When God Was a Bird
Christianity, Animism, and the Re-Enchantment of the World
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8081334 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mark I Wallace (0000-0003-0662-7878, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Pages | 240 |
| Publication date | 2018-11-20 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | BOOK |
| Venue | When God Was a Bird (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Fordham University Press (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.5422/fordham/9780823281329.001.0001 |
| OpenAlex | W4244285418 |
| Open Library | OL28891976M |
| ISBN | 9780823281329 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 9 |
At one time, God was a bird. In ancient Egypt, Thoth was the Ibis-headed divinity of magic and wisdom. Winged divine beings—griffins and harpies—populated the pantheon of Greek antiquity, and Quetzalcoatl was the plumed serpent deity of the pre-Columbian Aztecs. It is said that in spite of—or better, to spite—this time-honored wealth of divine avifauna, Christianity divorced God from the avian world in order to defend a pure form of monotheism. This narrative, however, misses the startling scriptural portrayals of God as the beaked and feathered Holy Spirit, the third member of the Trinity who, alongside the Father and Son, is the “animal God” of historic Christian witness. Appearing as a winged creature at the time of Jesus’ baptism (Luke 3:21-22), the bird-God of the New Testament signals the deep grounding of archi-original biblical faith in the natural world. This book calls this new but ancient vision of the world “Christian animism” in order to signal the continuity of biblical religion with the beliefs of indigenous and non-Western communities that Spirit enfleshes itself within everything that grows, walks, flies, and swims in and over the Earth. To this end, it weaves together philosophy (Heidegger, Girard), theology (Augustine, Hildegard, Muir), and the author’s own birdwatching visitations (wood thrush, pileated woodpecker, great blue heron, American dipper, domestic pigeon) to argue that all things are alive with sacred personhood and worthy of human beings’ love and protection in a time of ecocidal, even deicidal, climate change
Art · Baptism · Christianity · Divinity · Eschatology · Faith · Theology · Veneration · Religion, Ecology, and Ethics · Violence, Religion, and Philosophy · Animism · Birds · God · God (Christianity) · Holy spirit · Human Ecology · Human ecology, religious aspects · Religious aspects · History · Philosophy · Religious Studies
How Would We Know What God is Up To?
The Wounding of the Earth
The Climate Crisis and the Entanglement of Psychoanalysis and Spirituality
"Integral Ecology as Theology and Ethics of "Place
The Word Made Flesh and the Spirit's Breath
"Ritual and Magic" in Buddhist Visual Culture from the Bird Totem
Praying with Animals, Plants, Soil, Land, and Water
Feminist Theology, Plant Names, and Power
Spiritual Ecology
| Unique citing works | 9 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,29 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2026 (8) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 9 |