Responding to the Countryside Alliance

  (some reflections by Robert Barlow)

Within the Churches there are people who will respond to the Countryside Alliance, and its March on September 22nd in a variety of ways. In all that has been going on there is, I believe, a significant role for the Church not least because of what is happening in the debate about what is “rural”. Those who have visited the Countryside Alliance’s website will know that there is there a deliberation about this.

Richard Burge, Chief Executive of the Countryside Alliance, writing in an article in Country Living writes that rural communities are those “who rely not just materially but also spiritually  (my italics) on the sustainable use of the land…” He goes on to write “The soil gives us life through food and spiritual (my italics) nourishment and fulfilment from its splendour: it is where we return when we die.”

Rural people, he writes, are those people who form part of such communities, or who used to do so but have had to move into a town, or who aspire to a life connected to the soil. Because the land is productive in its seasons, then rural people are those who live in touch with the rhythm of the seasons. So the Countryside Alliance are saying that rurality is a spiritual issue! How should we react?

Clearly there is much in this that the Churches can and should respond to positively. As Brueggemann remarks, “Land is a central, if not the central theme (his italics), of biblical faith”[1].  Much of the biblical story can be understood in terms of God and His relationship with His people and their relationship with Him and His Creation, the land, which He has given.

The Genesis 2 account of Creation has mankind made out of the dust, and then the man from the soil is given the task of caring for the soil, the dust from which he was created. Our relationship with the soil is there at the beginning of the story and continues. The promise through Moses was to give the people a land. They were exiled from the land. They were restored to the land. One of the temptations of Jesus was about whether he would abuse his relationship with the land by turning stones into bread.

Tied up with that understanding of relationship with the land is an awareness of seasonality, so that (for example) in Jeremiah we find “But these people have stubborn and rebellious hearts; they have turned aside and gone away. They do not say to themselves, `Let us fear the LORD our God, who gives autumn and spring rains in season, who assures us of the regular weeks of harvest.'”[2]. At the risk of being thoroughly anachronistic, on Richard Burge’s description of rurality, Jerusalem living Jeremiah was “rural”.

So as Churches we would want to affirm that connection between humanity and the soil, but would want to assert that this should be for all people, irrespective of whether they see themselves as urban or rural. How does the church do that and convey our interconnectedness with soil and season? The liturgy of the Church speaks powerfully and in particular at two points about our relationship with the dust. Ash Wednesday has the words “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” as part of the imposition of ashes. Perhaps the symbolic act might be even more powerful if instead of using last year’s burnt palm crosses (as is often the practise) that dust from the churchyard were used. Unfortunately with Ash Wednesday being (inevitably) a mid- week service the congregation usually consists of the keener types. Should we be thinking of ways of making this a higher profile event in the church calendar?

Another powerful statement in the church’s liturgy is at the committal in the funeral service with the words “Earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes”. Interestingly at most funeral services, I observe that the mourners too feel a need to throw earth onto the coffin in the grave. Perhaps there is a residual awareness of humanity’s connection with the soil, which is brought out at critical moments.

The church’s liturgy also connects with seasonality through its calendar. This is true not only of the agricultural festivals (which might be celebrated more frequently in rural churches) such as Harvest, Plough Sunday, Rogation and Lammas, but also through the more distinctly Christian festivals. The date of Easter is derived from the cycles of the moon. Christmas is dated from the first measurably longer day after the longest night as the most appropriate time to celebrate the victory of the Sun of Righteousness.

Perhaps as churches we need to be enabling people to remake the connections between themselves and the soil. Perhaps also we might want to be saying to Richard Burge and the Countryside Alliance, “We agree with you. Come and discover what the churches have to offer about reconnecting with the soil and, when we fail to make those connections, challenge us to do so."

Send mail to robert.barlow@zetnet.co.uk with questions or comments about this web site.