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Hosted by Princeton Theological Seminary President Jonathan Lee Walton, Expanding the Table gathers leading voices in history, theology, and public life to explore questions of faith, leadership, and justice.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 00:06
Welcome to Expanding the Table. A Princeton Theological Seminary series from the Office of the President. I'm Jonathan Lee Walton, the 8th president of the seminary. And at this table, we gather leading voices in history, theology, and public life to explore questions of faith, leadership, and justice. Today's guest is Dr. Nathan Stuckey. He serves as director of the Farminary Project here at Princeton Seminary. Nate grew up on a farm in Kansas where his love and commitment to the Christian faith and agriculture first took root. After earning his bachelor's degree in music from Bethel College, Dr. Stuckey spent six years doing ecumenical youth ministry on the eastern shore of Maryland, and then two years back farming in Kansas. Dr. Stuckey then came and earned his Master of Divinity degree and his Ph.D. From here at Princeton Seminary, and his scholarship explores questions of ecology, theology, agriculture, and the Sabbath. Dr. Stuckey is the author of Wrestling with Rest. Inviting youth to discover the gift of Sabbath. Dr. Stuckey, it is such a joy to have you with us here on Expanding the Table Well, we're glad to have you.
Nathan Stuckey | 01:28
Today. Thank you so much. It's a privilege and a pleasure to be here.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 01:33
Listen, you are the director of the Farminary Project here. For those who are not familiar with the Farminary, how would you define and describe this learning laboratory?
Nathan Stuckey | 01:44
Yeah, so at its simplest, farm plus seminary equals Farminary. It's a project that integrates things that have been happening at the seminary since its founding in 1812. The theological reflection, grounding in the theological disciplines, But then these disciplines are integrated with the practices and the rhythms of life on our 21-acre working farm, practices of regenerative agriculture, ecological attunement, and whatnot. Paying attention to how the land and the creatures and that space shed light on or bring to life, make three-dimensional things we've been studying and learning at the seminary from the beginning.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 02:26
So you just celebrated your 10th anniversary of the farm. I'm curious to know, how have you seen it evolve from the first time you put a shovel in the soil until now?
Nathan Stuckey | 02:39
Yeah. Well, one way to think about this is In some sense, there's a pattern of expanding concentric circles if I think about kind of turning points over the last decade. The very first class that was taught at the farm, it filled, as I recall, in two minutes.
So there was this signal that maybe we were on to something regarding the interest of our students.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 03:05
Do you remember what that class was?
Nathan Stuckey | 03:07
That class was... Scripture and food.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 03:11
Scripture and.
Nathan Stuckey | 03:11
Food. Colon... Teaching the Bible in congregations.
So exploring food as a thread that runs through scripture and then thinking about how food might provide something of a lever or a lens through which to encounter scripture with food providing a primary link between ourselves and the broader creation. So yeah, so there's that moment very early on where students express their wonderful interest Another turning point happens when Dr. Hannah Reichel comes as a candidate for a position on the faculty in the theology department.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 03:51
Hannah Reichel is now our Hodge Professor of Systematic.
Nathan Stuckey | 03:52
Charles Theology. Absolutely.
So when Hana comes to candidate for this position, she asks the committee They asked the committee if they can come and see the farm as part of the tour. Something else gets triggered there, like, wait a minute. Perhaps the farm not only helps us attract a certain kind of student, but a certain kind of faculty.
And then another sort of ring in the concentric circle 2024, we launched the first Thursdays at the farm.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 04:25
And first Thursdays is a dinner. -.
Nathan Stuckey | 04:27
Yeah, this dinner series that happens at the farm, we intentionally keep it to a smaller crowd. There's a thought leader. There's a meal prepared with produce from the farm featuring a local chef. But it's really targeted towards members of our local community and the response has been really gratifying. - So you.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 04:44
Pair a chef with a thought leader and you have a particular theme each of the Thursdays over dinner and there's disgust over dinner. -.
Nathan Stuckey | 04:52
Exactly. So it begins typically as a conversation between myself and the thought leader. By the time we hit the end of the main course or the dessert course, everyone at the table is invited to participate in the conversation. And you don't get to have that kind of experience just.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 05:09
Anywhere. - Thinking about some of the, in thought leadership, I mean, one of the areas that we know that you're a real thought leader around involves the Sabbath and notion of rest. One of the things that I find most engaging about your work is that this notion of rest is not withdrawal, but it's actually robust engagement of a sort as a form of discipleship.
Nathan Stuckey | 05:37
So in a world that is structured around the terms and the sort of stipulations of capital or productivity or efficiency, there are certain ways that we understand aspire to know something. Those modes of knowledge tend to manifest as control, possession, ownership. The Sabbath enters the world in a way that pushes back against all those things. And my sense is the Sabbath is saying, what if there's a whole nother way? Of knowing ourselves, of knowing the world, of knowing the land, and of knowing God. And there's a way in which the seventh day of creation manifests this. You read through the first six days, it seems like it keeps building and building, you get the creation of humanity on day six, and it seems like maybe the humans should get to work on day seven, but they don't. Instead, humankind's first full day of existence is a day not of work, but a day of rest, And I think we can hear within that a theological invitation that our starting point in knowing God, our starting point in knowing ourselves and knowing the world is not working for productivity, control, ownership, possession, but rather stopping.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 07:00
If I'm understanding you correctly, the prevailing sentiment or understanding of identity is kind of, I am because I do. Absolutely. I am because I produce.
Nathan Stuckey | 07:11
The way of the world. The way of the world, the way of Pharaoh, the way of empire, what I possess.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 07:16
Right? I am what I produce and or I am based upon what I own.
Nathan Stuckey | 07:20
Yeah, 100%. What I possess, what I consume, what I produce, all these kinds of things. And the word Sabbath at its core means to stop. And so there is like this literal, no, we're going to start with stopping. And it turns the logic of the empire on its head. And there's this quality of relationship, right? Say more.
Well, insofar as... Perhaps we could argue that we don't fully know anything. Or any one, until We're comfortable just being. With. The beloved, the one we love. And, We've probably all known relationships. That were over-indexed on productivity or achievement or accomplishment or consumption. And there's an anxiety that can go along with that. And I think it's too easy to see that kind of anxiety in the lives of our children or in the lives of our students. But the quality of relationship into which God invites us is like, whoa. Just take a deep breath. Just stop. The reality of the love that is given is not dependent. Upon what you're going to achieve or accomplish or produce. But rather on a love that exists before you were created. And so then to extend that out into our relationship with the land, I mean, you've got everyone from a James Cone to a Wendell Berry who's going to say there's a striking resemblance between the way we treat our neighbors human neighbors and the way we treat the land. And so is it possible to love land in a way that would include that kind of stopping. That kind of, wait a minute, I'm going to love the land on the land's terms. Instead of me bringing the terms of production, achievement, accomplishment, consumption, etc. Ownership, control. Ownership, absolutely.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 09:22
This totally undercuts, I mean, from what I hear you saying, And I guess this is the radical nature of the gospel, the way that it undercuts the kind of meritocratic impulse that we know informs our lives, informs the lives of our students, where we find our sense of self and our sense of being into... Wholly tied up with our.
Nathan Stuckey | 09:45
Achievements. - Yeah. And there's still, you know, within this, Work doesn't go away. It gets put into perspective. There's a way in which instead of like scraping and clawing and thinking maybe someday if I get enough done, if I produce enough, achieve enough, control enough, possess enough, then I'll be able to stop and rest. To flip that on its head and say, no, we begin... With grace. We begin with rest And that becomes the starting point. For our labor, then we are ready. To enter into care for neighbor, care for ourselves, care for God's world.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 10:32
I've heard you. Talk a lot about. Vulnerability. And even failure. As a form of, or as essential to Christian practice and Christian leadership. I was wondering, I mean, let's continue to pull this thread, the relationship to the land. What does it teach us? What lessons might our students learn about vulnerability, about failure from the land?
Nathan Stuckey | 11:00
Yeah. If I'm thinking about land... And vulnerability and the farm and the gospel my mind immediately goes to September 1st, 2021. And the remnants of Hurricane Ida come through our area. The farm is flooded, the garden is a total loss, we lose Over 100 chickens. It's a devastating day. And we have been Thinking about that day ever since and thinking about The vulnerability of this farm that sits in this flood plain And there was a moment where we had some kind of big master planning kinds of conversations. And somebody asked an important question. And it was basically...
Well, Maybe we should sell this farm. And find a farm on higher ground so that we're not subject to this flooding. And we took the question quite seriously. But I'm really happy with where the conversation ultimately landed. Which was It is an understandable thought, a temptation to be like, let's find higher ground.
And where we ultimately landed was, no, I think this is the place. Where we're called to do theological education and formation. For theological reasons, because There is a way... A very tangible way in which God's move incarnation in particular is a move into vulnerability. To be born. As a human, For the creator to become creature utterly dependent on the creatures this creator has made is a movement of profound vulnerability. It's an entering into the vulnerability of the world for love's sake. And here again, right, quite countercultural, maybe even counterintuitive.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 13:10
I guess any relationship based upon true reciprocity and it's mutually beneficial and mutually enriching is based upon Yeah, I don't... Levels of vulnerability.
Nathan Stuckey | 13:22
I don't know of any... Loving relationship. Apart from vulnerability. Now, the reciprocity thing is an interesting question because... You know, there's like a loving relationship between partners, spouses. But then there's the parent-child thing. And we've kind of had this conversation before about like, it's not always as reciprocal as you might want it to be. And yet there's a vulnerability to in that where you kind of take the lead on vulnerability and you offer care. And maybe it's a few years before your kids learn to reciprocate. Is Yeah, but I would turn it.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 13:59
That the land?
Nathan Stuckey | 14:04
I would say the land has loved us. In a not quite reciprocal fashion. In other words, I have Wendell Berry in mind who says there's something very Christ-like about the topsoil. It takes into itself. Death, but not so that death gets the last word, but rather for the sake of new life. It's always turning death into life.
So I think the land is extraordinarily gracious. The land is extraordinarily loving, and it has continued to offer us that quality of care, even as we have pillaged it and exploited it and exhausted it.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 14:43
Now I want to hear some of your favorite courses. I mean, you're clearly, you're doing theology at the Farman area. And you are applying theological concepts from some of these schools. Varying theologians. What does this look like in the classroom? What shape does it take in terms of your course.
Nathan Stuckey | 15:05
Creation? Yeah, well, I'll cite a couple of our colleagues because I just love what they teach out there. And I'll circle back to our colleague, Dr. Hunter Reichel, who they came out to the farm. We did the tour. We're talking about the kind of formation that's possible. And their very first idea for a course to teach at the Farminary was titled Theologies of Order and Chaos. And I love this for so many reasons, one of which is I could have taught at the farm for a thousand years and never come up with Theologies of Order and Chaos. But one of the premises of the course is to help students understand kind of interrogate their assumptions when it comes to order and chaos, including their sort of theological underpinnings for these things. Do we assume that order is good and chaos is bad? Do we assume that the garden at the farm is us bringing order to an otherwise chaotic creation? Or is it possible that our highly controlled garden is actually the imposition of chaos onto an otherwise ordered creation.
So helping students unpack that, reading different folks' Katherine Keller's read of Genesis 1 compared to Karl Barth's reading of Genesis 1. And getting into all of that and helping students recognize maybe chaos isn't always bad. And maybe sometimes order... Can be quite negative. And so how do we think about these things theologically, practically, et cetera. Another course that I absolutely love out there, was taught by Dr. Casey Choi in the theology department. He did a course on theology and ethics of food at the farm. And so they're caring for the garden. They're reading, everything from, you know, sort of, Norman Wurzba, Food and Faith, to, you know, texts in black veganism. And as the semester is progressing, every week during class, they're cooking together. The Timeline for the course roughly coincided with the life cycle of one of our flocks of chickens that we grow for meat. Every week the students had to go and just spend time with these birds. Just pay attention. Just observe.
And then when the time came, The students were invited to be at the farm on the day that these chickens were butchered. And then the class culminated in a meal at which some of these chickens were then served as part of a closing feast. Now, All of the subject matter, all of the readings from that class could have been encountered in any kind of space. But to encounter them there, In that space, while making food together, while spending time in the garden, While observing and caring for these chickens and then recognizing these chickens are giving their lives for the sake of a meal. I think there's a quality. Of education there that is such that those students are never going to forget that. Now, Should we? Kill chickens for every class? Probably not. Will we always kill chickens at the farm? I have no idea. But... There's a very tangible, visceral... Reality of the interconnectedness of life and death. And there's a way in which the farm makes that tangible. It, makes us uncomfortable. We recognize in very tangible ways that There's blood on our hands. And what are we going to do about that?
Jonathan Lee Walton | 18:50
So the first time I ever visited Farming Ares, some years ago, You took me straight to the compost pile. And I recall you saying, "If I can teach our students to preach half as well as this compost pile." unpack that for us.
Yeah. What does you mean by.
Nathan Stuckey | 19:09
That? Yeah, absolutely.
Well, there's... There's a direct link from the compost pile. To the chickens. To the dining hall. And back to the compost pile, wherein there's a way in which the reality of the chickens can disorient us. It can sound a little gruesome. But it's only saying something that has always been true, which is that we live by the death of other creatures. And we're always participating in this movement from life to death to new life again. And The compost pile proclaims this, the chickens proclaim this, and part of what we get to do at the farm is to push back against, again, the systems and the structures of all of the narratives that would want to lead us to believe that somehow we can wash our hands of death. And to say, actually, It's simply a part of life. We live by the death of these other creatures. And so the chicken gives its life so that we can live.
So the carrot. The compost pile then becomes this space. Where it's taking into itself all these things that are passing away. The kitchen scraps from the dining hall, the spent coffee grounds from the local coffee shop, the feathers from the chicken butchering, all going into this compost pile, but not so that death gets the last word, but rather for the sake of a new life in another season. That sounds a lot like the gospel to me, a gospel that does not shy away from the reality of death, but rather insists that death will not get the last word.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 21:00
And it's... And. Once again, it, regenerates. It rises again. Absolutely.
So the chickens, the produce that come to the dining hall here on campus is consumed by our learning community.
Nathan Stuckey | 21:15
Yeah, Absolutely.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 21:15
Yeah. Ends up in scraps at a compost pile.
Nathan Stuckey | 21:19
And then gets taken up into this even longer story of where the reality is the land itself at the farm bears the wounds of extractive and exhaustive modes of agriculture, models of relationship between people and place. The compost pile then becomes ground zero for Trying to swing the pendulum in the other direction, trying to insist that the way of being that we are called to in this world is not towards exploitation or extraction or exhaustion, but rather towards new life, towards regeneration and rest. And so then the compost pile, as it cooks down, becomes fertilizer for our exhausted land, which slowly moves that pendulum in the direction of new life.
So that so here again, right.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 22:09
That others discarded actually is that which ends up producing. Yeah.
So.
Nathan Stuckey | 22:15
It's like what kind of, way of perceiving the world does the gospel give to us? If, you know, your typical, I don't know, seminary student, pastor, leader, academic, whatever, sees a mountain of leaves on the side of the road, in the autumn of the year, what do they see? If the average person sees a bucket of rotting food scraps, what do they see? The systems and structures of our economy condition us to see those things as waste. As refuse. To me, the eyes of the gospel, the eyes of the good agrarian, good ecologist, see those things that the world wants to label as waste or refuse and say, not so fast. The things that the world wants to kick to the curb actually become the keys to new life. Hope for the future. Hope for the future. Hope for new life.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 23:07
So as we talk about hope for the future, you've had 10 years at the Farming Area. What do you envision for the next 10 years?
Nathan Stuckey | 23:16
I love this question. I think... At its simplest, I hope we can continue. The trajectory we have started, which is that movement from, well, the students are really interested. Wait, the faculty have something to contribute here. Wait, the community is drawn to and recognizes the importance of these conversations. How do we continue expanding the table? How do we continue facilitating conversations, not only among theologians and pastors? We need them at the table as well. But the scope of the challenges that we're facing ecologically regarding health and faith and all these things, the scope of those challenges is going to require more and more people at the table who are willing to contribute expertise from a Technology and climate science and agriculture and health and all these kinds of things I think the farm wants to be a convening space for those kinds of conversations good food helps that space closer to the compost pile? To remind us there's always been life and death. On the line here and to just keep nurturing the vitality that we're already seeing in such tangible and beautiful ways.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 24:38
So this is the final question for those who may never have the privilege of visiting the Farminary. I wonder what lesson... Might you offer? Where people might think about their relationship with faith. Food in the earth. They tangibly can walk away with yeah that would enrich their faith.
Nathan Stuckey | 25:01
Yeah, I think it's a couple of things. One is... To Do the brave thing. And be honest about the ways the world... Is caught up in the patterns of extraction. Exploitation, exhaustion, ownership control. Which I think requires a stop. You gotta pause. Brave And then ponder, What if it's true? What if the gospel... On the loose in God's good creation. Moves us in the other direction.
And then it becomes a whole new way of perceiving the world. One in which we are invited to think twice before we label anything or anyone As waste. And to imagine the possibility the Apple core, the neighbor we don't particularly care for, may all participate in the new left to which we're called.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 26:16
Dr. Stuckey, I think that's a sermon better than... With the compost pile, you for joining us for Expanding the Table.
Nathan Stuckey | 26:21
Can't do that. Not possible without the compost pile. Thank.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 26:28
A Princeton Theological Seminary series from the Office of the President. These conversations are one of the ways we live into our mission. Cultivating leaders shaped by faith, scholarship, and compassion. And as well as opening our community to the world. On behalf of all of us at Princeton Seminary, thank you for being a part of this gathering. And until next time. May you continue to find ways to expand the table in your own communities. With faith, integrity, competence, compassion, and joy. One love.