Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si opened publishing floodgates for theologians seeking to extend the pontiff’s manifesto for constructive projects.  Torvend’s short volume forges a link between contemporary ecotheology and Benedictine history and spirituality.  While Lynn White, Jr.’s 1967 essay “The Historic Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis” indicted Christianity for providing a theological justification for planetary exploitation, Torvend argues the case for the defense and appeals to Benedict as a church reformer whose life and rule provide ecological wisdom for the twenty-first century.  His central question: “How is it that early medieval monasteries might serve today as a model of sustainable development and environmental conservation in a time of rapid urban development and global warming” (x).

The book’s opening chapters begin with an extensive historical overview of the opposition between the early Christian church and Roman imperialism, an opposition illustrated in the Book of Revelation.  Torvend admits Roman polytheism sacralized nature, but contrasts imperial religion with the actual practice of agriculturally-motivated deforestation and destruction wrought by repeated wars.  Benedict is presented as a figure who embarks on an exodus from both imperialism and a Romanized Christian faith made visible in the mammoth basilicas far removed from the groups meeting in house churches in the first generations after Christ.  Relying upon Gregory the Great’s Dialogues to reconstruct a portrait of the saint living in harmony with his immediate surroundings, Torvend stresses the importance of Benedictine stability in fostering commitment to the natural world.

Chapter Four moves from historical synopsis to the spiritual theme at the heart of the book.  Beginning with the liturgy of the hours outlined in Benedict’s rule, the author interweaves biblical references to the natural world with a presentation of how seasonal changes echo a christocentric spirituality.  In Chapter Five Torvend emphasizes the “sense of place” (99) that distinguishes the Benedictine charism from the wandering mendicants who would succeed early Christian monks during the High Middle Ages.  This cenobitic rootedness accompanied by communal ownership is a contrast to the mobility taken for granted by contemporary North Americans.  Torvend retrieves these charisms to make a case that White, raised in a Calvinist church, made assumptions about Christianity not sustained by historical research.  This monastic charism echoes Jesus’ own embodied relationship to the ecological landscape of Palestine, and channeling the sociologist Philip Rieff the author poses the apt question: “Has the triumph of the therapeutic in the religions of North America drawn attention away from the fate of the earth and underscored an anthropocentric view of Christian spirituality that focuses solely on the individual’s spiritual journey or growth in holiness?” (122).  Christians must break through delusions of autonomy to embrace interdependence and to distinguish personal wants from community needs.

In the book’s final chapter Torvend describes a 1986 epiphany centered upon Marcel Breuer’s abbey church at St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota.  A non-religious visitor to the building calls Torvend’s attention to the way in which the bricks, the concrete, the wood, and the granite demonstrate how “the land is in the church” (141).  Sacramentality constitutes both buildings and the Christian community, providing a foretaste of the New Jerusalem depicted at the end of Revelation.  Monastic Ecological Wisdom provides those new to the study of monastic history with a helpful overview of the Benedictine tradition’s commitment to ecological values past and present.  Students in theology and spirituality will benefit from the historically-informed presentation of Benedict’s cultural context.  With this book, Torvend has provided a helpful counterpoint to Lynn White’s claim that Christianity corrodes human solidarity with the natural world.  The lived witness of Christian monks provides ample evidence to the contrary.