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Book Cover
E-book
Author Wallace, Mark I., 1956- author.

Title When God was a bird : Christianity, animism, and the re-enchantment of the world / Mark I. Wallace
Edition First edition
Published New York : Fordham University Press, 2019

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Description 1 online resource
Series Groundworks: ecological issues in philosophy and theology
Groundworks: ecological issues in philosophy and theology
Contents Intro; Half Title; Series Announcement Page; Title Page; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; Preface; Introduction: Crossing the Species Divide; The Animal God; Animism; Feral Religion; God of Beak and Feathers; 1. Song of the Wood Thrush; The Singing Monk of the Crum Woods; Nature Religion; The Pigeon God; Sacred Animals; Christian Animism; Divine Subscendence; Avian Spirit Possession; Return to the Crum Woods; 2. The Delaware River Basin; Toxic Tour; Heidegger's Root Metaphors; Calling Spirit from the Deep; Sacrament of Dirt and Spit; Girard's Fear of Monstrous Couplings; Green Mimesis
The Pileated Woodpecker3. Worshipping the Green God; Crum Creek Visitation; Christian History; Jesus and Sacred Land; Augustine and Natalist Wonder; Hildegard's Viriditas Pneumatology; Rewilding Christian Worship; 4. "Come Suck Sequoia and Be Saved"; John Muir's Christianimism; Indian Removal in Yosemite; The Great Code; The Water Ouzel; The Two Books; Sequoia Religion; "Christianity and Mountainanity Are Streams from the Same Fountain"; 5. On the Wings of a Dove; Sagebrush Requiem; Is Earth a Living Being?; Suffering Earth; Refreshment and Fragrance in the Hills; A Tramp for God
The Death of God; God on the Wing; Acknowledgments; Notes; Index; Series Page
Summary At one time, God was a bird. In ancient Egypt, Thoth was the Ibis-headed divinity of magic & wisdom. Winged divine beings populated the pantheon of Greek antiquity, & Quetzalcoatl was the plumed serpent deity of the pre-Columbian Aztecs. It is said that in spite of, or better, to spite, this time-honoured wealth of divine avifauna, Christianity divorced God from the avian world in order to defend a pure form of monotheism. This work 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 & non-Western communities that Spirit enfleshes itself within everything that grows, walks, flies, & swims in & over the Earth
Analysis Augustine
Bible
Christianity
Girard
Heidegger
Hildegard
Holy Spirit
Muir
animism
bird-God
environment
indigenous
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed October 22, 2018)
Subject God (Christianity)
Holy Spirit.
Birds -- Religious aspects -- Christianity.
Animism.
Human ecology -- Religious aspects -- Christianity.
animism.
RELIGION -- Christian Theology -- General.
PHILOSOPHY -- Mind & Body.
Animism
Birds -- Religious aspects -- Christianity
God (Christianity)
Holy Spirit
Human ecology -- Religious aspects -- Christianity
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780823281343
0823281345
9780823281336
0823281337