Table of Contents

Preface ix
Introduction: Crossing the Species Divide 1
The Animal God • Animism • Feral Religion • God of Beak and Feathers
1. Song of the Wood Thrush 20
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 50
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 Woodpecker
3. Worshipping the Green God 81
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” 113
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 141
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 173
Notes 177
Index 205

About the Author

Mark I. Wallace is Professor of Religion and Environmental Studies at Swarthmore College and core faculty for the U.S. State Department’s Institutes on Religious Pluralism at Temple University. His books include Green Christianity: Five Ways to a Sustainable Future and Finding God in the Singing River: Christianity, Spirit, Nature.

Reviews

Mark Wallace argues that 'Christian animism' is not a contradiction in terms. In doing so, he opens new lines of exploration and insight that have the potential to spark fundamental changes in the ways animists and Christians think of each other and themselves. An important contribution.---Norman Wirzba, Duke Divinity School

Seldom do I read a book with such verve and audacity as When God Was a Bird. Mark Wallace has given us a treasure, almost in the form of a parable, because if God is manifest in a bird--the Holy Spirit as dove--where else might God be found? And what might that radical, even creation-wide incarnation of God mean for us today? Highly recommended---Brian D. McLaren, author of The Great Spiritual Migration

This book brings forth a luminous animism for all to see, previously hidden in the scriptures and traditions of Christianity yet embedded in the body of the Earth itself. We are all indebted to Mark Wallace who has given us a masterpiece of eco-theology rendered in the most elegant and accessible poetic language. A gift for years to come!---Mary Evelyn Tucker, Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology

When God Was a Bird combines personal stories, nature writing, biblical interpretations, historical theology, and Continental philosophy. As such, a wide range of readers will find it interesting and accessible. It is also beautifully written. The book not only is a provocative treatment of the subject matter but also displays the unflagging generosity with which Wallace treats his students, his colleagues, his scholarly sources, and his readers. Wallace demonstrates not only how to treat the natural world but also how to treat one another.-- "Reading Religion"