Craig Bartholomew on Place

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This interview has a lot of affinities with a Benedict Option future for the Church. A sample:

In your book, you not only provide a biblical and theological discussion of the concept of place, but do so in a way that addresses the crisis of place in contemporary culture. What's the nature of the crisis?

What we are experiencing in our world is a wide sense of displacement, which does not lead to human flourishing. Outside Christian circles, the literature on the crisis of place is huge, but within Christianity, it's only starting to get attention.Contemporary life roots against this deep implacement through the speed of culture, technology, the automobile, and the state of economics. The middle class is always on the go through places and are not generally deeply rooted in a particular place.When I travel I have opportunities to see new places, but many are all the same corporate chain stores that we have here in Hamilton. Everything is monochrome. All the houses look the same, and houses are not viewed as homes but as assets. Wendell Berry wrote that "a house for sale is not a home." It is not wrong to move, but if we want to flourish as humans, the house must become a home, not an economic asset.I want to wake Christians up to the crisis and have them take off their blinders. We are out of touch with what is going on. Christians haven't led the way on this issue. Non-Christians are capable of enormous insight and in a sense, we have to catch up. 
What contributes to Christians' blinders? 
The diagnosis is that we have lost a robust doctrine of creation. Place is rooted in the doctrine of creation. If we recover that doctrine of creation and see the wonderful redemption in Christ as God recovering his purposes for his whole creation, then suddenly all these issues—like city, home, gardening, and farming—are spiritual and thus not second-rate.Of the several hundred thousand churches in the United States, many are property owners. Just imagine if each of these churches attended closely to their property as a place and develop it in healthy—not necessarily expensive—ways. This would make a major contribution to the commons of our culture and bear plausible witness to Christ. Just as the creation constantly declares God's goodness and power (Psalm 19), so too our places would continually bear witness to this extraordinary God who has come to us in Christ.

If my wild idea for moving to a certain place and in effect "colonizing" it does not work, the next best thing is to flourish where we are at and sink deep roots into a place, rather than forever longing to be somewhere else - Florida, Arizona, or wherever.

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