Bleak Days for a Chosen People

Last updated on: December 3, 2018 at 1:22 am by Agnes Howard

Bleak Days for a Chosen People 2018-12-02T09:11:58-04:00 Agnes Howard

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, Thomas Jefferson famously opined in his Notes on the State of Virginia, adding, in what sounds like a snarky aside, “if ever he had a chosen people.” Jefferson maintained that God made the breasts of farmers “his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.”

Champion of religious liberty and religious minorities, Jefferson in these words was making clear that, whether or not a Supreme Being was the source of farmers’ blessedness, there was something about the activity of cultivation, of familiarity with the land, of obedience to its rhythms and seasons to coax bounty forth, that made for better citizens. Farmers seemed meritorious to Jefferson for a range of reasons. They were active and independent. They looked “up to heaven” and “to their own soil and industry” for their flourishing. Therefore they were ready for liberty and self-government.

Indeed, agriculture seemed to our third president so foolproof a way to encourage human flourishing that he ventured, “Corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators is a phenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an example.” That is: woe betide the nation whose farmers fall into misery.

Jefferson’s words haunt when spoken over a mental-health crisis troubling some farm states, as reported in a recent NPR segment. Some agricultural sectors prosper but in others, the failure not only of crops and prices but a way of life is causing grief, leading to substance-abuse problems, overdose, and suicide. America’s life expectancy rate declined for the third year in a row, announced Center for Disease Control. The NPR report on farmers’ mental health notes that Minnesota’s suicide rate has risen forty percent in the last several decades.

The Minnesota state department of agriculture retains services of a psychologist to address farmer stress. That psychologist, Ted Matthews,offers some insight into what is troubling farmers. Unlike others who might be unhappy in their jobs, farmers can’t just quit and do something else. For the farmer, a job might also be a home and a whole way of life. life. At stake is not only income but identity, land and a living passed down from one generation to the next. It is no small thing to let go. Some farmers might feel guilty about losing their farms, Matthews speculates, even if it were not their fault.

Matthews presents the example of dairy farmers as among the most beleaguered–a job nobody would do unless they were born into it, he quips. Twelve hours every day for seven days a week every day of the year. “Sell out as fast as you can,” is the advice offered to small dairy farmers in an NBC investigation of their plight. Exhausted by the work and disappointed by earnings from it, farmers can become depressed, “truly isolated,” in Matthews’s words, as their spouses work in town. Substance abuse is no surprising response to true isolation.

This is not only the farmer’s problem. It is ours.

Floods of commentary in recent years mark food supply as inescapably a moral question , connected to politics as much as to health concerns, connected to justice as much as to the environment. We rely on the labor of others to produce the food we eat. Food-movement conversations, it is hoped, may have made us care about the safety and wholeness not only of food itself but of the people who produce it. We depend on them. They are not dispensable.

Or are they? Jobs that no one wants to do are among the readiest for replacement by automation. The near-future specter staring down many of us in our jobs also peers through the barn door. Should robots become dairy farmers? So suggests a Nebraska dairy extension educator, Kim Clark. According to Clark, cows actually might prefer to be milked by robots. With robots, cows can “go in and get milked as frequently as they feel they need to, it’s consistent”– unlike humans—and “the cows can lay down and eat and drink, and that’s the perfect life for them.” Younger farmers might prefer robots too, because it “take[s] the employees out of the equation,” which Clark thinks be better for everyone all the way around.

No! No! No! would say Thomas Jefferson. And Wendell Berry. And lots of others. To be sure, farms already use plenty of machinery and technology to get crops from field to market. But this kind of creative destruction ignores features of farming central to Americans’ sense of its importance. What matters about farming is not only the food it produces but the way it uses land and creatures in production, the way its disciplines shape the farmer, and the way relationships build among those who produce and consume food.

We all should be uneasy that, this winter, the future looks so bleak to those who put bounty on our tables that some of them refuse life. Matthews helpfully offers mental-health resources for the problem. Neither economic nor therapeutic resources may be sufficient to the need. The problem, loneliness, is a spiritual one too. There is no reason to single out the Land of 10,000 Lakes. These stresses belong to all of us and admit no easy solution. Nevertheless, the buyer of milk or butter or cheese, or anything else we take with our daily bread, might start by caring who makes what we put on our tables.

Minnesotans do “look up to heaven”: about 74% of those in the state identify as Christian and 5% other religions, according to a 2014 Pew Research study of America’s religious landscape. What difference does that make? Beyond what we may want to claim as obvious, finding God a refuge and strength present in trouble, that upward gaze recalls that the earth is not for our despoiling, that vocations are honorable, that justice and mercy are proper pursuits, that loving neighbor is our call.

We might take reflection on this as a discipline of the season, this season spent anticipating good news from angels’ trumpets. After all, their glad tidings, Immanuel, was a promise of deliverance from human isolation.

Agnes Howard

Thomas Jefferson

Previous Post

November 30, 2018

First and Second Comings

Next Post

December 4, 2018 Advent: The Most Apocalyptic Time of the Year

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abolitionism Abortion Abraham Joshua Heschel Abraham Kuyper Abraham Lincoln Academia Activism Adam Renberg Advent Adventist africa African American Religion Agnes Howard Albert Camus American History American Religious History American Revolution American West Anabaptists Ancient History Andrea Turpin Andrei Tarkovsky Anglicanism Annales Ansley Lillian Quiros anti-Catholicism Antisemitism Anxious Bench apologetics Apparitions Arash Azizi Archaeology archives art Artificial Intelligence Asia Asian Americans Augustine Authors Bad Bunny Baptism Baptists Barack Obama Battle of Hastings Benjamin Franklin Bernard-Henri Levy Beth Allison Barr Beth Moore Bethany Mannon Bible Bill Cunningham Billy Graham Black Music Bob Dylan Body Boenhoffer Books Breastfeeding Bruce Springsteen C.S. Lewis Calvinism Cancel Culture Capitalism Carmelites Catholicism Cedric Robinson Cesar Chavez Charismaticism charity Charles Dickens Charles Lindbergh Che Guevara Chicago Children Chinese Christianity Chris Gehrz Christ Christian death Christian Higher Education Christian life Christian Nation Christian Nationalism Christianity Today Christmas Church life Church Practice cinema Civil Religion Civil Rights Movement Civil War civility Classics Climate Change Cold War Colonial Mexico colonialism Comer Communism community complementarianism Conference on Faith and History Congregationalism Conspiracies Conspiracy Conversion Narratives Coronavirus Costa Rica Council of Nicaea Covid-19 Creation Critical Race Theory Crusades Culture culture wars Daniel K. Williams David Barton David Swartz Death Ways death with dignity DEI democracy Democratic Party Devotion Digital Age Diplomacy discipleship diversity Donald Trump Drama Dua Lipa Early Church early modern Early modern Catholicism Easter Eastern Christianity economic exploitation Education elections Elie Wiesel Elizabeth II Elizabeth Taylor emotions Empire Engineering England enslavement Entertainment Episcopal Church Erica Ramirez eschatology Eurocentrism Evangelicalism Evangelicals Exegesis Family Feminism Film Flannery O'Connor folk music Food Foreign Policy founding fathers Franciscans Franciscus Junius fundamentalism Funerals G.K. Chesterton Gender Genocide genre geography George W. Bush George Washington George Whitefield Global Christianity Global church Grief Guadalupe Guest Post guest post gun control gun violence Gustavo Gutierrez Hamid Dabashi Harold John Ockenga Harvest Hate Hawaiian Christianity Healing health care Heather Cox Richardson Hell Heresy Hermeneutics Higher Education Hinduism Hippocratic oath Historical Fiction Historical Methodology Historical Profession Historical Profession Historical Theology Historical Thinking historiography Holidays Holocaust horror movies Human rights Humanitarian Work humanities Hummingbirds Hungary hymns Imago Dei Immigration Injustice Interviews Iran Islam Islamophobia Israel Ivan's Childhood Jacob Randolph James Bratt Janine Giordano Drake Japanese history Japanese Literature Jean Paul Sartre Jesse Miranda Jesus Jesus Christ Jimmy Carter Joan Baez Joan Didion Joanne Freeman João B. Chaves Joao Chaves Joey Cochran John Calvin John Fea John Tillotson John Turner Johnny Cash Jonathan Edwards Jonathan Tran Joseph Smith Josh Howerton Journalism Jr. Judaism Jürgen Moltmann Just War Justice Justin Brierley Karl Barth Katelyn Beaty koi ponds Kris Kristofferson Kristin Kobes Du Mez Latin American Religious History Latino Americans Lectio Divina Leisure Lent Leonard Cohen liberal arts liberalism Liberation Theology Linda Ronstadt Lisa Clark Diller Literature Lou Reed Lynchings Lynneth Miller Renberg Mainline Protestantism Malcolm Foley Marilyn Monroe Maritime history Mark Noll Marriage Martin Luther Martin Luther King Martyrdom Marxism Mary Masih Alinejad mass shootings material culture medieval Christianity Medieval Ethiopia Melissa Borja memory Mennonites Mental Health Mental Illness Methodism Mexican Americans Mexicans Mike Madrid Miles Mullin Min Jin Lee Miscarriage Missionaries Mister Rogers Mitt Romney modernity Monasticism Mormonism Motherhood Mothers of the Church Moving Music Musicals Nadya Williams Nahua Christianity Native Americans Natsume Sōseki New Contributor New England New Year New York Nico Non-Violent Protest Orthodoxy pacifism Paleo Evangelicals Palestinians Parenting Patti Smith Paul Kingsnorth Pedro Calderón de la Barca Pentecostalism Philip Jenkins Phillis Wheatley physician-assisted suicide pilgrimage Pilgrims pluralism Plutocracy Poetry Politics Pope Francis Pope Leo XIV post-modernism prayer preaching Presbyterians prosperity gospel Protest Public history Publishing Puritans purity culture Quakers race Race Massacres Racial Capitalism racial reconciliation racialization Racism Raha Bahloulipour Re-Enchantment reading Reformation Refugees religion and the university religion and war Religious Freedom Religious Nones Religious Pluralism Religious Symbols religious violence Republican Party Revival Rita Coolidge Ritual Roger Williams Roman Catholic church Royalty Russell Moore same-sex marriage Sarah Irving-Stonebraker Scandinavia Science Science and Technology Scopes trial Scriptural Interpretation secularism Selena Quintanilla seminary Seventh-Day Adventists sexual morality Sexuality Sikhs Silence slaveholders theology Slavery Slavoj Zizek social justice Social Media Southern Baptist Convention Southern Religion Spain Spiritual Autobiography Spiritual but not religious Spiritual Discipline Sports Stanley Hauerwas Suffering Summer Camps Sunday Night Odds and Ends Supernatural Supreme Court Syriac Christianity Tal Howard Taylor Swift Teaching Technology Television Thanksgiving The Beatles The Mission theater TheoBros Theology Thomas Dixon Thomas Jefferson Thomas Kidd Thomas Merton Tim Gloege Tim Walz Tom Holland Tourism tradition Tragedy Translation Transnationalism Travel Trump Ukraine Uncategorized Unitarians United Methodist Church US History Vanessa Chan Velvet Underground Verónica A. Gutiérrez Veronica Gutierrez Vikings Violence Virgin Mary Virtue Virtue ethics Visions Voting War WCTU Wendell Berry Westminster Assembly White Evangelicalism Wildfires Winnie the Pooh Witches women Women in Ministry Women's and Gender Studies Work Worship writing Yasunari Kawabata Zena Hitz

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What woman became a queen and saved her people?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Hannah Esther Deborah Miriam