Editor’s Note: Matthew Chicoine interviewed Dr. Jared Staudt, via phone on April 10th, 2026. Some of the questions/answers have been rearranged, edited, and paraphrased to provide the best reader experience without losing any integrity of the answers given.
What inspired you and Jason Craig to explore the American Catholic land movement?
We were at the Augustine Institute about 12 years ago and we were reading about Wendell Berry (he was a poet, wrote a series of fictional novels based on his community), John Senior, and Peter Maurin (he had worked with Dorothy Day and gave her the idea of the Catholic Worker Movement). Jason had moved back to his home state of North Carolina and started homesteading. About 3 years ago we moved and became neighbors with him. So the book was a fruit of this friendship we formed along the way.
How do you see the agrarian tradition contributing to the Church’s social teachings today?
One of the problems of modern culture is that we have become so abstracted from nature. Catholic Church social teaching is based on the fundamental command by God to have dominion over the earth. The land is the foundation for social life. We depend on it for our food. The land movement is calling us from this abstraction of modern life. It calls us back to our origin and to be good stewards of our gifts God has given us.
Your book covers a broad history of Catholic agrarian efforts, from early missions to the Catholic Worker Movement. Can you share a few pivotal moments or movements in this history that shaped the American Catholic land movement?
The first intentional land movement occurred as Catholic missions. This brought about a great meeting about cultures. The next wave occurred through the immigration of Catholics.
But the land movement proper began in the early 20th century with the rise of urbanization. This is where Catholics started to be intentional about building rural Catholic communities to counter the economic crisis of the Great Depression.
Peter Maurin said, “There is no unemployment on the land.” There were monasteries involved in the liturgical movement that called people back to the land in an increasingly secular culture.
In the cultural upheaval of the 1960s he saw the hippies wanting to start farming communities. As technology increases there’s a yearning for people to get back to the land.
I think with Covid that the land movement led to people desiring to live off the land in more earnest. They saw the land as an opportunity to live their faith more intentionally.
Do you see this rise of homeschooling and hybrid model schooling being connected to the land movement?
I have helped to found two independent Catholic high schools and an independent Catholic college. There is a great renewal in Catholic education and there is an intersection with the land movement.
One of the central themes in your book is reconnecting work with faith and soil. How can modern Catholics incorporate this integration into their daily lives, especially those who live in urban or suburban settings?
We have a whole chapter dedicated to hunting and fishing as expressions of conservation and proper stewardship of the land. Wendell Berry had said to be more mindful of where your food is coming from. In the suburbs you can do more to make your own food. Support local butchers and farmers. We have a small community of families in my area, and Jason has his own dairy. There’s another family who have their own butcher shop and they share their own honey. My family has a large vegetable garden and has chicken for eggs.
In the book, you discuss modern responses like family-based economic initiatives and homesteading. Can you highlight some of the practical ways these movements address the current social and economic challenges faced by families today?
I think one of the greatest challenges we face is consumerism. We have become so dependent on purchasing junk from across the world. We become passive economically and as a family. The land movement shows us that there is more we can do to be self-sufficient and more reliant on people in our own community versus being reliant on global corporations.
It may be cheaper but not very efficient to ship mass goods from another part of the world.
The book’s main theme is about building local productive communities.
You propose that America’s soil could yield spiritual renewal. What do you believe is the spiritual significance of land?
It’s interesting that land becomes one of the first and main promises of Israel. God puts forward the land of plenty as an embodiment of his promises. God has placed us within our own countries for a reason. Like the Israelites coming into the Promised Land, we have a mission to sanctify our own land and communities.
Secularization tells us to keep our faith and life apart. The American Catholic Land Movement says that we need to keep our faith at the center. Our own land has been polluted (physically and spiritually) and we have succumbed to many of the same sins as the Canaanites (sexual sins, idolatry, sacrificing our children).
The ultimate purpose of the land is not for providing an abundance for us, it is meant to be a sacrifice to give back to Him. Through this sacrifice back to Him it is a way for us to heal the land of pollution and sin.
Finally, looking ahead, what are some of the most hopeful or exciting developments you foresee in the future of Catholic agrarianism, especially in terms of parish life and family economics?
The land movement is not just about economics. I think it is one of the best places for evangelization. The land is where families can learn how to slow down, to do things together, and to be healthier. They don’t have to live on the land but there are places they can go to on retreat to listen to the voice of the creator.
Monasteries have a great example for families. I am an oblate at the monastery in Clear Creek. Families can see how prayer and work are integrated together in the monastery. It’s like a culture in miniature.
“First of all, it is necessary to cultivate home life. It is in the home that one discovers love and joy, that one learns manners, discipline, responsibility, respect, generosity, and how to relate to others. More than half the battle of life is already won when someone comes from a good family milieu. And it is only through renewed families that a general restoration of culture can be possible. John Senior writes: “If even a fraction of the next generation” should practice this home life, the restoration, if it comes, “will come because of them, far from the madding crowd, far from the protests, bull horns, klieg lights and cameras, in that quiet place at home by the fire which in the meantime, little as it is, is of immediate and lasting worth.”
-Fr. Francis Bethel, OSB, author of John Senior and the Restoration of Realism
Related Links
Wendell Berry, the Benedict Option, and the Vocation of Fatherhood
About Jared
R. Jared Staudt, PhD, is the Head of Content for Exodus 90. He is the author of How the Eucharist Can Save Civilization and Words Made Flesh: The Sacramental Mission of Catholic Education. He and his wife, Anne, have six children, and he is a Benedictine oblate at Clear Creek Abbey.
