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

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? 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 Spirit--the "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 self-definition as an otherworldly religion, Wallace paves the way for a new Earth-loving spirituality grounded in the ancient image of an animal God who signals the presence of spirit in everything, human and more-than-human alike.