The Insurgency of the Spirit taps mutli-disciplinary methodologies of post-colonial biblical scholarship and anthropology, liberation theologies, indigenous studies, grief/trauma research, and nature-meditation writings to shape a constructive retrieval of the animist Jesus. The vision that emerges is one that sets forward an Earth-loving Jesus who challenges Christians in particular to mobilize against the destructive relationship that exists between imperial religion and political systems in a time of climate catastrophe.
The entire “Introduction: Toward an Animist Spirituality Ecology” is found on Amazon’s kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Insurgency-Spirit-Liberation-Spirituality-Protectors-ebook/dp/B08J9QLVL1/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=The+Insurgency+of+the+Spirit&qid=1611586832&sr=8-1
Critical Reviews: The Insurgency of the Spirit: Jesus’s Liberation Animist Spirituality, Empire, and Creating Christian Protectors https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781793623188/The-Insurgency-of-the-Spirit-Jesus’s-Liberation-Animist-Spirituality-Empire-and-Creating-Christian-Protectors
The Insurgency of the Spirit is an incredibly insightful animist and shamanistic reading of the biblical Jesus tradition against the backdrop of the anti-ecological and anti-queer theologies and politics of the late capitalist West. This dialogue between past and present—between the sacred wildlands of the Bible and the toxic landscapes of neoliberal America—opened to me the power of the biblical imaginary to tear down today’s regnant settler colonialist order.
In an Age of Eco-Apocalypse—the “dark night of the Earth,” to quote the author’s use of Steven Chase’s paraphrase of St. John of the Cross—the author’s achievement is based on two recurring commitments: strong methodological underpinnings, including post-colonial biblical scholarship, critical gender theory, liberation theology, and new indigenous studies; and careful attention to the wide range of contemporary movements and issues that shape the author’s liberatory retrieval of the animist Jesus—e.g., from rights of nature jurisprudence to restoration of tribal lands and from contemporary trauma theory to earth-based meditation and healing practices.
This book is an exciting Christian animist theology of resistance and insurrection against the forces of fossil fuels extraction and governmental control that define our historical epoch, the Anthropocene. Now aligned with violence and empire, the author argues that regnant Christianity has effaced its ecological, pastoral origins in favor of an alliance with corrupting political institutions that stretches over two millennia. He uncovers the origins of the Jesus movement in nomadic gift economies, solidary with the poor, animist love of biotic communities, and resistance to imperial power. Today this green Jesus movement lives on, inside and outside of the churches, in non-violent opposition to what Walter Wink calls the domination system. Beautifully written and persuasively argued, the book will elucidate for readers Christianity’s true beginnings, its historic wrong turns, and provide a road map for a sustainable future that has the potential to be personally and politically transformative. — Mark I. Wallace, Swarthmore College
Nobody knows what ways might emerge for the religions of the world as they gradually recognize themselves in other traditions and eventually see themselves in the world. But this much seems certain. Compassion for the other-than-human will wellspring from all spiritualities as we go forward…or we will not go forward. As Christianity bends back towards its inherent compassionate cosmology, The Insurgency of Spirit points toward contemplative pathways for reanimating evangelization. This is a welcome vade mecum (“walk with me”)for those on the way. — John Grim, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and Yale Divinity School
In The Insurgency of the Spirit: Jesus’s Liberation Animist Spirituality, Empire, and Creating Christian Protectors, Shore–Goss writes with passion and intellectual depth in addition to which the range of engagement in this book is astounding. In this electrifying text he draws the reader into a reanimated world and asks them to remain there. Shore-Goss is clear from the start, he says, ‘wilderness forms a geographical, cultural, spiritual, and eco-theological symbolics for this book’ and this opens the way for the untamed eco-theology that follows.
While this book dwells in the wild/ernes and the animist it is also firmly grounded in the person of Jesus and this gives it the unique quality that calls out to people to read it. The central character in Christianity is re-read through wild eyes and found to be larger and more compassionately inclusive than traditionally thought. This ‘green Jesus’ for Shore-Goss is no simple tree hugger or prophet who begs people to take care of their environment but rather one who gathers the forces of nature in a revolution against all that would make life and all the living denuded through the rupture of interrelatedness across species and all the natural world.
Shore-Goss calls for an animist revolution as the place where the healing of the planet and all its inhabitants lies. This call is embedded in scripture and the life of Jesus of Nazareth, the one who lived in a certain landscape both political and natural and used that landscape to declare a revolution through words and the use of everyday food- bread and wine, which in this story become symbols of an open table as well as radical economics and politics. Shore-Goss is not the first to suggest that the use of bread and wine and the symbols of Eucharist call for radical politics and particularly economics but his use is welcome and eco-based. The land he tells us is generous and of itself gives freely, further the earth itself provides us with solutions to climate change if only we would remain intimately connected to it. The earth gives freely of wind, water and sun all of which offer solutions to the fuel crisis, there is no need to ripe at the belly of Mother Earth to extract fossil fuels.
This book offers a radical way to read scripture and to view Jesus and from this starting point to begin the decolonizing of the earth and to turn on its head the centuries of dominance over the earth and its inhabitants that a traditional reading of Christianity has led to. After reading this book it is not possible to demand of the earth but rather to wonder what the earth wants from us. For Shore-Goss and his conversation partners the answer is clear, for the earth to be healed and flourish it must be emancipated from the deadening demands of capitalism. God bless the revolution!!! — Lisa Isherwood, Emerita, University of Winchester, UK
Robert E. Shore-Goss has continually been at the forefront of expanding the theological imagination of our time. The Insurgency of the Spirit is no exception. In a time of climate change, that desperately demands a liberative, anti-colonial ethic and a vision to lead us out of ecological peril, Shore-Goss delivers. He has a gift for both critically and appreciatively engaging complex intellectual histories and debates so that they can become relevant and prescient for the moment. Read this book and allow him to challenge and broaden your perception of the theological landscape before us. — Brooks Berndt, Minister of Environmental Justice and Convener of the Environmental Justice Council of the United Church of Christ
Timely and provocative, this anti-imperial, animist, and comparative theology distills wisdom from Christianity, indigenous traditions, and Buddhism to offer vision and hope in facing climate disaster. No one will look at Jesus in the same old anthropocentric way after reading this book. I highly recommend it for faculty and students, religious leaders, and activists. — Kwok Pui-lan, Dean’s Professor of Systematic Theology, Candler School of Theology, Emory University, and author of Postcolonial Imagination & Feminist Theology
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Table of Contents
The Insurgency of the Spirit: Jesus’s Liberation Animist Spirituality, Empire, and Creating Protectors
Table of Contents
Introduction: Towards Animist Spiritual Ecology
Spiritual Ecology
The Wild in Spiritual Ecology
Animism
A Geography of the Spirit
Christian Animism
Chapter 1 Toward a Retrieval of the Earth-loving Jesus
The Earth-loving Jesus against Empire
The Imperial Assimilation of Christianity
Fossil Fuel Empires, Authoritarianism, and Climate Catastrophe
Chapter 2: Contemporary Shamans and Animist Spiritualities
Nature-Deficit and Compassion-Deficit Disorders
Animist Mindfulness
Contemplation of Nature
Thomas Berry and David Abram
Chapter 3 Jesus’ Vision Quest
Disciple of John the Baptist
John the Baptist and Wilderness Vision of Quest
Baptism: Water, Earth, Sky and Mother Earth
Wilderness Contemplative Silence
Contemplative Model of Wilderness
Compassionate Inclusivity
Ritual Ordeals
Chapter 4 God’s Kin-dom as Ecological
Kin-dom as Empowerment
Was Jesus an Environmentalist?
Kin-dom as Great Economy
Kin-dom as God’s Dream
Kin-dom as Wild Space
Kin-dom as Animist
Chapter 5 God’s Wilderness Seeds Animist Revolution
Popular Peasant Spirituality
Abba God is Fiercely Compassionate
Jesus’ Fierce Compassion
Compassion as Intentional Practice
Compassion as Social Radicalism
John Muir as Christian Animist
Chapter 6 Radical Inclusiveness and Abundant Giving
Open Commensality
Open Table: Radical Inclusive Love
Inclusive Commensality as the Feast of Creation
Gratitude for Earth’s Gifts
Love of the Earth
Chapter 7 God’s Dream of Restoration
Shamanic Healings and Exorcisms: Parables in Action
Ecological Samaritans
Healing Environmental Racism
Chapter 8 Jesus’ Biomimicry of Creation Wisdom
Jesus as Sage
“Consider the Lilies”
Jesus’ Transformative Path of Wisdom
Compassionate, Non-Violent God
Ecological Beatitudes
The Revolution of the Meek
Chapter 9 Wild Grace Challenges Imperial Dystopia
The Roman Empire
God’s Reign of Non-violence
Jesus and Imperial Violence
Slave Leadership
Voluntary Poverty and Itineracy
Peasant Loss of Lands
The Land (Earth) as Gift
Chapter 10 Standing Rock, Scarcity and Earth Economy, and the Rights of Nature
Imperial Scarcity vs. Wilderness Enoughism
Earth Economy
Earth Rights
The Rights of Nature
Chapter 11 Dangerous Memories, Crucifixion, and Trauma’
The Passion Narrative
Conflict of the Last Week
A Tale of Two Birds
Roman Crucifixion Trauma
Do This in Memory of Me
The Cross does not Save but God Saves
Dangerous Memories of Resistance
Chapter 12 The Empty Table: Eco-Heartbreak ad Resistance
Mourning as the Regeneration of Empowered Companionship
Presence in Meaning
Ecological Heartbreak
The “Dark Night of the Earth”
Earth Mourning
Extinction Rebellion
Remembering Earth Martyrs
Epilogue: Creating Earth Protectors
Love of the Earth
Self-Emptying Compassion
Biomimicry: Creative Earthiness
Creating Earth Protectors and Eco-Samaritans