Written Into the Land: Use, Identity and the Human Awakening to an Eloquent Creation

• Main Author: D'Angelo, Christopher J. M.
• Other Authors: Kuipers, Ronald A.
• Language: en
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: Land use > Biblical teaching; Agriculture > Religious aspects > Christianity; Ecology > Religious aspects > Christianity
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10756/285315

This thesis argues that human land use is a decisive yet commonly overlooked indication of the sort of people we are. As such, to grasp that we live in a world in 'ecological crisis' requires grappling with the moral, spiritual and narrative underpinnings and effects of those twentieth century shifts in urban/suburban development and farming practices that have so dramatically altered the North American cultural and geographical landscape. In particular, this dilemma is approached from a biblically informed Christian perspective. Chapter 1 proposes that understanding and experiencing the world as Creation requires accounting for the embodied and wondrous character of existence. Chapter 2 examines aspects of the biblical narrative that provide resources for rethinking destructive land use patterns. In conversation with agrarians and new urbanists, Chapter 3 provides an agrarian ethic for urbanites; a vision rooted in agrarianism that acknowledges how deeply the fate and health of cities and farms are intertwined.