Books
"How should a Christian think--and feel--about creation? Is it something to be transcended, or embraced--or something else entirely? In this highly readable, important, and deeply rooted book, Ragan Sutterfield opens the Christian imagination to a vision of a God both transcendent and immanent, an incarnational Father entwined in the mud and dirt and beauty and death of his creation. This book teaches Christians how to get their hands dirty--and why they should." --Paul Kingsnorth, author of Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist
"Weaving together reflections on the soil, the biblical story, farming, compost, and our hope for the healing of creation, Ragan Sutterfield has created an allusive and poetic symphony of gratitude, awe, and solidarity with and for the soil and ourselves as creatures. This book evocatively and compellingly invites us to join the dance of all of creation, so that we, who are intimately bound with the soil, might become more deeply rooted in the life of the Creator." --Sylvia C. Keesmaat, founder, Bible Remixed
"Weaving together reflections on the soil, the biblical story, farming, compost, and our hope for the healing of creation, Ragan Sutterfield has created an allusive and poetic symphony of gratitude, awe, and solidarity with and for the soil and ourselves as creatures. This book evocatively and compellingly invites us to join the dance of all of creation, so that we, who are intimately bound with the soil, might become more deeply rooted in the life of the Creator." --Sylvia C. Keesmaat, founder, Bible Remixed
“Sutterfield’s book is full of practical wisdom not just for those interested in Berry or agrarianism but for anyone interested in living a sane life. This is a compelling and transformative read.” --William T. Cavanaugh, DePaul University
“This collection of essays offers a reliable map to Berry’s thought and life, beautifully distilled into a dozen keystone convictions (no small accomplishment).” --Ched Myers, author, Watershed Discipleship: Reinhabiting Bioregional Faith and Practice
“Goodness and beauty, lament and hope, humility and resilience, soil and skin— readers of Wendell Berry know how he celebrates treasures too many people treat as trash. Now Ragan Sutterfield has gathered a dozen central themes from Berry’s work and offers them as a call to aliveness in this wonderful and endangered world.” --Brian McClaren, author, The Great Spiritual Migration
“This wide-ranging yet coherent introduction to Berry’s work offers also a view of Christian life that engages the deepest threats to our humanity and our physical world, and at the same time provides concrete guidance for the patient practice of hope.” --Ellen F. Davis, Amos Ragan Kearns Professor of Bible and Practical Theology, The Divinity School, Duke University
“People of faith and goodwill are seeking ways to live lives of truth, beauty, and love in a society which seems to discard or disdain such things. Sutterfield’s unpacking of Wendell Berry’s wisdom, insight, challenges, and faithfulness offers ways of doing that in these perilous times. This is an important book for the living of these days.” --J. Brent Bill, Quaker minister, author, Holy Silence: The Gift of Quaker Spirituality, and steward of Ploughshares Farm
“In Wendell Berry and the Given Life, Ragan Sutterfield has gotten to the spiritual core of Berry’s work and elegantly introduced it to people of faith. This book is a beacon of hope in our bleak times, one that guides us not only deeper into Berry’s work, but also toward a richer and more sustainable way of life.” --C. Christopher Smith, founding editor of The Englewood Review of Books and coauthor of Slow Church: Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus
“This collection of essays offers a reliable map to Berry’s thought and life, beautifully distilled into a dozen keystone convictions (no small accomplishment).” --Ched Myers, author, Watershed Discipleship: Reinhabiting Bioregional Faith and Practice
“Goodness and beauty, lament and hope, humility and resilience, soil and skin— readers of Wendell Berry know how he celebrates treasures too many people treat as trash. Now Ragan Sutterfield has gathered a dozen central themes from Berry’s work and offers them as a call to aliveness in this wonderful and endangered world.” --Brian McClaren, author, The Great Spiritual Migration
“This wide-ranging yet coherent introduction to Berry’s work offers also a view of Christian life that engages the deepest threats to our humanity and our physical world, and at the same time provides concrete guidance for the patient practice of hope.” --Ellen F. Davis, Amos Ragan Kearns Professor of Bible and Practical Theology, The Divinity School, Duke University
“People of faith and goodwill are seeking ways to live lives of truth, beauty, and love in a society which seems to discard or disdain such things. Sutterfield’s unpacking of Wendell Berry’s wisdom, insight, challenges, and faithfulness offers ways of doing that in these perilous times. This is an important book for the living of these days.” --J. Brent Bill, Quaker minister, author, Holy Silence: The Gift of Quaker Spirituality, and steward of Ploughshares Farm
“In Wendell Berry and the Given Life, Ragan Sutterfield has gotten to the spiritual core of Berry’s work and elegantly introduced it to people of faith. This book is a beacon of hope in our bleak times, one that guides us not only deeper into Berry’s work, but also toward a richer and more sustainable way of life.” --C. Christopher Smith, founding editor of The Englewood Review of Books and coauthor of Slow Church: Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus
"I honestly don't think there is a book out there that is quite so brave and honest about the complex, pain-filled, and beautiful experience so many of us have with our bodies as this one. I applaud Ragan Sutterfield for bringing to the light what has for so long been hiding in the dark" —Nadia Bolz-Weber, author of Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint
"Ragan has learned from experience what our best poets have been telling us--that the key to being human in our time is a "recovered body." That the "soft animal of your body" will teach you, like the wild geese, if you give it your attention. What Ragan makes so beautifully clear is how Jesus longs to love and redeem us in and through our bodies. This Is My Body is a memoir that threatens to up-end spiritual writing in the 21st century."—Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, author of Strangers at My Door: A True Story of Finding Jesus in Unexpected Guests
"Ragan Sutterfield not only reminds us that we live our faith in our bodies, but he calls us to live with beauty, grace and strength. This is My Body is the ideal companion as we seek to live whole, healed lives in mind, body and spirit.” —Doug Pagitt, author of Flipped: The Provocative Truth That Changes Everything We Know About God
"Ragan has learned from experience what our best poets have been telling us--that the key to being human in our time is a "recovered body." That the "soft animal of your body" will teach you, like the wild geese, if you give it your attention. What Ragan makes so beautifully clear is how Jesus longs to love and redeem us in and through our bodies. This Is My Body is a memoir that threatens to up-end spiritual writing in the 21st century."—Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, author of Strangers at My Door: A True Story of Finding Jesus in Unexpected Guests
"Ragan Sutterfield not only reminds us that we live our faith in our bodies, but he calls us to live with beauty, grace and strength. This is My Body is the ideal companion as we seek to live whole, healed lives in mind, body and spirit.” —Doug Pagitt, author of Flipped: The Provocative Truth That Changes Everything We Know About God
"Like tenacious alfalfa roots, which reach deep into the ground and transfer essential nutrients to the soil's surface, Ragan Sutterfield digs deep into the subsoil of agrarian thought, Christian faith, and his own experience as a farmer, and brings up life-giving nourishment for all to share. In this world of smartphones and dumbed-down culture, Cultivating Reality points us toward those habits of mind that deepen our relationship with the world, with God, and with each other. Here's to 'the priesthood of all farmers' and 'the farmerhood of all peoples.' Take this book, and eat." --Fred Bahnson, author of Soil and Sacrament: Four Seasons, Five Gardens, and the Search for a New American Spirituality
"Sutterfield wants to cure our rapacious apathy toward reality by infecting us with an agrarian mind. His comprehensive argument exposes just how fantastical it is to ignore food and farming as matters of faith. Like farming, this book is also 'a dance of effort and grace'--at once conservingly creative, strenuously imaginative, a disciplined and artful cultivation of our capacity to recognize with equal clarity the idols eviscerating us and the gifts by which we are sustained." --D. Brent Laytham, Dean of the Ecumenical Institute of Theology, St. Mary's Seminary
"Sutterfield wants to cure our rapacious apathy toward reality by infecting us with an agrarian mind. His comprehensive argument exposes just how fantastical it is to ignore food and farming as matters of faith. Like farming, this book is also 'a dance of effort and grace'--at once conservingly creative, strenuously imaginative, a disciplined and artful cultivation of our capacity to recognize with equal clarity the idols eviscerating us and the gifts by which we are sustained." --D. Brent Laytham, Dean of the Ecumenical Institute of Theology, St. Mary's Seminary
Pamphlets
"In this quiet and patient set of meditations Ragan Sutterfield calls us to return to what is fundamental: healthy soil, tasty food, good work, the fellowship of friends, and faith in God. Whether you are an urban dweller, suburbanite, gardener, or farmer, there is much to be learned, put into practice, and enjoyed in these pages."
-- Norman Wirzba, Duke Divinity School
"Farming as a Spiritual Discipline is a small book that packs a big punch. It's more like a fresh layer of compost than a flashy quick-release packet of chemical fertilizer. Sort of unassuming at first glance, it is packed full of health and a great contribution to the debates about faith and environment. Personally, it has re-sparked my imagination around my work with the Pumpkin Patch Community Garden and Millwood Farmers' Market and helped me see how those fit into God's unfolding kingdom." -- Craig Goodwin, Author of Year of Plenty
"Farming As A Spiritual Discipline is not a large book but it is one of the most powerful and concise books that should be on the shelf of every Christian. And despite what the title may infer, it is not just for farmers- it is for all of us who long for the coming shalom of God's New Earth." -- Jason Fowler, Sustainable Traditions Blog
-- Norman Wirzba, Duke Divinity School
"Farming as a Spiritual Discipline is a small book that packs a big punch. It's more like a fresh layer of compost than a flashy quick-release packet of chemical fertilizer. Sort of unassuming at first glance, it is packed full of health and a great contribution to the debates about faith and environment. Personally, it has re-sparked my imagination around my work with the Pumpkin Patch Community Garden and Millwood Farmers' Market and helped me see how those fit into God's unfolding kingdom." -- Craig Goodwin, Author of Year of Plenty
"Farming As A Spiritual Discipline is not a large book but it is one of the most powerful and concise books that should be on the shelf of every Christian. And despite what the title may infer, it is not just for farmers- it is for all of us who long for the coming shalom of God's New Earth." -- Jason Fowler, Sustainable Traditions Blog
God's Grandeur: The Church in the Economy of Creation (Ekklesia Project Pamphlet Series)
Our age has been one of denial. Central to this denial has been a rejection of our creatureliness, our dependence upon, and membership within creation. Embracing a culture of exploitation and consumption, we have come to understand ourselves as the masters of creation rather than its members, independent of God’s grace and life-sustaining gifts. Christianity possesses the resources to name and correct this denial, but rather than offer a prophetic voice against the idolatry of our age, the church has all too often been mute, or worse, joined its voice with the cacophony.
The Taste of Discipleship: Cultivating the Flavor of Faithfulness (Ekklesia Project Pamphlet Series)
Co-Authored with Brent Laytham
This pamphlet seeks to cultivate the truth about taste and the goodness of discipleship by walking again through the beauty of God’s garden. Rereading Genesis 1-4, we invite the church to recover the flavor of fidelity in a world of liquid smoke and aspartame—a world of deceit, apathy, violence and greed. We suggest that faithful discipleship is cultivated and cultivating—it is agricultural and leads, when practiced well, to a savory, faithful flavor.
Our age has been one of denial. Central to this denial has been a rejection of our creatureliness, our dependence upon, and membership within creation. Embracing a culture of exploitation and consumption, we have come to understand ourselves as the masters of creation rather than its members, independent of God’s grace and life-sustaining gifts. Christianity possesses the resources to name and correct this denial, but rather than offer a prophetic voice against the idolatry of our age, the church has all too often been mute, or worse, joined its voice with the cacophony.
The Taste of Discipleship: Cultivating the Flavor of Faithfulness (Ekklesia Project Pamphlet Series)
Co-Authored with Brent Laytham
This pamphlet seeks to cultivate the truth about taste and the goodness of discipleship by walking again through the beauty of God’s garden. Rereading Genesis 1-4, we invite the church to recover the flavor of fidelity in a world of liquid smoke and aspartame—a world of deceit, apathy, violence and greed. We suggest that faithful discipleship is cultivated and cultivating—it is agricultural and leads, when practiced well, to a savory, faithful flavor.