Wendell Berry, a Baptist layman, poet, and conservationist, died at his home in Port Royal, Kentucky, on August 31 at the age of 92. ^[1] Berry was a lifelong member of the New Castle Baptist Church in Kentucky, where he was baptized, though he often attended worship at Port Royal Baptist Church. ^[2] Berry wrote more than 50 books of fiction, poetry, and essays focused on agrarian life, community, and the environment. ^[3] An editor at Penguin approached the author to edit a collection of essays by Wendell Berry for a British audience, noting that Berry's work had not previously been published in book form in the U.K. ^[4] Berry opposed the modern monoculture and the extractive corporate economy, which he argued 'sell[s] the world to buy fire,' in favor of locally adapted economies based on local nature and work. ^[5] Berry's writing consistently addressed the decline of the human-scale world and the need to restore the human spirit against attacks from mountaintop removal coal mining and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's war on small farmers. ^[6] Wendell Berry never bought a computer or used a smartphone, refused to use air travel, and lived and worked in a small rural community to practice what he preached. ^[7] Berry described himself as a 'forest Christian' or 'marginal Christian' due to his uneasy distance from conservative institutional politics and dogmatism, despite his writings being deeply infused with biblical themes. ^[8]