Baptist layman, poet and conservationist Wendell Berry died at his home in Port Royal, Ky., Aug. 31 at age 92.
The Kentucky farmer became a sort of patron saint for iconoclastic Baptists, of which he was one.
BNG columnist Justin Cox two years ago described Berry as a contrarian: “I can think of no one who embodies the spirit of contrariness better than Wendell Berry, Kentucky’s agrarian, poet and social activist. Berry … is an incongruous icon. His writings constantly call me to be at odds with a way of life not in harmony with the rest of the created world. For years, he’s voiced and lived his lamentations. His refusal to utilize a computer and preference to perform farm labor with a plow and mule instead of a backhoe has caused him to be labeled a philistine by some and a prophet by others.”
President Barack Obama presents a National Humanities Medal to poet, novelist, farmer and conservationist, Wendell E. Berry, March 2, 2011, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Berry was a lifelong member of New Castle Baptist Church in Kentucky, where he was baptized but often attended worship at Port Royal Baptist Church.
Berry described himself as a “forest Christian” or “marginal Christian” due to an uneasy distance from conservative institutional politics and dogmatism, yet his writings were deeply infused with biblical themes.
A celebrated author, he shunned attention and rarely gave interviews. He wrote more than 50 books of fiction, poetry and essays focused on agrarian life, community, and the environment.
One of his best-known titles is Jayber Crow, a novel that follows the life of an orphan turned town barber in rural Kentucky. In 1977’s The Unsettling of America, Berry argued that good farming is a cultural and spiritual discipline.
Berry had a longtime habit of walking onto the land on Sunday mornings: “I go free from the tasks and intentions of my workdays, and so my mind becomes hospitable to unintended thoughts: to what I am very willing to call inspiration.”
His wife, Tanya, helped found, served on and chaired the board of BSK Seminary, a Kentucky school affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. BSK Seminary also partners with The Berry Center, which advocates for farmers, land-conserving communities and healthy regional economies.
Wendell Berry speaks at Kentucky Coffeetree Cafe in Frankfort, Ky., Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2006. (AP Photo/The State Journal, Amy Wallot)
Wendell Berry was born in Louisville in 1934. His father, John M. Berry, co-founded the Burley Tobacco Growers Co-Op in the 1920s, which stabilized the price of tobacco. His family farmed in Henry County, Ky., from around 1812.
“He leaves behind a sprawling legacy of advocacy, conservationism, literary pursuit and protest that inspired people from the hills of Kentucky to Hollywood and beyond,” wrote Sarah Ladd in Kentucky Lantern. “His death leaves a vacancy of voice that was not always without controversy throughout his life but was decisive and steady throughout a long career.”
Among his many well-publicized opinions:
- He protested the Vietnam War, saying in 1968 that “peace is more important than victory.”
- He was arrested in 1979 for trespassing as he protested the Marble Hill Nuclear Power Plant in Madison, Ind.
- He joined thousands of people who marched in protest of the Capitol Power Plant in Washington, D.C., in 2009.
- He withdrew papers he had loaned the University of Kentucky in a 2009 protest against the university’s acceptance of $7 million from coal producer and philanthropist Joe Craft to rename a residence hall the “Wildcat Coal Lodge.”
- He opposed the death penalty in a 2009 statement which began, “As I am made deeply uncomfortable by the taking of a human life before birth, I am also made deeply uncomfortable by the taking of a human life after birth.” He and 38 other writers from Kentucky wrote to Gov. Steve Beshear and Attorney General Jack Conway asking them to impose a moratorium on the death penalty in the state.
- He fought in 2020 to preserve a controversial piece of University of Kentucky art condemned as racist but which he found historically significant.
- He spoke against mountaintop removal and joined a sit-in at former Gov. Steve Beshear’s office in 2011.
Berry earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from UK. He then taught at the University of Kentucky from 1964 to 1977 and again from 1987 to 1993. He also taught at Stanford University, Georgetown College, New York University, the University of Cincinnati and Bucknell University.
The awards piled on Berry for his life’s work were numerous:
- Former President Barack Obama awarded him the 2010 National Humanities Medal.
- He earned the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Aiken Taylor Award for poetry, the John Hay Award of the Orion Society and the Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
- In 1961, he was a Guggenheim Fellow. He was given the Kentucky Libraries Award for Intellectual Excellence, the Thomas Merton Award, The Cleanth Brooks Medal for Lifetime Achievement from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion from The American Academy of Religion, the Poets’ Prize and others.
Wendell Berry is survived by his wife, Tanya, and two children: Mary Berry and Pryor Berry, known as “Den”; two sisters, Mary Jo Berry and Martha Baxter; five grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
Related:
Reflections upon agrarian/poet/activist Wendell Berry’s 90th birthday | Opinion by Justin Cox
Wendell Berry expounds on gay marriage
What should we make of the curious case of Wendell Berry and a University of Kentucky painting? | Analysis by Rodney Kennedy
Can the church practice the spiritual virtue of contentment? | Opinion by Stephen Shoemaker