Celebrated American author Wendell Berry passed away on 31 August 2026. He was 92.
His daughter May Berry confirmed his death, telling the Associated Press, “There’s not enough I could say about him to do him justice.”
Berry was the author of more than 40 books. While he was not a systematic theologian, his work intersected themes of faith, justice, and rural life. He influenced many religious leaders and was well regarded across the divides of religion and politics.
A leading advocate of environmental stewardship, his work is revered in ecotheology.
“You might recognize his belief system in what’s known as creation care today,” wrote Kristy Nabhan-Warren in the Conversation.
“It embraces a responsibility to care for the Earth and all its creatures. Berry increasingly saw that ethic violated by the industrialization of agriculture and ignored by a dominionist theology, preached by some prominent American Christians, which holds that humans have a God-given right to exploit the Earth’s resources.”
Although Berry never won a Pulitzer prize, he was a celebrated author, with a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Critics Circle. In 2011, he received the National Humanities Medal from President Barak Obama at the White House.
Berry lived a simple life, without computers, television, or phones.
“And so I go into the woods. As I go in under the trees, dependably, almost at once, and by nothing I do, things fall into place,” wrote Berry.
“I enter an order that does not exist outside, in the human spaces. I feel my life take its place among the lives – the trees, the annual plants, the animals and birds, the living of all these and the dead – that go and have gone to make the life of the earth.”
Insights sends condolences to Wendell Berry’s family, friends, and readers.
Jonathan Foye is a freelance journalist and academic. He is the author of Freedom and Faith.
