With Heart and Hands

SITTING ON HIS PORCH in a southwest Virginia holler, with the late-afternoon sun shining down, Richard Cartwright Austin is a man in his element. An ordained Presbyterian minister who has lived in various urban areas, Austin's vocation has grown to include a commitment to environmental theology.

After a decade of pastoral ministry in Appalachia, Austin's experience with the destruction of his locale by strip mining led him to coordinate the West Virginia Mountain Project, and eventually to be a national organizer for a project to secure federal legislation to end the strip mining of coal. The legislation he drafted was passed by Congress and eventually was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter.

As Austin was preparing to return to his primary call of pastoring, he realized that his faith addressed the experiences he and his parishioners had shared in their struggles against the devastation of the land. Since that time Austin has been developing a theological basis for understanding the relationships among God, people, and creation.

The laboratory in which Austin does his study is Chestnut Ridge Farm, near the coal fields of southwest Virginia. With his wife, Anne Leibig, a Gestalt therapist, he farms his land -- a small, self-sufficient, organic vegetable and maple syrup farm -- relying on the power of his two teams of horses, both for work and for fertilizer.

Bob Hulteen and Brian Jaudon visited Dick Austin on his farm in November 1989.

-- The Editors

Sojourners: I want to start by asking you about your experience of farming, both as a business and as a lifestyle.

Dick Austin: I see the farm as part of my identity and ministry. It's become a place where I constantly run into moral issues, one of which is the place of work and labor. I decided early on that I wanted my farm to be relatively labor-intensive rather than capital-intensive, and that I wanted to work with somebody year-round rather than use day labor. I'd rather invest in hiring someone than invest in a big machine.

Most of the people who have worked here have enjoyed the farm and come to love it almost as much as I do. We try to create something together.

I can't claim that I have made a financial success out of the farm. I have not. But that's in part because I've got several goals here, and making some financial return is only one. It's sort of a laboratory for me. It's a sensual, moral, experiential laboratory in which I learn about the earth.

My major crop is insight, and I'm willing to pay something for that. I think that the first purpose of farming, as I've come to reflect on it, ought to be subsistence or sustenance. In other words it ought to be what we gather from it that really nourishes us, not just what we eat, but also pleasure, beauty, satisfaction.

I sit out on the porch on summer evenings and listen to hundreds of thousands of creatures making their noises. The tree frogs come through my garden cleaning it out of bugs, and birds nest all over the place. There's so much life, and it's their place as much as mine. The benefit I get from that is that they make organic farming possible by keeping the ecosystem in balance. My fields and gardens are small, and when I turn my back, they are invaded by creatures who help take care of it and are just as important to the quality of that environment as I am.

Sustaining a community of life is the first purpose in farming, then conservation, and then finally production. We all need cash income, but production is only one of the purposes of farming. I think all three ought to be rejoiced in and compensated.

If this land is going to be restored to health, we as a society are going to need to pay farmers for conservation just as we pay foresters in national forests and other people for conservation work. It's valuable to the whole society and needs to be compensated.

Sojourners: Do you think the individual consumer can compensate the farmers' conservation efforts, or is programmatic or legislative action necessary?

Austin: Consumers can make important contributions. In many ways they are the key because they create demand. If consumers buy and favor fresh produce over prepared produce, local over long-distance produce, organic over pesticide-laden produce, and make these preferences known in their supermarkets, they will have a strong impact.

Most of us who are trying to do local organic farming are bucking the system. It is hard for us to find markets, and we need consumers who will work the other end of that system.

Sojourners: I understand that in preparation for writing your books you have reread the Bible in light of ecological concerns. The concept of stewardship is the biblical theme most often related to the Earth by church people. Has your biblical study led you to agree with this? Do you think stewardship is a helpful paradigm for understanding nature or God's creation?

Austin: No. Stewardship in the Bible is actually applied almost entirely to the materials of harvest after they are harvested. The idea is never applied directly to creatures or to the land.

The Bible has much more dynamic categories. Perhaps the most exciting is Covenant -- the relationship between a called holy people and a called holy land, both of which God is rescuing from oppression and abuse and bringing together in a new community. In addition, there's the whole Sabbath tradition, which is the cycle of human and religious life in the Bible. It is a cycle that embraces nature in the same way it embraces humanity.

One of the obligations of the land in the Bible is to feed the poor. When the land is doing what it's supposed to do, it'll be more productive. But if the poor are isolated from the land, the land can't do its job. When land is reunited with people who love it and care for it, the biblical assumption is that both become more vital.

This is the Bible's image of the relationship. It is all through the books of the prophets. And Jesus spoke to it when he announced, "The time is fulfilled and the kingdom is at hand, and it's time for the chains to be broken and the poor to be set free."

It's time to restore our relationship to the land. Jesus was announcing Jubilee, which is why the fish were excited and swarmed to his nets, and the land and people gathered and the bread multiplied. It related to the way the whole community works. It's a vision of a community not just of people, but of people and their land and other life that shares the land with them. All are part of the community that Jesus came to redeem and that the Covenant was established to bring together in a moral way.

But the real paradigm in the Bible is not in relation to the Earth or to the Fall but to pollution. When Cain killed Abel and Abel's blood polluted the ground, it was no longer fertile and Cain had to wander the Earth. Pollution is the biblical paradigm for what happens to the Earth as a result of human abuse.

But the curse on the land in the third chapter of Genesis is lifted in the ninth chapter of Genesis. The ground is not cursed in the Covenant community. In fact, part of what the Covenant community is all about is rebuilding a moral relationship that does not have to be cursed.

In the New Testament I hear the promise that Christ came to redeem the whole world as God loves the whole world. I believe that all living creatures will be saved together and not apart from each other. As John said in Revelation, "we will praise the Lamb triumphant with all creatures," not in their absence. So the paradigm of redemption which is at the heart of the Christian gospel is the paradigm most appropriate for those who appreciate the radical depth of the environmental crisis.

Sojourners: It seems that there's been more talk in the last year or two about how to handle the environmental crisis politically. Do you think the political landscape has changed? How can we build the kind of genuine, authentic, sustainable movement needed to create real change?

Austin: I think the environmental crisis is moving to the number one position on the world stage, which was occupied until a year or so ago by the Cold War. I think it is going to be the issue that dominates or at least leads political discourse for the next generation.

In order to rescue the planet, in order to keep it a livable place for human beings and other forms of life, profound changes are going to have to come, and come quite quickly. We're still on the "approach ramp," however, and only here and there are we on the freeway of real action. Most of what has been done so far has been tinkering with the system to try to lessen the impact. It hasn't been redesigning systems. When we start truly redesigning our energy system, so that we don't produce the acid rain and the hydrocarbons and the greenhouse gases, then places such as the coal fields where I live and have ministered most of my life are going to be profoundly transformed.

Protection of the earth will require a redistribution of the earth's resources. The land will not be protected until people again live on it and tend it. It will not be protected by industrial-scale land ownership and land use. I think that's proving to be a failure in this country and around the world in terms of environmental protection.

When coal is no longer in demand, for example, the land which is now 80 percent owned by coal companies will need to be returned to the people, so we have some basis on which to begin a new style of life. This is the biblical insight and the place where people of faith can contribute most clearly to the environmental dialogue.

John Muir, who began wilderness protection efforts in this country, knew that wilderness is best protected by bringing people to it and getting them to care for it. Then they have a stake in wanting it shielded from invasion and despoliation. From the biblical point of view, nature is only safe from pollution and brought into a secure moral relationship when it is united with people who love it and care for it.

Sojourners: How do you respond to criticism from some that environmental concerns in the United States could affect the distribution of wealth internationally? Brazilians, for example, say that U.S. foreign aid that is tied to the preservation of the rain forest prevents them from controlling their own land.

Austin: There are obviously some Brazilians who want to follow a discredited model of capitalist exploitation in their own development and want the privilege of making the same mistakes that some of the rest of us have made. But the worst thing we can do to Third World people is force them to devote their land and productive capacities to serve our interests rather than their own.

If we weren't inducing them to convert rain forests to beef cattle pastures for Wendy's hamburgers, and if we weren't inducing them to convert farmlands into pineapple ranches for export to us, there would be some chance for the people of Brazil and the people of the Philippines to build their own base agriculture. But as long as they are coerced by debt and seduced by our market instead of serving their own needs, they're going to end up spoiling the Earth, and we'll all suffer for it.

Sojourners: In a crowded world, the needs for food, space, and recreation would seem to compete with the need environmentalists see to stop plowing the most fragile farmland to protect the integrity of large ecosystems, and to limit human intrusion into the wilderness that remains. Are human needs, particularly the needs of the poor, in conflict with the needs of the creatures with whom we share this planet?

Austin: The more exploitative our society becomes and the worse job we do in managing our resources, the more competition, of course, there will be between the needs of one group and the needs of another. When both the poor and the earth are oppressed and exploited, those needs come into acute competition. They are forced to fight each other for survival.

I learned early on from my years as a pastor in Appalachia, and from the days when I started fighting strip mining in southwest Virginia, that the only defense those mountains have from exploitation by the energy conglomerates' bulldozers is the poor, isolated people who live in those hollers, who care so deeply that they would fight for that land. Take those people away and the mountains are totally defenseless.

Sojourners: Agriculture has been called the number one polluter in North America. Farming involves life-and-death control of land, plants, and animals and can lead to the abuse of creatures. Do you think there's a moral and Christian approach to agriculture?

Austin: I do, and I think that a Christian approach to agriculture can and should be very different from most of the agriculture that's practiced in this country, even by good Christians. Christian, or biblical, agriculture begins with the 10th commandment: "You shall not covet your neighbor's land." It resists the temptation "to add field to field." It resists growing for efficiency. It insists that neighbors are more important than space for machines to operate.

And so it's focused on the building of community, both for other human beings and with the life that shares the earth. You don't tear down fencerows and plow endlessly, because then you deprive all kinds of creatures of habitat. A Christian approach to agriculture will recognize that there is a culture to be built that includes people and the full range of life on the soil. It will be focused on celebration and sustenance, on conservation as well as production for sale.

This is an area where the church could really provide leadership, because we still have a strong rural infrastructure with thousands of churches. Rural colleges could provide educational leadership.

Sojourners: You've been a meat producer for some time now on your farm, and yet one of the chapters in your current book is on cattle culture. Would you explain your perspective on growing beef cattle?

Austin: What we have tried to do on the farm is to get away from some of the types of exploitation and waste that are so common in our society. We have moved from a society where cattle were part of the farm ecosystem to a society where cattle are raised in giant feedlots. They are confined and oppressed, their waste products don't return to the soil but become a pollutant, and they consume huge quantities of grain that would be better used feeding people directly.

Here, we have grazed our cattle on green pastures in family groups. I think it's more humane.

Farmers always face the reality of exercising life-and-death control over other creatures. I don't think that as human beings we can step out of the fundamental systems of life, which are to eat and be eaten. It is because of this that the world can sustain such a complex and rich array of life. I don't apologize for being part of that system and for being one of the Earth's predators.

But I don't think that gives farmers license to abuse, to harvest thoughtlessly, to use what we harvest inappropriately, or to afflict and oppress other creatures. Because we are capable of moral reflection, we have the obligation to make these relationships moral and sensitive to the welfare and character of other species.

Sojourners: You have written a proposal for a constitutional amendment to grant civil rights to natural life. What do you think would be accomplished by doing that, and how realistic is its success?

Austin: We have a history in this country of civil rights expanding from white male property owners to embrace now most human beings. And yet our constitutional form of government affects not just human beings but a vast array of life which is unrepresentable in the legislative and legal processes. We need a way to break that next barrier so that we can truly create a culture in which all have some overt protection.

My proposal, which I have been working on for a decade, will be published this spring. At the same time, the National Wildlife Federation has a constitutional amendment proposal that it is going to start pushing very aggressively. The amendment that I propose would require the considerate treatment of natural life and would give some specific protections to species, to systems of life, to distinctive natural features.

The purpose of an amendment campaign, very much like the ERA [Equal Rights Amendment] campaign, is that it clarifies the issue. Even if the amendment never passes, it can be a powerful educational tool. The critical issue in environmental awareness and policy is to move beyond, "We must save the Earth for the sake of human society, " and get to, "We must save the Earth for its own sake as well as ours. "

We have to make this shift in thinking because while the media alarm us regularly with crises, we adjust to crises. We can't live in terror and fear indefinitely, so we adjust to the most awful things -- hydrogen bombs hanging over our heads, the greenhouse effect. We will adjust to anything, usually to our loss. Crisis gets our attention, but only love and engagement will hold our attention and commitment.

Sojourners: What's challenging you now? What are the edges of new growth for you in your work?

Austin: I think that the biggest challenge to me now is wrestling with how important community is. I've always been very much an individualist, and the typical American self-sufficient individualist. I am realizing more and more how vital communal relationships are to achieving the things I've come to value.

For farming to be effective, as the Amish are witness to, neighbors need to be using the same technological discipline. When my equipment breaks down, or I get sick, my neighbors need to substitute for me and me for them. The only common technological discipline now is that imposed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the large equipment sellers, and the chemical pushers, and most farmers use it. If you don't use it, you start out at high risk on your own.

For better farming systems to be established, you have to form a new group -- a new neighborhood of farmers who support each other. I don't think the individual can make a go of small farming, but I think a neighborhood can.

The other growing edge for me is learning how to keep the sensory experience of life in gear with reflection on the meaning of life, so that they really infuse one another. I want to stay in touch with the world -- the people, the creatures, and God -- all of whom I have come to love. And I want to do it, not in an abstract way, but by staying in touch with each and with the meaning of the relationships between them.

Extending Constitutional Protection: An amendment for all creatures.

THE EARTH AND ALL ITS LIFE shall be treated considerately for they are vulnerable to human culture. Although cultivating natural life, harvesting from species and natural resources, and physical expressions of culture are appropriate for humanity, it shall be a constitutional responsibility to preserve living species, the natural systems that support life, and natural features that are unique and beautiful.

Species, natural systems, and natural features shall have standing before the law to protect these their rights within the general welfare.