Healing Gods Earth: Rural Community in the Context of Urban Civilization

Rural communities and traditional cultures throughout North America and around the world are being systematically dismantled by the forces of urban civilization. It is no new phenomenon. For over four millennia, the powers of urban civilization have been playing God, oppressing people, and exploiting the earth. This long history has brought us to the brink of disaster in the current economic, ecological, and energy crises confronting the dominant global culture. This book reads the Bible through the lenses of rural communities. The Bible has something to say about the origin and character of urban civilization and the dynamic of its relationship to rural communities. Both Israel in the Old Testament and Jesus in the New Testament were engaged in the formation of rural communities of faith living as alternatives to the dominant cultures of the urban civilizations in which they lived. It turns out that local, face-to-face communities, both rural and urban, along with traditional cultures of all stripes, are God's chosen instruments for the subversive, nonviolent disarming of urban civilization and the healing of God's earth.

Growing up in a rural community, and serving four rural congregations in Iowa, Illinois, Saskatchewan, and South Dakota over nearly four decades as a pastor of Mennonite Church USA and Canada, S. Roy Kaufman personally witnessed the dismantling and disintegration of rural communities and churches. This book is a distillation of forty years of living, preaching, and teaching with these rural congregations. Kaufman lives in his home community, Freeman, South Dakota.