Decomposing Holy Ground: Theological Compost for Shifting Worlds

For the church, “creation care” is back on the agenda. But is creation care really the full picture or do we need to learn that we are a part of the very creation of which we claim to be stewards. Does our climate crisis demand a more radical theological response? This book argues that as our scientific, cultural and historical awareness of the complexities within the ground beneath our feet increases, it should lead us to full scale reimagining of ourselves, not as individuals but as a part of the land we mourn. In this startling and radical piece of theological work, drawing on her understanding of earth, soil and compost, Emma Lietz Bilecky challenges us to rethink our understanding of land, church, race and God. This is a book for anyone tired of shallow optimism and cheap faith in the face of climate breakdown, and who wants to better understand the deeply interconnected web of theology, race, colonialism and the environment.

You can tell when you have met someone who has truly and deeply seen something, experienced it in their breath and bones. Such a person speaks or writes with an authentic intensity. That is what you will feel on every page of this. Emma has experienced a transformation in her relationship to land, to soil, to Earth, to the web of carbon and water and sunlight and life of which we all are part. This is a transformation we need, for our common well-being depends on. This book makes that transformation contagious. Powerfully written and deeply insightful, this book is extraordinary.

Soil is not a metaphor, Emma Lietz Bilecky insists. In Decomposing Holy Ground, Bilecky invites us to get our hands dirty in the particularities of our local soil, to think through and with the soil about many of the most urgent issues of our world today, from climate crisis to colonialism, and to turn that thinking into truly earthed prayer. Digging deep with both scientific understanding and poetic contemplation, Decomposing Holy Ground calls us to practise new-and-ancient kinds of care for the earth, in the hope that together we might learn to survive.

Emma Lietz Bilecky weaves insights from her work in small scale agriculture, heartfelt questions and breathtaking prose in this meditation on life''s essentials. In an extended meditation on that which animates earthy life, Emma Lietz Bilecky weaves a tapestry—of poetics, of theological contemplation, of narrative—in resistance to the unraveling wrought by climate change. Decomposing Holy Ground is precisely the kind of prayerful work that is needed to resist the supremacisms of our precarious present and to sow a more fecund future. For the church, “creation care” is back on the agenda. But is creation care really the full picture or do we need to learn that we are a part of the very creation of which we claim to be stewards. Does our climate crisis demand a more radical theological response? Decomposing Holy Ground argues that as our scientific, cultural and historical awareness of the complexities within the ground beneath our feet increases, it should lead us to full scale reimagining of ourselves, not as individuals but as a part of the land we mourn. In this startling and radical piece of theological work, drawing on her understanding of earth, soil and compost, Emma Lietz Bilecky challenges us to rethink our understanding of land, church, race and God. This is a book for anyone tired of shallow optimism and cheap faith in the face of climate breakdown, and who wants to better understand the deeply interconnected web of theology, race, colonialism and the environment. BLOGPOST: Theological compost: breaking down our relationship with the land by Emma Lietz Bilecky on the SCM Press blog here.

• | Author: Emma Lietz Bilecky
• | Publisher: SCM Press
• | Publication Date: Oct 31, 2025
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Paperback / softback
• | ISBN-13: 9780334061700
• | ISBN-10: 0334061709