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Norman Wirzba is Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology and Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute of Ethics at Duke University. His research and teaching interests at the intersections of theology, philosophy, ecology, and agrarian and environmental studies. Raised on a farm in Southern Alberta, Norman went on to study history at the University of Lethbridge, theology at Yale University Divinity School, and philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. Since then he has taught at Saint Thomas More College/University of Saskatchewan, Georgetown College (KY), and Duke University Divinity School. He's the father of four children and is married to Gretchen Ziegenhals. He likes to bake, cook and make things with wood. He also enjoys playing the guitar. He used to be a good athlete! He enjoys being outdoors and spending time with his family and friends. He tries to grow some food.Find him online at https://normanwirzba.comEucharist Church is a community of disciples in San Francisco California seeking to live all of life in reference to Christ. Find us online at eucharistsf.org
"Cooking is a declaration of love ... food is God's love made delicious." Theologian Norman Wirzba reflects on the threats of our faulty logic of food and our disordered and disconnected relationship to eating and nourishment, and imagines a theology of food grounded in membership, gift, and hospitality. Interview with Matt Croasmun.Support For the Life of the World: Give to the Yale Center for Faith & CultureAbout Norman WirzbaNorman Wirzba is the Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Theology at Duke University. His teaching, research, and writing happens at the intersections of theology and philosophy, and agrarian and environmental studies. He is the author of several books, including Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating (2nd Edition), From Nature to Creation, and The Paradise of God: Renewing Religion in an Ecological Age, and his most recent book, This Sacred Life: The Place of Humanity in a Wounded World, will be published in 2021. In his spare time he likes to bake, play guitar, and make things with wood. For more information visit his website at normanwirzba.com.Show NotesIntroductionFood and Faith: A Theology of Eating—a picture of what eating can be, connecting us to the world, to each other, to God.When it comes to eating in America these days, how are we doing?Anonymity and ignorance. We are disconnected from food, we're not encouraged to know where food comes from or how it came to be."Eat food, not too much, mostly vegetables."Good eating is not solely a matter of personal virtue or vice. It's part of a complicated system, agricultural strategy, and political process we're involved in.Food is central to human flourishing, but if it's only a market commodity, we end up with a faulty logic that drives a sinister food industry.You can only sell so much: therefore, preservativesIf food is primarily to be digested, we have foods that are, in principle, indigestible. It tastes good, and never makes you full. It's the perfect food commodity. The food system is developed to take advantage of you as a unit of consumption. What is eating for?Membership as a eucharistic mode for changing the way we conceive of food and the good. Eating is a daily reminder of our need.Fruits of the spirit that ought to animate our relation to membership.Mutual belonging (Willie Jennings, The Christian Imagination)How disconnection from the land leads to alienation and loneliness.Attention to geography and sources of life; how do we cultivate awareness and proper attention?Robin Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass—the White American presence has always been “this is not home.” Therefore, “The land we live on and are blessed by does not love us.” Think about what kind of compensation must follow to this kind of alienation. Racial components of agriculture and food. "You cannot tell the story of agriculture apart from the story of slavery.” Agricultural labor and the objection to embodiment.Embodiment and food.Essential work, abstraction from bodies, and disembodied labor."We don't want to know, because to have to know these things implicates us in how we shop for food."God creates a world in which creatures eat.What's communicated through a meal prepared for you? You matter.God invites us into hospitality, and food and eating can teach us that nurturing welcoming presence.Food as gift. Submitting oneself to "the grace of the world.” "Food is God's love made delicious.""Life has always proceeded by hospitality."“Eating and cooking … cause us to stop and say, ‘It's not all vicious. Maybe our living together can also be a celebration.'""All eating involves death.” How do you square the gift of food with the death it entails?The first virtue of humility—because I don't know, and because I understand vulnerability, I must live in a more humble, patient way.What does policy look like when it comes through the lens of humility, dependence, gift, and vulnerability?The story of a meal—its cultivating, growing, cooking, gathering, eating, enjoying, and nourishing.You can't homogenize people's experience of food.Sabbath, time, place: Slowing down to notice the goodness of the world God has given us. Thoughtfulness, intention, attention, presence, honoring each otherWho is invited to the table? Communal living, kinship, and community in a welcoming world. Abraham Heschel's “an opening for eternity in time."How can we honor the life that feeds us? Start simple. Soup and bread to celebrate the goodness of the world.
Soul Soil: Where Agriculture and Spirit Intersect with Brooke Kornegay
"Eating is not simply filling some gustatory hole, eating is knitting yourself into the fabric of life that's going on all the time, all around you...and how you knit yourself in can either make that fabric a beautiful thing, or it can make it tattered. Right now, I think a lot of our eating is creating tatters all across the world. What would be great is if the kinds of eating we do, beginning with the growing of food and the harvesting of food and the distribution and the cooking and sharing of food...could create a beautiful tapestry." Dr. Norman Wirzba is a Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Theology, Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics, and the Senior Associate Dean for Institutional & Faculty Advancement at Duke School of Divinity. Dr. Wirzba pursues research and teaching interests at the intersections of theology, philosophy, ecology, and agrarian and environmental studies, and has published several books on food and land. He serves as Series Editor for a group of books called “Culture of the Land”. As an editor, Dr. Wirzba contributed to Wendell Berry’s work in The Art of the Commonplace. He is the director of a project called “Facing the Anthropocene” wherein he works with an international team of scholars to rethink several academic disciplines in light of challenges like climate change, food insecurity, biotechnology and genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, species extinction, and the built environment. In this episode... How connecting with the land fosters empathy and stewardship Why the environmental preservation movement has seen so little progress How children model Presence and show us how to be in the Now Restlessness that is inherent in the social condition Examining sacrifice How the world economy thrives on ingratitude How operating in a world where speed, homogeneity, and mechanization are the production norm, ultimately degrades life at every level Our human creaturely condition Nurturing the world that nurtures us The importance of moving cautiously in a world that we don't fully understand The mental health benefits of growing food, cooking, and eating in community Food as the ultimate cross-disciplinary subject Resources Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer Wendell Berry Mary Oliver normanwirzba.com https://divinity.duke.edu/faculty/norman-wirzba
My guest is Stanley Hauerwas. He is Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Divinity and Law at Duke University. Professor Hauerwas has sought to recover the significance of the virtues for understanding the nature of the Christian life. This search has led him to emphasize the importance of the church, as well as narrative for understanding Christian existence. His work cuts across disciplinary lines as he is in conversation with systematic theology, philosophical theology and ethics, political theory, as well as the philosophy of social science and medical ethics. He was named "America’s Best Theologian" by Time magazine in 2001. Dr. Hauerwas, who holds a joint appointment in Duke Law School, delivered the prestigious Gifford Lectureship at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland in 2001. His most recent book is The Character of Virtue: Letters to a Godson. (https://www.amazon.com/Character-Virtue-Letters-Godson/dp/0802875793) Special Guest: Stanley Hauerwas.
The Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative at Duke Divinity School and the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine at Duke held a seminar on November 3, 2017 with Stanley Hauerwas, DD, PhD, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Divinity and Law at Duke Divinity School.
The Duke Divinity School Office of the Dean hosted a March 27 retirement lecture given by Grant Wacker, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Christian History, who is retiring at the end of the 2014-15 academic year after serving on the faculty for almost 23 years. The public lecture, “Reckoning with the Past,” was held in Goodson Chapel with George Marsden, the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame, delivering opening remarks honoring Wacker.
Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Divinity and Law, spoke on military suicide and Christian witness. Milites Christi, Duke Veterans, Duke Center for Reconciliation, Sacred Worth, and Centurion's Guild co-sponsored the event.
Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University Divinity School, a distinguished contemporary ethicist and pacifist, asserts that war is a moral practice and its Christian alternative is worship.
Distinguished theologian and Christian ethicist Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University Divinity School, asserts that the greatest sacrifice of war may be sacrificing our unwillingness to kill. The talk was given as part of the Deitchman Family Lectures on Religion and Modernity.