When God Was a Bird: Christianity, Animism, and the Re-Enchantment of the World

Groundworks: Ecological Issues in Philosophy and Theology

by Mark I. Wallace

2019 NAUTILUS GOLD WINNER

In a time of rapid climate change and species extinction, what role have the world's religions played in ameliorating--or causing--the crisis we now face? Religion in general, and Christianity in particular, appears to bear a disproportionate burden for creating humankind's exploitative attitudes toward nature through unearthly theologies that divorce human beings and their spiritual yearnings from their natural origins. In this regard, Christianity has become an otherworldly religion that views the natural world as "fallen," as empty of signs of God's presence.

And yet, buried deep within the Christian tradition are startling portrayals of God as the beaked and feathered Holy Spirit - the "animal God," as it were, of historic Christian witness. Through biblical readings, historical theology, continental philosophy, and personal stories of sacred nature, this book recovers the model of God in Christianity as a creaturely, avian being who signals the presence of spirit in everything, human and more-than-human alike.

Mark Wallace's recovery of the bird-God of the Bible signals a deep grounding of faith in the natural world. The moral implications of nature-based Christianity are profound. All life is deserving of humans' care and protection insofar as the world is envisioned as alive with sacred animals, plants, and landscapes. From the perspective of Christian animism, the Earth is the holy place that God made and that humankind is enjoined to watch over and cherish in like manner. Saving the environment, then, is not a political issue on the left or the right of the ideological spectrum, but, rather, an innermost passion shared by all people of faith and good will in a world damaged by anthropogenic warming, massive species extinction, and the loss of arable land, potable water, and breathable air. To Wallace, this passion is inviolable and flows directly from the heart of Christian teaching that God is a carnal, fleshy reality who is promiscuously incarnated within all things, making the whole world a sacred embodiment of God's presence, and worthy of our affectionate concern.

This beautifully and accessibly written book shows that "Christian animism" is not a strange oxymoron, but Christianity's natural habitat. Challenging traditional Christianity's self-definition as an other-worldly religion, Wallace paves the way for a new Earth-loving spirituality grounded in the ancient image of an animal God.

Genres: Theology, Religion, Christianity, Spirituality, Ecology, Philosophy

240 pages, Hardcover

Published November 20, 2018

Reviews

[Steve Watson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Early in the gospels, Jesus is baptized. A dove lands on him, and writers say this was the Holy Spirit in bodily form. Wallace takes this literally - that the Holy Spirit was incarnate as a bird. Charting other God/bird imagery in the Bible and beyond, looking at the scriptures' comments on God's presence in nature, reading Jesus' comments to the same, Wallace finds possibilities for what he calls Christianimism.

Through panentheism - the belief that all things are in God and God is in all things - one can reach most of Wallace's conclusions: the immense value of the natural world; a highly embodied, incarnate faith; sacred justification for environmental protection; and repentance from an otherworld.y, colonizing, exploitative faith.

Wallace's work with Christian animism allows him to do some other things, though. He can explore the idea of Jesus as shaman - Jesus channeling God's presence and power in the natural world - which is both surprising and illuminating. He can bring greater dignity and respect to traditional religions or much fo the world's first peoples too. And he can intensify the sacred quality of the whole earth.

Without sharing all of Wallace's theology and conclusions, I love his explorations of God's highly incarnate nature and the human call to reduce suffering to ourselves, to other creatures, and even to God by seeing God revealed in this earth and to love, preserve, and protect it accordingly.

[Caleb Ingegneri · Rating 4 out of 5]

While there are argumentative gaps and linguistic ambiguities throughout the text (some likely intentional) I enjoyed When God Was a Bird. It opened me up to possibilities of a christian animism which reenchants the world with sacredness. The mystical moments in the book are lyrical and moving. By reading this in a group settingI aquired a critical eye that I would have lacked if reading individually. The material Wallace provides to reconsider conceptions of the ecological divine are the gift, one the requires further work to be enfleshed or, as Wallace puts forth, enfeathered. Nonetheless, I am grateful for the pastoral intention put forth by Wallace to create such an illuminating, perspective-altering text.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hint: God is still a bird.

What if we Christians took as seriously as we take God’s incarnation in Jesus, God’s incarnation in the bird that heralded his ministry? This is the fascinating & incredibly thought experiment Mark I. Wallace performs in “When God was a Bird: Christianity, Animism, and the Re-Enchantment of the World.” Deep & prophetic. I am profoundly moved.

[Grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was helpful to read, but, ultimately, Wallace's arguments for Christian Animinsim were too often based on tenuous links and involved stretching scripture beyond its natural conclusions. I also struggled with some of the colonial, racially biased, sources used to support his point. While he acknowledged them, he seemed more interested in finding evidence to support his theories rather than interrogating his sources with rigour

[Matthew Hansen · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was fine. I think, or believe, what I read in these pages, is an author who already believes or wants to believe animism to be true, while remaining Christian. Therefore, not unlike, those on the other side of spectrum, decides to force some of the Biblical texts into an animist stronghold. He likes to exaggerate the “evidence” found in the scriptures to make it seem obvious. Why? It seems to me that he believes Christian-Panentheism, doesn’t go far enough to insight a green revolution among Christianity. I disagree. I believe panentheism to be more congruent with what we find in the Biblical texts. Again, the book was fine, but every time he pushed beyond panentheism he seemed to be pushing further than the text was actually going.

[Lydia Van Calster · Rating 4 out of 5]

Above all else, nature is God’s preferred habitat in the Bible. In Genesis, God partners with the sacred ground to make human beings out of the fertile soil (2:1–9). In Job, God answers Job’s theodicean cry with a plea for Job to look to nature for answers—and especially to the Behemoth, perhaps the great hippo, the first of all of God’s works (40:15–24). In the Gospels, Jesus is born in a stable (Luke 2:1–20), uses agriculture as the basis of his many parables (Matthew 13), and grounds his most sacred teachings about baptism and Eucharist in the primal elements and foodstuffs of water, wine, and bread (John 3:1–10, 6:41–59).

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In the Bible, it is earthen wild places—it is the natural world in all of its glory and wonder—that is the interspecies body of God’s revelatory activity. It is in nature where Moses encounters a burning bush—God as a sacred plant—and where God speaks of God’s perfect identity and instructs Moses on his divine mission (Exodus 3:1–15). It is in nature where two lovers in the Song of Songs sing a rapturous poem of erotic delight: “Your rounded thighs are precious jewels, your breasts are palm clusters that I want to climb, and your kisses are the best wine that glides over my lips and teeth” (Song of Solomon 7:1, 8–9). And it is in wild nature where the Markan Jesus, symbolized by the lion, is ministered to by wild beasts and angels at the threshold of his public ministry (1:12–13); where the Johannine Jesus, as we have seen, makes mud pies as poultices to heal the man born blind from birth (chapter 9); where the Lukan Jesus goes to pray great drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night of his arrest (22:39–46); and where Jesus’ body, in Matthew’s account, is laid to rest in a rock-cut tomb after a life spent in compassion and struggle (27:57–61). In the Bible, contrary to Girard, the natural world, and its wealth of flora and fauna, its bounty of gifts and sustenance, its everflowing offerings of grace and magic and beauty—it is the natural world itself, far from being a dangerous melee of demigods and monsters, that is the privileged site of God’s power and habitation for all of God’s many and diverse children.

[Sebvand · Rating 5 out of 5]

When Jesus was baptized, the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form as a dove" (Luke 3:21-22). If this could be so, then all things would be viewed as bearers of the kenotic sacred; each and every fleshy creature and natural element would be seen as a portrait of the avian God; and everything that is would be cherished as holy and blessed and good.

This book seemed rather alien to me at first, as I am not a Christian and I hardly knew about animism at all. Through the course of the book however, Wallace manages to get the reader very well acquainted with the ideas of animism, the history of Christianity and eco-theology. His reading of the Bible is not only illuminating and interesting, it is also coherent and sense-making.

This book is an intellectual project, to adopt a less rational outlook toward nature, to refute the cold lifelessnes rationality instills on it. Perhaps sometimes it is sometimes reasonable not to reason: the most important lesson of faith.

[Linden Leman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The rich biblical scholarship and history in this book offers a much needed grounding for the often very new-age eco-theology out there. Reading Hildegard's specific instruction for a soil-based healing ritual was just pure joy. Learning about the thousand-year history of the Mosaic snake cult in the temple—epic. Jesus as Shaman?! Freaking awesome—all his examples serve us a real opportunity to see the Christian tradition beyond the lens of Greek philosophy and acknowledge the ways in which it has been informed by animism and traditional forms of spirituality, rather than the current assumption that the two have always been diametrically opposed with no overlap. Ironically, I feel a bit "mid" on the whole "the Holy Spirit is a physical bird" thing—just didn't seem like much of an addition to the realm of panentheistic theology.

[Jules Middleton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whilst I am not convinced of Wallace's argument for Christian animism this book opens up a challenge as to how we view God and the planet and our own connections with it. He uses the example of the Holy Spirit descending as a dove at Christ's to argue for a few of 'animotheism', so that all beings are imbued with divine presence. Using his own examples within nature alongside scripture this is a fascinating read for any Christian concerned with the state of our planet. It's probably a little like marmite - some Christians will hate this, seeing it as too pagan, pantheistic and even the suggestion of animism alone enough to spark outrage but I really would invite you to read it and take on board the areas that work for you.

[Jacqueline · Rating 4 out of 5]

A truly important book, both theologically and ecologically. I found that parts of it were overstretched and others under-explored, but there were many exciting ideas within its pages. Christianity is an embodied religion, one in which God came to live with us in all this mess and chaos. That message alone is one that's deeply needed. This book is an important part of a conversation that surely needs to be had. I am grateful for it.

[Joshua Glucksman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Literally fire, such good methodological musings: “ Every generation invents Jesus afresh according to its own cultural presuppositions. Indeed, as Albert Schweitzer said, every generation that seeks to discover the historically authentic Jesus of Nazareth only finds itself looking down the well of its own imaginings- and, thereby, mistake ing its own face looking back at itself for the authentic face of the Jesus of history” 88

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this as my extra MA assignment text for my Contemplative Christianity class, and I thought this was excellent. It's not even about birds as I thought - even though it discusses birds plenty. It's a call for an ecological understanding of Christianity. I picked this based solely on the title and I am glad I did!

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was much more academic than Church of the Wild, but the author clearly has a deep love for nature, especially avian life. A lot to chew on from the original gospels up to today. Wonderful descriptions of bird life he has observed

[Anne Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book had me at the title of Chapter 4: “Come Suck Sequoia and Be Saved”, quoting John Muir.

[Sarah Mayer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wasn’t fully convinced by the argument but it was interesting to engage with nonetheless

[Alison Lilly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting (though not as radical as the author seems to think) take on “green” Christianity... but not animism. Full review to come.