By Wendell Berry
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Since I started writing my Prairie Muffin Manifesto, a few ladies have connected so much with what it says that they have used the badge on their websites and proclaimed themselves Prairie Muffins, too. Some find that some of the Manifesto resonates with their convictions, but there are a few touchy points that hinder them from wanting to be known as Prairie Muffins, though they consider themselves "sympathizers" (this sounds rather like an underground cabal, doesn't it?) Mostly, there are those who see the words "Prairie Muffin" and immediately conjure up the frumpy picture of female oppression which I abjure and which I have been battling since the beginning.
For now we will ignore those who think any use of the words "feminine," "patriarchy," "submission," or even "complementarian" are anathema.
The questions vary, but most boil down to this: when we accept the status quo are we accepting the destruction of what Russell Kirk called "the Permanent Things"?
When I began to codify some convictions I have about biblical womanhood, it was not to start any kind of movement. It was a somewhat tongue-in-cheek (with serious intentions) way of encouraging Christian women to hang on to the principles that they know are true but which are daily under attack—both from "friendly fire" and from the world. In our postmodern age, any attempt to take a stand for truth when it is under attack is considered hubris and is usually not welcome, even in the church. Though every assault on God's revealed truth is fundamentally an attack on the character of God, those assaults take different forms in different ages. In our age, though we see other manifestations of Satan's schemes, the biblical family is particularly targeted by the enemies of God. Thus, there are defenses raised by God's people promoting righteousness in family issues, such as a renewed emphasis on distinct roles for men and women, homeschooling and Christian education, and ministries which focus on encouraging Christian families.
I think that the interest in Christian agrarianism is also a phenomenon which comes from a desire to defend the family against worldly assaults.
Though I live in the country, I do not live an agrarian life. I am not a good gardener, and I would rather be inside reading a book than digging in the dirt. My husband has no interest in being a farmer, and though he can't stand the city, he derives our income from there and he is content making a living doing what that at which he excels: slinging computer code for hire. I would say, however, that we are agrarian sympathizers. We like getting eggs from our few chickens and recognize their superiority to the pale-yolked store-bought eggs. We are happy to drink water from our own well. We take responsibility for providing for our own needs (including some alternative power) and don't expect any help from the government. We prefer to stay home and consciously try to preserve our time as a family, not living in the car or getting involved in too many extraneous activities. We go to church near our home so that we can cultivate relationships in our community with the people with whom we worship. And we engage in what Allan Carlson says is an outworking of the agrarian credo in modern times: homeschooling. He says:
Contemporary home-schooling circles, moreover, are disproportionately "agrarian" in their behavior: they are more likely to live in rural places, villages, or intentional communities; they are more likely to maintain a "family garden" and simple animal husbandry; and their families are larger and more stable: another Agrarian trait. It seems that once having tasted household freedom in the act of home education, the family looks for other ways to grow into autonomy.
That household freedom is what makes us sympathetic to agrarianism and its principles. We repudiate the encroachments of statism and, even more, the cultural enslavement which so many people seem to want to embrace. Which is why Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow was such a compelling book for me.
It was the first Berry novel I have read. I have enjoyed some of his poetry and an essay here and there, and this story, set in the same fictional community of Port William, Kentucky as all of his fiction is set, was as much a defense for the agrarian way of life as any of Berry's non-fiction. You can tell he is a poet, even in his prose and essays. He paints pictures in his writing, and though his sentences are usually simple, even spare, his insights into character and place are rich—a quality that his poetry has most likely contributed to his other writing.
The simple title is emblematic of this modest style of writing. Jayber Crow is the name of the narrator and main character who, in David Copperfield-style without the Dickensian flourishes, relates his life and adventures in a mostly linear fashion, with some notable digressions and interjections. Like David Copperfield, Jayber Crow discovers some things about himself that he doesn't like, and he learns a lot about what is truly valuable in this life. Jayber Crow also learns to think a lot on the life that is to come.
An orphan, Jayber spends the first ten years of his life with an older couple near the river, working and learning to love his simple life, and like a tree planted by those streams of water, he grows deep roots at a young age. When "Aunt Cordie" and "Uncle Othy" die within months of each other, Jayber is sent away to an orphanage where he learns to despise institutions ("Like...most institutions, it was turned inward, trying to be world in itself") and where he dreams of returning to his home in the Port William area. After a brief college stint where he realizes he's not cut out to be a ministerial student let alone a minister, Jayber heads back to Port William to cut people's hair, as the town barber.
Some parts of this book are not nice. Jayber is full of sin, and so are the people in his town. As he frequently admits, sometimes apologetically, barbers eventually hear about everything that goes on in their town. As he tells us (the readers) all about it, he also tells of his growing realization of the eternal consequences of all he observes. To make money on the side, Jayber is the church custodian and town gravedigger, positions that position him to dwell on deeper things. He decided he wasn't made for the ministry when he had too many questions about the "hard" verses in the Bible and couldn't accept them on "faith" like his compatriots were content to do. Instead, he ends up learning far more about those difficult doctrines by having to love his enemies and by participating in the suffering of those he loves. Jayber loves deeply: his friends, his place, and a woman who cannot return his affections, and he learns that love can be both a comfort and a pain. Jayber's theology (which is probably Wendell Berry's theology) is not always orthodox, and sometimes seems to indicate a kind of universalism, except for occasional bits of wisdom from some of his friends, like Athey—the hardworking man who spent his whole life building up a magnificent farm only to have his craven son-in-law mortgage it all off in the name of progress—who said, "If the Devil don't exist, how do you explain that some people are a lot worse than they're smart enough to be?"
Or Miss Gladdie Finn who tells Jayber, "You don't want to go to Hell, honey."
He replies, "I don't... But I don't reckon it has enough room for everybody who's eligible."
"Well I don't know," she says, "A soul is mighty small."
"It's strange the way your mind withdraws from a place it knows you are going to leave," Jayber says as he prepares to move away from the town of Port William when it declines in the end of the century while modern life encroaches on its simple ways. This encroachment is a theme that agrarians discuss and repudiate with lives that embrace simple living as much as possible. When Port William's soul wastes away because of the more shallow attractions of city life and the devastation of two wars, Jayber doesn't like it, which he makes clear in his observations of events as they transpire. "Television had come. Instead of sitting out and talking from porch to porch on the summer evenings, the people sat inside in rooms filled with the flickering blue light of the greater world." But though he knows that those changes mean something valuable has been lost, he can also see, as he gets closer to Heaven, how the changes may have brought some benefit, as well. He says that his autobiographical book is about Heaven,
But the earth speaks of Heaven, or why would we want to go there? If we knew nothing of Hell, how would we delight in Heaven should we get there?
Those in Port William who are always looking for greener grass are the most unhappy of people. Those in Port William who are rooted to the place and who are willing to love, accept, and encourage others in their lives are sometimes unhappy, too, but they also know how to be joyful, and they know that this life is not all there is. Even if the grass seems greener (though with a distinct fluorescent tinge) elsewhere, there is no greener grass than in those green pastures beside still waters in eternity. Even the trees planted firmly by the rivers of water in Port William do not last forever, so our roots must run even deeper than a vision of agrarian (or Prairie Muffin) utopia.
The here and the not yet is a tension that Christians need to live in wisdom, as we work and obey God here, looking forward to the future there with Him. There are many sparkling distractions that would tempt us away from our purpose, which is to bring glory to God in all that we do...not pursuing our personal peace and affluence, a path which never gets us to the promised land, but building the permanent kingdom of Jesus Christ in the spheres which He gives us to serve Him. Modern life is often not conducive to this purpose. There is a lot of wisdom in agrarianism about cutting out the dross. Jayber Crow shows the beauty of life lived in simplicity and rootedness, as well as giving a picture of how to deal with the inevitable changes that are imposed on us as we live with that tension.
