Enuma Elish. A necessary conclusion of witnessing God’s love 
poured out into an abundant creation is that the exploitation of 
such creation must be rejected. Indeed, according to Davis (2009, 
55), the “dominion” (radah) given to humanity in Genesis 1 should 
be more accurately thought of as “mastery among” as a master 
craftsperson “who works with reverence and respect for both his 
tools and materials” (Cornford 2016a, 82). In other words, God’s 
apparent intent is that humans achieve a level of skill in under-
standing and stewarding creation, such that work can continue to 
occur that will further perfect what God has made. The stacking 
of this suggestion with the articulation of Adam’s role to work and 
keep the garden in Genesis 2 suggests that, while agriculture may 
be an unnatural imposition on creation, there is meant to be a 
human agrarian presence in which creation is “mastered among” 
(not mastered over) for its good and the good of humanity.3

There is clearly a tension here in that Adam is appointed to 
care for the garden and steward creation, and yet agriculture is 
viewed as a curse. This is understandable in the historical con-
text of the Ancient Near East given that agriculture represented 

3. Bauckham suggests that humans “subduing” the earth is related to the 
command to fill the earth, and that only by agriculture were humans able to fill 
the earth. To subdue the earth, he says, is “to take possession and to work the 
soil in order to make it yield more food for humans than it would otherwise 
do” (2011, 226).



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widespread oppression. People who settled in one location to farm 
became subject to both natural dangers (like disasters and shifts 
in weather) and human oppression (as city-based elites extracted 
their surplus production through the threat of violence). Agricul-
ture made possible the existence of the city, a form of human orga-
nization to which Genesis is uniformly opposed, in part due to the 
oppression is represented (e.g., Gen 4:16–24; 11) (Howard-Brook 
2010, 28; see also Lenski 1966, esp. 189–242).

Despite the portrayal of agriculture as a curse, biblically it is 
also something to be redeemed. In Torah, Israel is given specific 
commands regarding agriculture. Examples include:

• Restitution for land damaged by livestock (Exod 22:5)

• Allow the land to rest, according to Sabbath regulations 
(Exod 23:10–11; Lev 25:3–7, 11–12)

• Allow slaves and animals to rest, and to enjoy what they pro-
duce (Exod 23:12; Lev 25:4–7; Deut 5:14)

These commands deal with various agricultural issues including 
soil fertility, pest control, labor and animal ethics, crop rotation, 
overfarming, erosion and compaction. Such commands reflect 
God’s care for the earth and concern that Israel’s agricultural prac-
tices echo such care. The meaning of the story of the manna in the 
wilderness in Exodus 16 could be construed partly as an object 
lesson in how to do agriculture when the time eventually comes 
for Israel to transition into a settled existence—take only what 
you need, not too much and not too little (Myers 2001). This is 
revisited in Leviticus’s commands to restrict production to certain 
years (Lev 25). In other words, human agriculture is not separate 
from creation, but exists within its limits.

It is also worth remembering that the land into which YHWH 
promised to bring Israel following its wilderness wandering is de-
scribed according to its agricultural bounties:

For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, 
a land with flowing streams, with springs and under-
ground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of 



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wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegran-
ates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you 
may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack noth-
ing. (Deut 8:7–9a)

That God’s mission might encompass the redemption of ag-
riculture is also signalled in the OT’s vision of future restoration:

They shall beat their swords into plowshares, 
    and their spears into pruning hooks . . . 
they shall all sit under their own vines and under their 
own fig trees. (Mic 4:3–4)

Micah’s vision of an idealized future, like that found in Isaiah 
65:17–25, is not devoid of agriculture. Rather it is characterized 
by each family having access to their own agricultural livelihood, 
unthreatened by external ambitions and environmental adversi-
ties. According to these prophets, this state of affairs is the will and 
doing of YHWH.

In sum, while the OT’s witness on agriculture is mixed, it 
does tend toward redemption at the behest of YHWH. The missio 
Dei involves the redemption of farming.

The NT’s witness is less explicit on the matter, given the 
latter Testament’s generally parochial focus on local concerns in 
the burgeoning ekklēsia. Still, there are glimpses of agricultural 
redemption, or at least concern for agriculture and environment. 
The book of Revelation includes several descriptions of environ-
mental devastations or “judgments” including fig trees dropping 
their winter fruit (6:13), the burning up of trees and grass and the 
poisoning of water (8:7–11), and the drying up of rivers (16:12).4 
Each judgement is the result of beastly imperial violence (Wood-
man 2011, 178–84). These are a form of krísis, which I will define 
and discuss shortly.

Jesus himself, in Luke 4:18–19, appeals to the Levitical agri-
cultural laws when, channelling Isaiah, he declares his vocation to 
proclaim the Year of the Lord’s favor—the Jubilee—in which the 
land is rested and returned to its original owners. These Levitical 

4. I will have more to say about the category of “judgment” below.



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laws remind us that if we live in the land in accordance with YH-
WH’s commands relating to its limits, that land will yield its fruit 
and we will eat our fill and live securely. However, Leviticus 26 
warns us that, whether because we give it respite or because it be-
comes desolate, the land will have its rest. I would suggest that 
such predicted outcomes do not require divine action. They are 
simply the natural consequences of human stewardship or spoil-
ing of the land. Whatever the case, if Jesus’ own vocation involves 
the proclamation of Jubilee—with all of its agricultural implica-
tions—we ought to consider the ways in which it figures into our 
understanding of Christian mission.

Agricultural Krísis  as Missional Moment

I have described the impending agricultural moment as a crisis. By 
this I mean two things. First, I mean “crisis” in the conventional 
sense of the word: a time of danger, instability, or upheaval. I point 
this out not to be a harbinger of death, but to offer an interpreta-
tion of where our current practices have led us—and might lead 
us still.

Second, however, is the biblical sense of the word “crisis.” 
When the NT speaks of krísis, it is usually translated “judgment.” 
This is fitting, in that humanity is now experiencing the conse-
quences of its actions and underlying worldview dating back to 
at least the industrial revolution. We must exercise more nuance 
than this, though, since if this is the sum total of “judgment,” it is 
less than just. The global poor, those who have done the least to 
contribute to our environmental and agricultural crises, will bear 
the brunt of the effects of our sins.

While I cannot comprehensively deal with the topic of judg-
ment in the NT in this paper, John’s Gospel sketches a helpful way 
forward. In John 3, the Evangelist records the words of Jesus: “This 
is the judgment (krísis), that the light has come into the world, and 
people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were 
evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, 
so that their deeds may not be exposed” (John 3:19–20). In other 



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words, for John, krísis is an opportunity. It is a point of decision. 
Will we come to the light, or will we hide away in the darkness, 
forbidding our deeds from being exposed by the light? Will we 
repent, or slink back into our evil until it catches up with us?

This is the moment we currently face—krísis. Indeed, Chris-
tians have much from which to repent. Wendell Berry pronounces 
that “the culpability of Christianity in the destruction of the natu-
ral world and the uselessness of Christianity in any effort to correct 
that destruction are now established clichés of the conservation 
movement” (1993, 93–94). Berry lambastes Christians for their 
complicity in the cultural destruction and economic exploitation 
of traditional cultures and of farmers, and for their indifference to 
the natural world’s rape and plunder and the destruction wrought 
by industrial economics. He is also critical of the distinction be-
tween biblical instruction and the behavior of the supposedly bib-
lically instructed. For Berry, even “respectable Christian behavior” 
is catastrophically detached from biblical instruction, and the 
survival of creation may well rely on the renewal of Christianity 
(1993, 95). 

The tragedy is that Christians have a genuinely unique contri-
bution to make with regard to agriculture, and environmentalism 
more generally. There is indeed a place for increased knowledge 
of and improved techniques for agriculture. But the heart of the 
matter lies not with these things.5 What is much more pressing, 
and indeed prior to any particular practice, is a recovery of correct 
vision of and right relationship to the land. This means a correc-
tion of our failure to see the land truly as “good,” and as a gift. 
As Pope Francis said in Laudato si’, “Nature is usually seen as a 
system which can be studied, understood and controlled, whereas 
creation can only be understood as a gift from the outstretched 
hand of the Father of all” (2015, 76). This point is hardly novel, but 
to grasp its implications requires a complete overhaul of the lives 

5. After all, increased knowledge and improved techniques are only as 
good as the people wielding them. There are a range of “organic” farming prac-
tices that may be applicable in a range of situations, but to discuss these in an 
abstract sense is pointless and, ironically, a failure to exercise the principles of 
environmental observation and contextualization that such practices require.



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and relationships of basically every person living in the West amid 
late-capitalism. There is an opportunity for Christians to model 
to society what true life looks like, but this can only happen with 
the reorientation of our vision. Revival, after all, is not primarily 
about the conversion of the world, but about the revitalization of 
the Church. Such revitalization must include seeing the land as 
good, and truly seeking its good for the sake of our good. This is 
an “interior conversion” as “a loving awareness that we are not dis-
connected to the rest of creatures, but joined in a splendid univer-
sal communion” (Francis 2015, 217, 220). This is a change that will 
require a reanimation of our imaginations, including theological.

For many Protestants, such a revolution of theological imagi-
nation must include a reorientation of our notions of salvation. 
Christ, after all, is reconciling all things to himself (Col 1:19–20; 
cf. Eph 1:9–10). There is no reason to think this does not include 
non-human creation. Such cosmic reconciliation is the mission of 
Christ—a mission on which we must be willing to embark. We are 
the present embodiment of the shalōm that God will eventually 
bestow on all creation. 

Within my own Australian context, there is much that Chris-
tians can learn about this cosmic notion of salvation from our Ab-
original brothers and sisters, in particular those who have sought 
to construct a distinctly Australian Aboriginal theology. In their 
work Rainbow Spirit Theology, the Rainbow Spirit Elders outline a 
theology of land and reconciliation, beginning with the assertion 
that the Creator Spirit (God) camped among us in Jesus Christ, 
who suffered, died, and returned to life in our land, not only in 
an historical sense in Roman Palestine, but also as a living reality 
in the land (Rainbow Spirit Elders 2007, 66). Christ, they argue, 
continues to suffer with the land in order to give new life (Rainbow 
Spirit Elders 2007, 67). Such suffering of the land is that referred 
to in the NT (Rom 8:22), and Christ came to overcome the powers 
under which the suffering land is groaning—Christ not only suf-
fers, but can overcome the evils which enslave the land (Rainbow 
Spirit Elders 2007, 68). Moreover, through Christ, the land and 
the people are reconciled with the Creator Spirit, and with one 



Matthew Anslow—Our Agricultural Krísis

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another. This latter process is something in which we are able to 
participate (Rainbow Spirit Elders 2007, 69–72). Finally, the Rain-
bow Spirit Elders rightly point out that for such reconciliation to 
occur, the Australian Church must acknowledge the crimes com-
mitted against Aboriginal people, their culture, and their land.

This is a rich theological sketch of various elements of recon-
ciliation with the land. It makes clear, in light of Romans 8, that the 
land’s liberation is an aspect of Christ’s work, a suggestion in con-
trast to much Western soteriology, detached as it has been from 
land. The Rainbow Spirit Elders, and other Aboriginal leaders, are 
pointing to the krísis we currently face whereby we are being given 
the opportunity to readhere soteriology with the land.

For some, the connection of all of this—in particular, ac-
knowledgement of past sins committed against Aboriginal peo-
ples—with farming and food may be obscure. But the truth is that 
reconciliation with this land’s First Peoples is a prerequisite for 
ending our agricultural crisis. We will never learn to see this land 
rightly—as a good gift—until we have come to terms with our sins 
against it and against those who cared for it for some sixty-five 
thousand years (Clarkson, 2017). Moreover, we deprive ourselves 
of the wisdom of hundreds of generations of proper management 
of this land for both its benefit and ours.

While I cannot claim the same wisdom as these elders, I can 
suggest various ways in which the Church can embody a more in-
tentional and holy approach to mission as it regards farming and 
food. While I could speak about necessary forms of farming, such 
as organic farming or small-scale farming, or political realities 
such as food sovereignty and water management, these are hardly 
relevant to the daily life of the vast majority of Western Christians. 
Here I will point my suggestions not to farmers, but rather to those 
who rely on farmers. Such suggestions are not exhaustive, nor de-
finitive, but are merely sketches of the kind of work that is both 
possible and necessary.



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Getting Our House in Order

I have already suggested our current krísis demands we learn to 
see land rightly and recover a harmonious relationship with land. 
For so-called “consumers,” this will take innumerable forms. It 
will begin not with particular actions, but with realigned desires. 
Indeed, our desire for more of everything has led to the wreckage 
of the earth’s resources, including the sources of our food (more 
on this imminently). Consumerism is a spiritual disposition, one 
characterized by detachment from the material world (Cavanaugh 
2008, 34–35). For this reason, our great challenge is to develop the 
spiritual discipline of relating to the material world (Cavanaugh 
2008, 47). Our problem is not that we are too materialistic, but that 
we desire to transcend material constraints (Cavanaugh, 2011). 
We are not materialistic enough. We must become more material-
istic, that is, healthily connected to the material world, even at the 
level of our desires. Consumerism does not arise randomly, but 
rather proceeds from our desires, as they have been trained in the 
industrial era. What is required is a realignment of our desires on 
a large scale.

The rich Christian history of reflection on desire bestows 
on us a unique and crucial message for the world. Such witness, 
particularly that present in the early centuries of the Church, also 
points us toward one inescapable conclusion: The Good is irresist-
ible, and we only desire what is not the Good to the degree that we 
have been blinded to the truth regarding what is good. Augustine 
was correct when he famously commenced his Confessions by not-
ing that our hearts are restless until they rest in God (Augustine 
1997, 1.1), who is Goodness itself and the source of all that is good. 
Such rested hearts will see things in their proper place in relation 
to God and will thus have had their desires properly ordered.

One implication of all of this is that there is a connection be-
tween conversion—people coming to a knowledge of God in Christ 
and being initiated into the community Christ established—and 
the restoration of our agriculture. However, any evangelistic efforts 
on this front will be thwarted by the harsh truth that, on the whole, 



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Christians have little embodied witness to which they can point 
as good news. Most Christians do not have ordered desires when 
it comes to land, food, and consumption, let alone the practices 
necessary to offer an alternative to our current malaise.

We must, therefore, get our own house in order if we wish 
to be missional. This will mean more than buying organic food, 
or using an ethical shopping guide, or even attempting more am-
bitious goals such as the one-hundred-mile diet.6 None of these 
things is wicked, but none necessarily challenges the economic 
conditions under which farmers toil and consumers consume.7 
Such economic conditions blind us from the reality of the food 
we eat by making it impossible to know the processes by which 
such food arrives at our table. Such veiling makes possible infi-
nite configurations of the food market, such that even subversive 
movements—for example organic food—can be subsumed into a 
fundamentally destructive market system.

The Church’s greatest witness will be to recover those ele-
ments of food production and eating that otherwise characterize 
Christian mission: relationship, contextuality, and participation. 
My suggestions here are by no means comprehensive, and in fact I 
am resistant to offering overly prescriptive solutions since they will 
not be born of the relational and contextual work that is necessary 
in each unique environment. Rather, these are merely sketches that 
illustrate the direction in which I think we must migrate. These 
sketches are intended to be seen in addition to other, more widely 
understood tasks of the Church, for example education, which will 
play a crucial role in awareness-raising and habit formation.

Relationship

The Church needs to recover the relationships necessary to embody 
an alternative to our current food economy. While deconstructing 

6. In which a person seeks to procure only food produced within a one-
hundred-mile radius of their home.

7. Though, of course, they can be exceedingly helpful in undermining per-
vasive economic habits if undertaken rightly.



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26

this economy is a task of gargantuan proportions, beginning to 
enact an alternative need not be. The resources exist to connect 
with nearby farmers in order to purchase food from a known 
source, and to support local farmers who strive to enact a healthy 
and sustainable agriculture. Farmer’s markets are one obvious 
example—indeed, an example that is trending upwards—even if 
my experience tells me they can become problematic when man-
aged within a consumerist paradigm. Such local connections may 
lead to the achievement of the aims of the one-hundred-mile diet 
in such a way as to prioritize human connection rather than, say, 
environmental puritanicism.

The difference the Church can make beyond the individual 
eater is that it, as one of the last remaining major voluntary institu-
tions in the West, can communally structure its purchasing and 
eating, including pooling money in order to support good farmers. 
This would no doubt be a radical proposal for some, since it re-
quires Christians to surrender their own individual financial sov-
ereignty, at least with regard to food. But can this can work? I have 
experimented, with reasonable success, with joint food purchasing 
on a smaller scale within the context of an intentional commu-
nity in Sydney. New life was evident as people shared more meals 
together and embraced community to greater depth. Churches 
can generate lists of local producers and suppliers of sustainable 
goods, encouraging church members and the wider community to 
purchase from them.

I imagine that in some settings it is not outside the bounds of 
possibility for a regular church meal to become central to the life 
of a community, and to begin to shape the habits of that commu-
nity. Earth Dinners, in which a festive gathering is held on Earth 
Day, represent one possible model whereby theory and practice 
converge.8 Earth Dinners are relatively simple: you gather a group 
of people—whether family, friends, or the broader community—
to share a dinner comprising food from local and sustainable 
sources, during which participants tell stories, discuss the food we 

8. My gratitude goes to Michael Frost, my colleague at Morling College, for 
drawing my attention to this model.



Matthew Anslow—Our Agricultural Krísis

27

eat, brainstorm ideas for how we can eat more sustainably, and cel-
ebrate the food the Earth provides. The timing of such an occasion 
could be reconfigured to align with an agricultural event, such as 
a local time of harvest, in order to better conform our rhythms to 
that of the environment.

Contextualization

Cavanaugh suggests that globalization, though it may have in-
creased our awareness of and sympathy for other times and places, 
has nonetheless produced a detachment from all times and places 
(2008, 44). This is a profound observation, and demands our re-
place-ment, our reconnection with this time and place as a time 
and place, not merely as the contingency in which we happen to 
exist.

Many churches are primed to be able to offer a local, con-
textual alternative for food production. Community gardens are 
rarely able to produce sufficient food to provide meaningfully 
for even a handful of people, but they can become a catalyst for 
neighborhood food production. Churches can often access unused 
space that can be converted into such gardens, whether on their 
own land, that of parishioners, or on land stewarded in agreement 
with local government. Perhaps churches could even reclaim curb-
sides though this may cross legal lines in some jurisdictions (or 
at least the limits of our willingness to contravene them). From a 
community garden, churches are able to welcome those from the 
wider community, learn from their experience, and pass on col-
lective knowledge through all manner of gatherings. Again, I have 
experimented with this reasonably successfully in recent years, at 
least on a small scale with few resources.

Such possibilities remind me of monastic practices in the me-
dieval period which, far from the Protestant mythology of monks 
“fleeing the world,” sustained European memory and culture in a 
period of turmoil. As Kenneth Latourette notes, Benedictine and 
Cistercian monasteries involved themselves with, among other 
things, improving soil and agricultural methods. One example was 



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28

the Benedictine’s pioneering use of marl (lime-rich mud). Hence 
the monasteries became centers of “orderly and settled life . . . pio-
neers in industry and commerce” (Latourette 1938, 379–80).

As with the Benedictines, the recovery and cultivation of 
agricultural knowledge in the cities will become increasingly im-
portant in our time as food prices likely rise in the future. Com-
munity gardens, and the innumerable home gardens they could 
spawn, could provide the material means to buffer cities against 
future crises and lay the groundwork for renewed relationships be-
tween churches and their local communities. They may also make 
us less reliant on large-scale, industrial agriculture and provide a 
meaningful alternative to it in the meantime. As Berry has argued, 
mastery of land can only happen on a certain scale, since mastery 
requires intimate knowledge (1977, 31). Churches can pioneer 
this kind of mastery born of contextualization and in opposition 
to those monocultural forms of agriculture born of industry.

Participation

I have already suggested that Christians and churches ought to 
participate in their own food production, whether through com-
munity or home gardens, and that they should participate in the 
relationships that make eating well a possibility. I would add that 
we can participate in political advocacy for the sake of our food 
systems. I would suggest that Christian voices have been largely 
non-existent on such issues. Some churches, such as the Uniting 
Church in Australia, have thankfully been outspoken about cli-
mate change. This is a significant agricultural issue, but there are 
more issues, and there is more at stake.

I would also suggest that Christians and churches can par-
ticipate by reclaiming other areas of food production. As Jonathan 
Cornford notes, “Very few of us actually produce anything tangible 
and material, let alone produce things that serve our basic every-
day needs” (2016b, 32). This is an opportunity. Even cooking one’s 
own meals is a subversive act in our time when eating out is eas-
ier than ever, and cheap, poor-quality, environmentally-intensive, 



Matthew Anslow—Our Agricultural Krísis

29

pre-prepared meals are more common than ever. Even more sub-
versive is the performance of this act in the context of community, 
whereby we have organized ourselves to cooperatively produce 
the things we need without the mediation of large-scale industrial 
processes or capitalist markets. More subversive still is the sheer 
pleasure of eating meals that we have prepared, especially those 
prepared from produce we ourselves have grown.

One possible starting point for this is the adoption of prepar-
ing food liturgically. It is worth noting that most Christians cele-
brate the Lord’s Supper using food items that are produced in ways 
that are damaging to the environment, such as bread or crackers 
produced from grains grown in chemically-fertilized monocul-
tures and packaged in unrecyclable material. The preparation of 
the Eucharistic elements using ingredients that are sustainably and 
ethically produced is a good starting point, just as the sacrament of 
the Lord’s Supper is the starting point for our life together and our 
mission of welcoming the world to the table of the Lord.

Conclusion

All I have said could be summarized by Ellen Davis who calls for 
“agrarianism”—“a way of thinking and ordering life in community 
that is based on the health of the land of living creatures” (2009, 
1). My suggestions are sketches of a recovery of our connection 
to the rest of creation, our seeking after God (the Good) which 
orders our desires, genuine Christian community, and a holistic 
understanding of Christian mission.

While there can be a tendency toward forms of legalism in 
environmental circles, I certainly do not intend anything I have 
said to be understood as such. My aim for this paper is to inspire 
further conversation on a rarely explored but crucial topic. What 
I would want to assert is that the krísis we face is an opportunity 
in which we can choose to continue on our destructive path or 
choose the gift of life offered by the Redeemer. We should not seek 
to enact anything I have said out of a burdensome sense of obliga-
tion to a reduced way of life. We should rather seek to become the 



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30

kind of people who desire to recognize the gift of living simply 
and sustainably within nature’s limits in communion with God, 
ourselves, others, and non-human creation. In offering a sketch, I 
hope that more detailed work might be done. To recall Augustine, 
it is in this place that our hearts will be at rest. It is also a timely 
way in which we may participate in the missio Dei.

Where better to conclude than with the following poetic re-
minder from our era’s most profound agricultural prophet (Berry 
2005, 18–19)?

There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

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