Find When God Was A Bird: Christianity, Animism, And The Re-Enchantment Of The World Originated By Mark I. Wallace Available As Volume

rich biblical scholarship and history in this book offers a much needed grounding for the often very newage ecotheology out there, Reading Hildegard's specific instruction for a soilbased healing ritual was just pure joy, Learning about the thousandyear history of the Mosaic snake cult in the templeepic, Jesus as Shaman! Freaking awesomeall 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" thingjust didn't seem like much of an addition to the realm of panentheistic theology.
A truly important book, both theologically and ecologically, I found that parts of it were overstretched and others underexplored, 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, This book had me at the title of Chapter: “Come Suck Sequoia and Be Saved”, quoting John Muir, Wasnt fully convinced by the argument but it was interesting to engage with nonetheless Interesting though not as radical as the author seems to think take on “green” Christianity.
. . but not animism. Full review to come. 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 ChristianPanentheism, doesnt 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, 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, perspectivealtering text, In a time of rapid climate change and species extinction, what role have the world's religions played in amelioratingor causingthe crisis we now face One can point to Christianity's otherworldly theologies, which privilege our spiritual aspirations over our natural origins, as bearing a disproportionate burden for creating humankind's exploitative attitudes toward nature.


And yet, buried deep within the Christian tradition are startling portrayals of God as the beaked and feathered Holy Spiritthe "animal God" of historic Christian witness, Through biblical readings, historical theology, continental philosophy, and personal stories of sacred nature, this book recovers the Christian God as a creaturely, avian being promiscuously incarnated within all things.


This beautifully and accessibly written book shows that "Christian animism" is not a contradiction in terms but Christianity's natural habitat, Challenging traditional Christianity's selfdefinition as an otherworldly religion, Wallace paves the way for a new Earthloving spirituality grounded in the ancient image of an animal God who signals the presence of spirit in everything, human and morethanhuman alike.
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