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Theology That Matters: Ecology, Economy And God
What difference does theological thinking make? Does Christianity have any relevance for our secular, globalized, environmentally threatened world? Specifically formulated for undergraduate and seminary courses in theology, this volume answers a resounding yes. Gathering many respected and original Christian thinkers who have been inspired by the example and work of theologian Sallie McFague, this book engages such topics as God, Christ, revelation, eschatology, and church in three intertwined and pressing (1) our religious life and language in a secularized, pluralistic society, (2) our newly globalized economic life, and (3) our threatened environmental life.
- GenresTheology
245 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2006
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June 11, 2023
Theology That Matters: Ecology, Economy, and God, the title of the multi-authored essay collection edited by Darby Kathleen Ray, is playfully imbued with a double dose of meaning. At one level, it insists that its theological insights are relevant and significant, not to be dismissed as purely theoretical abstractions relegated to ivory towers. And at another, it alludes to the materiality of its contents, which engage the tactile stuff of human bodies, plants, oceans, islands, creeks, cash, and coins. These intertwined implications surge through the chapters, hoping to reinvigorate theology’s role within the most crucial ecological and economic crises of its moment, most of which loom even larger in 2023 than they did when it was published in 2006. The other throughline of the collection is the authors’ engagement with the work of Sallie McFague, a scholar who devoted much of her career to theologizing in creative and expansive ways around these same concepts and concerns. As tends to be the case with multi-authored compilations, some of the essays here arguably stray the course, veering into esoteric territory that it sought to avoid, but there are a number of compelling entries that make it more than worthwhile.
One of these is the prologue, penned by Darby Kathleen Ray, which presents a clear and compelling vision for the endeavor of the book and the theology it seeks to represent. She grounds its premise in the insistence that “Theology that matters is theology that informs daily living, nurtures life-giving habits, and breeds courage and hope in relation to life’s inevitable struggles and disappointments” (7). In other words, theology should never be severed from our ordinary lives, but should all the time seek to direct, enliven, and sustain our immensely varied experiences within the world. This is an energizing approach that is intentional about optimizing the inherently formational impetus of one’s theological outlook, recognizing that how we think about God shapes how we navigate the world. It certainly follows the path set by Sallie McFague, whose explicitly metaphorical theology often sought to construct timely new models for God with the purpose of disrupting harmful inherited postures and practices and inspiring generative new ones. The most dynamic essays that follow embrace this perspective by offering their own creative considerations of how we might seek to see, hear, and know God anew –– and what transformative possibilities emerge if we do.
Taking after McFague, a number of entries operate under panentheistic presumptions that understand God to be immanently and intimately present within all facets of creation, though not limited or exhausted by these incarnations, and see this as fertile ground for nonanthropomorphic models of God. For example, Jay McDaniel’s essay presents God as “Deep Listening,” which he defines as “listening that is guided, not by the aim of conquering or controlling, but by the aim of being with another in a sensitive way and or responding with wisdom and compassion” (29). He orients this within a Whiteheadian process framework to depict a vision of God that is eternally responsive to humanity (and beyond) and argues that this understanding enriches capacities for attentive listening, careful discernment, and cooperative attunement with the divine leading that arises out of God’s listening. Just as God as Deep Listening remains open to being affected by creation, McDaniel writes that “this is what it means to listen to God: it is to accept our own calling to listen, to walk through life with a willingness to be touched––even if it causes us sometimes to fall down in despair or sadness, after which, with God’s help, we get up and begin again, committed to a life of listening” (36). Critically, McDaniel insists that such listening extends to the natural world that is often so easily ignored, especially in iterations of religion that have not cultivated such depths of attentiveness and receptivity.
Other essays center the ecological implications more explicitly. Mark Wallace’s, for example, develops a panentheistic pneumatology that directly correlates the Spirit with the world. Drawing from a variety of biblical passages that depict the Holy Spirit in elemental manifestations (e.g. an earthen dove, ruach and pneuma, living water, and purifying fire), Wallace argues that the Spirit is not just symbolized but enfleshed and embodied by the natural world (126). He writes that “The Spirit is an earthen reality––God’s power in the land and sky that makes all things live and grow toward their natural ends. God is living in the ground, swimming through the oceans, circulating in the atmosphere; God is always afoot and underfoot as the quickening life force who yearns to bring all denizens of this sacred earth into fruition and well-being” (126). Wallace draws extensively from McFague’s thesis in The Body of God, affirming the universally sacramental implications of her work while also stressing the viability of the Spirit’s life as co-determined with that of the earth. In doing so, he accentuates the divine vulnerability inherent to such a model, arguing that an earthen Spirit is necessarily a wounded Spirit. Therefore, the damage the Spirit incurs through the ravaging of the earth can and does harm, limit, and scar God in ways that cannot always be repaired (136).
Catherine Keller’s essay largely parallels Wallace’s trajectory, and she finds reinvigorated potential in its ramifications. Keller writes: “But I think before the ethical responsibility of a mature sense of ‘stewardship’ or of what enlightened evangelicals are calling ‘creation care’ is likely to kick in, we will need Christians to feel and practice the elemental love of the universe as the very love of God. No environmental moralism or apocalyptic threat will motivate the transformation. Love might” (105). Her point encapsulates the guiding notion of the collection that as embodied humans, what is material tends to matters most to us. And both Keller’s and Wallace’s pneumatology attempt to reclaim the immersive, tangible, tactile ways that the world cares for us as real expressions of God’s immanent love. In turn, they hope to summon within us a reciprocal love for that of God embodied in the earth that counteracts our ecocidal inclinations. However, this raises unaddressed concerns regarding how to interpret the planet’s (escalating!) capacity to inflict harm upon humanity, particularly as neither theologian is interested in rescinding God’s persistent grace for a vindictive devolution. McFague addresses this in The Body of God, insisting upon the need for a “willful wager” that chooses to regard Jesus as the most vivid vision of God’s character, but the underveloped Christology in Keller and Wallace’s chapters is somewhat jeopardized in this regard. Nonetheless, their efforts to push McFague’s thinking towards a heightened ethical edge that meets embodied humans in their materialist biases brings further clarity to the generative potential of love at the core of the panentheistic model.
Turning to the chapters focused on economics more so than ecology, Eleazar Fernandez’s essay offers the most comprehensive consideration of neoliberalism’s malformative impact across the globe and openings for the church to respond. He presents an ecclesiology that reimagines the church as “household of life abundant” –– the global community of Christ’s Body called to inhabit worldviews that promote the abundant life for all (172). After demonstrating the ways that capitalist rhetoric and logic has infiltrated the church (e.g. “church shopping,” the church’s identity as a service vendor, the disintegration of Christian distinctiveness in favor of therapeutic spirituality or acquiescence to mainstream culture), he raises a demand for the church to reclaim its necessary compass, “an orientation towards God’s basileia” (176). The brunt of his criticism is directed at the mainline churches, whose leaders he believes have abandoned the particularities of the Christian faith and therein relinquished their prophetic capacity. He writes: “Without a powerful narrative to define its life, there is no doubt that the church will be swallowed up by consumer capitalism’s ferocious appetite. Instructions regarding our relationship to money and spirituality must be complemented with the formation of a counternarrative” (185). This rediscovery and reclamation of the Christian counternarrative is central to Fernandez’s strategy for responding to the pervasive, all-encompassing influence of capitalism, accurately recognizing religion’s crucial and distinctive capability to foster formation in alignment with the basileia of God.
Fittingly, Sallie McFague’s chapter serves as an epilogue for Theology That Matters. Here she advocates for the preservation and cultivation of the “wild space” within each of us, defined as “the memory of where we came from and the hope of where we are going: from paradise to the kingdom of God” (207). This, she suggests, is where we can find the seed of belief that, against all odds, a different world is possible. In the remainder of her brief essay, she encourages readers to pursue this conviction by imagining and praying for a different world, attending to the material well-being of all creation around us, and persevering in the face of despair through a commitment to seemingly small, repeatable steps towards seeing and behaving differently (208-211). As is always the case, this is certainly easier advocated for than achieved, and the compounding persistence of these very same struggles almost twenty years later cast a shadow over the hopeful fervor of the varied authors. But the message of the text continues to ring out, perhaps stubbornly so, that theology does matter, that how we understand and engage God can make a desperately needed difference in our material lives, and that the different world envisioned across its chapters is still possible.
One of these is the prologue, penned by Darby Kathleen Ray, which presents a clear and compelling vision for the endeavor of the book and the theology it seeks to represent. She grounds its premise in the insistence that “Theology that matters is theology that informs daily living, nurtures life-giving habits, and breeds courage and hope in relation to life’s inevitable struggles and disappointments” (7). In other words, theology should never be severed from our ordinary lives, but should all the time seek to direct, enliven, and sustain our immensely varied experiences within the world. This is an energizing approach that is intentional about optimizing the inherently formational impetus of one’s theological outlook, recognizing that how we think about God shapes how we navigate the world. It certainly follows the path set by Sallie McFague, whose explicitly metaphorical theology often sought to construct timely new models for God with the purpose of disrupting harmful inherited postures and practices and inspiring generative new ones. The most dynamic essays that follow embrace this perspective by offering their own creative considerations of how we might seek to see, hear, and know God anew –– and what transformative possibilities emerge if we do.
Taking after McFague, a number of entries operate under panentheistic presumptions that understand God to be immanently and intimately present within all facets of creation, though not limited or exhausted by these incarnations, and see this as fertile ground for nonanthropomorphic models of God. For example, Jay McDaniel’s essay presents God as “Deep Listening,” which he defines as “listening that is guided, not by the aim of conquering or controlling, but by the aim of being with another in a sensitive way and or responding with wisdom and compassion” (29). He orients this within a Whiteheadian process framework to depict a vision of God that is eternally responsive to humanity (and beyond) and argues that this understanding enriches capacities for attentive listening, careful discernment, and cooperative attunement with the divine leading that arises out of God’s listening. Just as God as Deep Listening remains open to being affected by creation, McDaniel writes that “this is what it means to listen to God: it is to accept our own calling to listen, to walk through life with a willingness to be touched––even if it causes us sometimes to fall down in despair or sadness, after which, with God’s help, we get up and begin again, committed to a life of listening” (36). Critically, McDaniel insists that such listening extends to the natural world that is often so easily ignored, especially in iterations of religion that have not cultivated such depths of attentiveness and receptivity.
Other essays center the ecological implications more explicitly. Mark Wallace’s, for example, develops a panentheistic pneumatology that directly correlates the Spirit with the world. Drawing from a variety of biblical passages that depict the Holy Spirit in elemental manifestations (e.g. an earthen dove, ruach and pneuma, living water, and purifying fire), Wallace argues that the Spirit is not just symbolized but enfleshed and embodied by the natural world (126). He writes that “The Spirit is an earthen reality––God’s power in the land and sky that makes all things live and grow toward their natural ends. God is living in the ground, swimming through the oceans, circulating in the atmosphere; God is always afoot and underfoot as the quickening life force who yearns to bring all denizens of this sacred earth into fruition and well-being” (126). Wallace draws extensively from McFague’s thesis in The Body of God, affirming the universally sacramental implications of her work while also stressing the viability of the Spirit’s life as co-determined with that of the earth. In doing so, he accentuates the divine vulnerability inherent to such a model, arguing that an earthen Spirit is necessarily a wounded Spirit. Therefore, the damage the Spirit incurs through the ravaging of the earth can and does harm, limit, and scar God in ways that cannot always be repaired (136).
Catherine Keller’s essay largely parallels Wallace’s trajectory, and she finds reinvigorated potential in its ramifications. Keller writes: “But I think before the ethical responsibility of a mature sense of ‘stewardship’ or of what enlightened evangelicals are calling ‘creation care’ is likely to kick in, we will need Christians to feel and practice the elemental love of the universe as the very love of God. No environmental moralism or apocalyptic threat will motivate the transformation. Love might” (105). Her point encapsulates the guiding notion of the collection that as embodied humans, what is material tends to matters most to us. And both Keller’s and Wallace’s pneumatology attempt to reclaim the immersive, tangible, tactile ways that the world cares for us as real expressions of God’s immanent love. In turn, they hope to summon within us a reciprocal love for that of God embodied in the earth that counteracts our ecocidal inclinations. However, this raises unaddressed concerns regarding how to interpret the planet’s (escalating!) capacity to inflict harm upon humanity, particularly as neither theologian is interested in rescinding God’s persistent grace for a vindictive devolution. McFague addresses this in The Body of God, insisting upon the need for a “willful wager” that chooses to regard Jesus as the most vivid vision of God’s character, but the underveloped Christology in Keller and Wallace’s chapters is somewhat jeopardized in this regard. Nonetheless, their efforts to push McFague’s thinking towards a heightened ethical edge that meets embodied humans in their materialist biases brings further clarity to the generative potential of love at the core of the panentheistic model.
Turning to the chapters focused on economics more so than ecology, Eleazar Fernandez’s essay offers the most comprehensive consideration of neoliberalism’s malformative impact across the globe and openings for the church to respond. He presents an ecclesiology that reimagines the church as “household of life abundant” –– the global community of Christ’s Body called to inhabit worldviews that promote the abundant life for all (172). After demonstrating the ways that capitalist rhetoric and logic has infiltrated the church (e.g. “church shopping,” the church’s identity as a service vendor, the disintegration of Christian distinctiveness in favor of therapeutic spirituality or acquiescence to mainstream culture), he raises a demand for the church to reclaim its necessary compass, “an orientation towards God’s basileia” (176). The brunt of his criticism is directed at the mainline churches, whose leaders he believes have abandoned the particularities of the Christian faith and therein relinquished their prophetic capacity. He writes: “Without a powerful narrative to define its life, there is no doubt that the church will be swallowed up by consumer capitalism’s ferocious appetite. Instructions regarding our relationship to money and spirituality must be complemented with the formation of a counternarrative” (185). This rediscovery and reclamation of the Christian counternarrative is central to Fernandez’s strategy for responding to the pervasive, all-encompassing influence of capitalism, accurately recognizing religion’s crucial and distinctive capability to foster formation in alignment with the basileia of God.
Fittingly, Sallie McFague’s chapter serves as an epilogue for Theology That Matters. Here she advocates for the preservation and cultivation of the “wild space” within each of us, defined as “the memory of where we came from and the hope of where we are going: from paradise to the kingdom of God” (207). This, she suggests, is where we can find the seed of belief that, against all odds, a different world is possible. In the remainder of her brief essay, she encourages readers to pursue this conviction by imagining and praying for a different world, attending to the material well-being of all creation around us, and persevering in the face of despair through a commitment to seemingly small, repeatable steps towards seeing and behaving differently (208-211). As is always the case, this is certainly easier advocated for than achieved, and the compounding persistence of these very same struggles almost twenty years later cast a shadow over the hopeful fervor of the varied authors. But the message of the text continues to ring out, perhaps stubbornly so, that theology does matter, that how we understand and engage God can make a desperately needed difference in our material lives, and that the different world envisioned across its chapters is still possible.
July 12, 2023
When first starting "Theology that Matters," I wondered why focusing on God, Ecology, and Economy. Why not simply focus on one? Now that I have read the work I realize that the bigger project is to give the reader a different way of thinking about faith and engagement with the world. That in considering a theology of ecology one must have a less "top-down" view or understanding of God. It is a call to move away from some of the more dominating models and views of God and towards ones in which God is part of creation and the creative process. It was no surprise that the hero of the book is the late Sallie McFague who wrote a brilliant postscript. Her work deserves further consideration.
What I particularly like about the work is that it is a theology of engagement with the world. It is a theology that calls us to be engaged with the economic structures of the world as well as to consider how we are engaged with creation. The challenge with a collection of writings is that we can lose a sense of a broader project or point, but Ray (the editor) did a good job in selecting the authors and in the ways she presented their works.
It was a good book that leads me to want to consider more writings on ecology and especially by McFague.
What I particularly like about the work is that it is a theology of engagement with the world. It is a theology that calls us to be engaged with the economic structures of the world as well as to consider how we are engaged with creation. The challenge with a collection of writings is that we can lose a sense of a broader project or point, but Ray (the editor) did a good job in selecting the authors and in the ways she presented their works.
It was a good book that leads me to want to consider more writings on ecology and especially by McFague.
June 17, 2014
I just literally finished this book and still am digesting.
The first thought would be; this book, or better, matters discussed in this book should be also discussed within our churches.
I gathered that it is written for undergraduates students of the theology, but as a believer myself I do not hear this material being frequently debated in today churches. This book redirects its readers from self serving relationship with God to the wider picture of relationship with God's creation within the body of the God, which is the world/ cosmos.
Although written mainly in big words this is a writing of the most importance for all humanity and mainly for all the privileged people of the north america in order to see through and carry us over the barriers to access the world which Jesus tought about and represents in our view of Christianity and Christian living.
The first thought would be; this book, or better, matters discussed in this book should be also discussed within our churches.
I gathered that it is written for undergraduates students of the theology, but as a believer myself I do not hear this material being frequently debated in today churches. This book redirects its readers from self serving relationship with God to the wider picture of relationship with God's creation within the body of the God, which is the world/ cosmos.
Although written mainly in big words this is a writing of the most importance for all humanity and mainly for all the privileged people of the north america in order to see through and carry us over the barriers to access the world which Jesus tought about and represents in our view of Christianity and Christian living.
August 15, 2007
This book is really really good. For the most part. Some of the process/open theology I am not quite willing to go all the way with. And it gets a bit repetitive at times. And Catherine Keller is too smart for her own good. The stuff she writes is brilliant, but I think she usues big words just so she can get to define them in the next sentence, and remind you she is smarter than you:) But the theology in here is truly awesome - if this doesn't challenge you to examine the way you live .... I am not sure what will
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