Norman Wirzba on Land, Life, and Dominion | Faith & Politics #15

Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture · Nov 2, 2026 · 1h 4m · transcript

Norman Wirzba — Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Theology at Duke and author of This Sacred Life and Love's Braided Dance — joins James Spencer and Ashish Varma for the tenth episode in the faith and politics series.

Wirzba grew up farming and wanted to be a farmer, then went through graduate school without encountering a single farmer on a syllabus. Reading Wendell Berry changed that, and gave him a way to see that agricultural traditions open the major philosophical and political questions rather than sitting off to one side of them.

The conversation moves from what…