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Christian Animism, by Shawn Sanford Beck
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Come follow the Cosmic Christ on the path of the green priesthood, deep into the heart of a living web of Divine Creation. "Christian animism", for many, can suggest nothing more than crude syncretism, or a blasphemous oxymoron. In this book the author challenges that view, from his own experiences and reflections, and those of many who find themselves on the fringes of church and society. He also searches out the fertile places of his own Christian tradition, seeking to hear a Word of healing for our Earth, a Word of grace for the trees and the animals, and a Word of invitation back to the garden of Creation, our once and future home.
- Sales Rank: #1944771 in Books
- Published on: 2015-05-29
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.49" h x .22" w x 5.58" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 60 pages
About the Author
The Rev. Shawn Sanford Beck is a priest, and trainer-of-priests, in the Anglican Church of Canada. He lives with his family on an off-the-grid homestead in Saskatchewan, and is the founder of the Ecumenical Companions of Sophia.
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
This book is a 'must read'!
By Noel Moules
It was such a joy reading Shawn Sanford Beck’s short (only 50 pages), but very important, introduction to this exciting subject of ‘Christian Animism’. He admits that some will consider such an idea to be a crude syncretism or even a blasphemous oxymoron, but nevertheless he well knows many people are coming to discover ‘Christian Animism’ not only as a vital and refreshing spiritual perspective, but also an essential understanding of the Christian faith; if the Christian community is really going to engage with a truly life-giving, healing and sustainable relationship with the natural world. However, this book is not only for those with a Christian identity, but also for all those with an earth-focused spiritual understanding, whatever their faith, belief or none.
Shaw Beck’s book is very engaging and readable. It is personal, passionate, yet at the same time wise and considered. These are the opening pages of a spiritual journey that he is inviting us to join him on. He begins with a quote from JRR Tolkien’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ and concludes with one from CS Lewis’ final Narnia story, ‘The Last Battle’. However, in between these two quotes is an intriguing and engaging book. He recognises that for people in modern society, the implications for connecting with nature in the way that Christian Animism invites us to can be a little scary, but what he is calling us to is in fact nothing less than many other cultures have embraced for millennia; and is in no way incompatible for someone who is a convinced and convicted believer in the Way of Christ Jesus.
Shawn Beck first of all sets out clearly how he is using the phrase ‘Christian Animism’, which is very helpful. He then notes the potential areas of opposition, and also examines the implications of setting out on this path. Having laid the foundations for his conversation, Beck takes us through a very helpful reflection on the five main influences that have shaped and nurtured his journey towards, and now within, Christian Animism; these are Neo-Paganism, Engaged Buddhism, Native American (Cree) worldview, the inspiring apocalyptic visions of 1 Enoch, and Celtic Christianity. There was such richness in what each brought to his understanding. They further helped to deepen the sense of journeying with the author over the years of coming to this understanding and practice.
The final section of this inspiring little book is entitled ‘Spirits of the Land’, with a call to cultivate a relationship with the spirits of nature, which he recognises will be a new concept and practice for many. Quoting Walter Wink he identifies them as simultaneously both the outer and inner expressions of nature. This understanding brings the need for a new worldview. Reviewing several options he concludes that Christian Animism must have an ‘integral’ one, which is wholistic and infused throughout by the Spirit. From here he moves on to reflect on the practice of communion and communication with other life forms spirit-to-spirit.
While this may be a short book, my brief review, however, does not even begin to do justice to Shawn Beck’s careful reflections and gentle wisdom. To my knowledge this is the first book to directly address ‘Christian Animism’ as its prime focus, and therefore to have it as its title. If you are new to the idea then there is simply no better place to start. If you have been thinking around the subject for some time, then this is certainly a ‘must read’.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Towards a deeper ecological holiness
By Ric Hudgens
Christian AnimismShawn Beck’s short, suggestive essay (60 pages) on “Christian animism” is a provocative delight. I want to highlight some of his most salient points and indicate some further directions for those who want to go further.
Beck writes:“To say that a Christian can, and should, cultivate a relationship with the spirits of nature, the spirits of the land, is something new. What was natural and somewhat unconscious up until the end of the medieval period now requires consciousness and intentionality.”
But can’t we do that without calling it “Christian animism”? Beck argues that we need not fear animism, nor should we see the conjunction of Christian and animism as something so foreign or idiosyncratic. Christian animism according to Beck is “what happens when a committed Christian engages the world and each creature as alive, sentient, and related, rather than soul-less and ontologically inferior.”
Christian Animism seems so foreign and frankly eccentric because we have all been indoctrinated into a “cult of reductionism” that reduces the world’s wondrous multiplicity to a series of justs: just a tree, just a rock, just the earth. In my own initial writing about Christian Animism I have noted how the voices of creation have been bound and gagged by modernity so that only the human voice can be heard.
Beck is defining Christian Animism through the lens of contemporary systems theory and an integral worldview. His type of contemporary Animism entails a broadening the concept of person to include the rest of the created world: “animism can be reclaimed as a concept which sees the natural world as sentient, personable, and very much alive.”
I agree with Beck that even historically earth-friendly forms of Christianity (such as the Franciscans and Rhinelander mystics) still saw creation as a means to an end. I would add that American Transcendentalism was also prone to this with Emerson turning nature into symbol (not so Thoreau by the way).
Beck also draws upon the contemporary fiction of C S Lewis and J R R Tolkien, the Christian spirituality of Celtic Christianity; and the political ontology (my term) of Walter Wink to demonstrate that forms of Christian Animism are already vitally present in Christianity.
Perhaps Christian Animism is not an objectionable syncretism, but the reclaiming of the entire scope of divine presence recognizing as Beck says that “there is ultimately more to our faith than God and the human soul.” I would call Christian Animism a species of radical incarnationalism.
The implications of Animism (hinted at but not fully developed in the context of an essay) include contributions to ecology, interfaith dialogue, and personal spirituality.
I welcome Beck’s very personal story and how especially the work of Christian Walter Wink and Neo-Pagan Starhawk informed his journey in Christian Animism. What benefit I gain from bringing Wink and Starhawk into the discussion is the recognition that a newly articulated Christian Animism would be political to the core: “A truly green spirituality will engage us in the work of Earth-protection and Earth-healing.” I would add that it will also push us (esp in the Americas) to more intentional alliances with contemporary indigenous communities and their struggles.
Christians have been major contributors to this desacralizing of the world and have shored up an oppressive anthropocentrism in the name of dominion or stewardship - as Beck notes merely the hard core and soft core versions of the same dynamic. But Beck does not foresee any solid theological objections to Christian animism. Christian hostility and the conflicted relations between the two are partly the result of an avoidable confusion and confluence of animism with pantheism and polytheism.
Beck confesses his lifelong struggle to reconcile his “inner pagan” with his faith in Jesus; and it is simply the case that many in the West are still dispositional pagans despite years of reductionist, secular education. In marking his own trail Beck has found help from a number of different sources including Neo-Paganism, Engaged Buddhism, and Native American spirituality. Within the broader Christian tradition he draws upon some of the animistic elements in the apocryphal Enochian Apocalypticism asserting that within the “Enochian lore reveals a universe in which all created beings have a spiritual aspect”. Beck says that the Book of Psalms is “thoroughly animistic” (which theologian Mark Wallace has provided some support for in his own Christian Animist work).
From the Cree worldview Beck has learned that “newcomers (non-Indigenous people) would not truly find our place here in Turtle Island until we learned to engage with the spirits of the land.” This affirms the assertion of Calvin Luther Martin that North America truly remains undiscovered until this happens.
I welcome Beck’s observation that the Native American Medicine Wheel represents a visual structure for expressing diversity within unity and the emphasis upon all beings having a place in the circle of life. I would add that the Apostle Paul writing for an indigenous culture might have employed the Medicine Wheel rather than the human body in 1 Cor 12. (Also, look at how animistic psychologist Bill Plotkin has utilized the Medicine Wheel / Four Directions structure in his book most recent book Wild Mind). However, there are issues of cultural appropriation that emerging Christian Animists will have to seriously consider as we engage with indigenous traditions and symbols. We have to both discern the animist substructure of all human religious belief (our “original religion” as Charles Eisenstein has written) from the superstructure built upon those beliefs.
The practice of Christian Animism requires a profound shift in consciousness. Perhaps it is only in striving to reawaken our primal connections with the more-than-human world will we become most fully aware of how alienated we are from the natural world. Celtic Christianity taught us that “The ability of the saints to cultivate such interesting relationships with animals was seen to be a sign of their growing sanctity.” Can Christian Animism move the church towards a new vision in which a deeper ecology becomes integral to a broader holiness?
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Just the reenchantment I've been searching for
By Gabriel Harrell
Shawn Sanford Beck provides language and a the beginninhs of a spiritual framework for ways of engaging with the world that open up possibilities of reenchantment in a religion that has been complicit in confining the world to crass materialism. What does it mean to see trees, gardens, rivers, thunderstorms as our kith and kin in Christ? How do we learn to worship alongside them? How do we minister to, and open ourselves to receive the ministry of, all that surrounds us?
This book is not an academic tome. It is short, conversational, and easy to read without having been through seminary, and in that way is very pastoral. It's brevity limits it's scope, and it opens up the reader to more questions than answers, but I think that was the point. It doesn't cover much in the ways of techniques for relating to the spirits of the land, but it cracks open a space to start relating to everything around us in new ways.
The author does a good job of covering non-Christian nature and animist spiritualities in a respectful way, allowing them to inform Christian belief and practice in a way that seems to me to be non-appropriative.
This book has made me hungry for more, and will be invaluable to my own spiritual journey as I work through Lupa's "Nature Spirituality From The Ground Up" and her other works on totems.
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