Insurgency of the Spirit

Robert E. Shore-Goss is a retired UCC clergy/theologian. He serves on the denominational Environmental Justice Council of the United Church of Christ.

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.

• Introduction: Towards Animist Spiritual Ecology Chapter 1 Toward a Retrieval of the Earth-loving Jesus Chapter 2: Contemporary Shamans and Animist SpiritualitiesChapter 3 Jesus’ Vision QuestChapter 4 God’s Kin-dom as EcologicalChapter 5 God’s Wilderness Seeds Animist RevolutionChapter 6 Radical Inclusiveness and Abundant GivingChapter 7 God’s Dream of RestorationChapter 8 Jesus’ Biomimicry of Creation WisdomChapter 9 Wild Grace Challenges Imperial DystopiaChapter 10 Standing Rock, Scarcity and Earth Economy, and the Rights of NatureChapter 11 Dangerous Memories, Crucifixion, and Trauma’Chapter 12 The Empty Table: Eco-Heartbreak ad ResistanceEpilogue: Creating Earth ProtectorsBibliographyAbout the Author