Sallie McFague
Encyclopedia
Sallie McFague is an American feminist
Christian
theologian
, best known for her analysis of how metaphor
lies at the heart of how we may speak about God
. She has applied this approach in particular to ecological
issues, writing extensively on care for the earth as if it were God’s ‘body’.
McFague was born in May 1933 in Quincy, Massachusetts
, United States
. She gained a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature in 1955 from Smith College
, and a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity School
in 1959. She then went on to gain a Master of Arts degree at Yale University
in 1960 and was awarded her Ph.D. in 1964 - a revised version of her doctoral thesis being published in 1966 as Literature and the Christian Life. She received the Litt. D. from Smith College in 1977.
At Yale, she was deeply influenced by the dialectical theology
of Karl Barth
, but gained an important new perspective from her teacher H. Richard Niebuhr
, with his appreciation of liberalism's concern for experience, relativity, the symbolic imagination and the role of the affections. She is deeply influenced by Gordon Kaufman.
McFague remarks that: ‘we construct the worlds we inhabit, but also that we forget we have done so’. In this light, her work is rightly understood as about ‘helping to unmask simplistic, absolutist, notions of objectivity
’ in relation to the claims language makes about God. And such images are usually not neutral: in McFague’s understanding (and that of many feminist theologians), images of God are usually embedded within a particular socio-cultural and political system, such as the patriarchal one feminist theology critiques extensively - she asserts that ‘there are personal, relational models which have been suppressed in the Christian tradition because of their social and political consequences’. But the 'trick' of a successful metaphor, whether in science or theology, is that it is capable of generating a model, which in turn can give life to an overarching concept or world-view, which looks like a coherent explanation of everything – looks like ‘reality’ or ‘truth’. In McFague’s view, this is how the complex of ‘male’ images for God has long functioned in the Christian West – but it has done so in a way that is oppressive for all but (privileged) men. So, the notion of God as 'father', 'lord' or 'king' now inevitably and seemingly unavoidably conjures up oppressive associations of ‘ownership’, obedience and dependency, and in turn dictates, consciously or otherwise, a whole complex of attitudes, responses and behaviours on the part of theistic
believers.
and tradition. But neither is privileged as a source of conversation about God for McFague - both ‘fall under experience’, and are, in their different ways, themselves extended metaphors of interpretation or ‘sedimentations’ of a linguistic community’s interpreted experience’. The experience of Jesus
- his parable
s, table fellowship and healing ministry in particular - makes him a rich source of the ‘destabilising, inclusive and non-hierarchical’ metaphors Christians might profitably borrow from him as paradigmatic, a ‘foundational figure’. But he is not all they need. Experience of the world, and of God’s relationship to it, must add to that illustration and re-interpret it in terms and metaphors relevant to those believers, changing how they conceive of God and thus care for the earth. As McFague remarks: ‘we take what we need from Jesus using clues and hints…for an interpretation of salvation
in our time’.
motifs, her development of them goes far beyond what they are traditionally held to convey. She uses others, such as the notion of the world as God’s body, an image used by the early church but which ‘fell by the wayside’ (according to British theologian Daphne Hampson
), in her search for models ‘appropriate’ to our needs. She stresses that all models are partial, and are thought-experiments with shortcomings: many are needed, and need to function together. Her work on God as mother, for example, stresses that God is beyond male and female, recognising twin dangers: exaggeration of the maternal qualities of the mother so as to unhelpfully essentialise
God (and by transference, women as well) as caring and self-sacrificing; or juxtaposition of this image to that of father, unhelpfully emphasising the gender-based nature of both male and female images for God. Nonetheless, she sees in it other connotations, which she maintains are helpful in re-imaging God in terms of the mother metaphor.
In particular, God as mother is associated with the beginning of life, its nurture, and its fulfilment. These associations allow McFague to explore how creation of the cosmos as something ‘bodied forth’ from God preserves a much more intimate connection between creator and created than the traditional model whereby the world is created ex nihilo
and sustained by a God distanced and separate from the creation. However, this same ‘mother’ who ‘bodies forth’ the cosmos cares for it with a fierce justice, which demands that all life (not just humankind) has its share of the creator’s care and sustenance in a just, ecological economy where all her creatures flourish. For McFague, God is the one ‘who judges those who thwart the well-being and fulfilment of her body, our world’.
, on this view, is a matter of offence against other parts of the ‘body’ (other species
or parts of the creation) and in that sense only against God, while eschatology
is about a better bodily future (‘creation is the place of salvation, salvation is the direction of creation’), rather than a more disembodied spiritual one. In this metaphor, God is not a distant being but being-itself, a characterisation that has led some to suggest McFague’s theology is a form of monism
. She defends her views as not monist but panentheist
. The world seen as God’s body chimes strongly with a feminist and panentheist stress on God as the source of all relationship, while McFague’s understanding of sin (as essentially a failure of relationality, of letting other parts of the created order flourish free of our control) is also typically panentheist.
and neo-orthodoxy: for McFague, God is not transcendent
in any sense that we can know. This has led some critics to ask whether McFague’s theology leaves us with anything that may properly be called God at all. British theologian Daphne Hampson notes ‘the more I ponder this book [Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age], the less clear I am that it is theistic’.
A theology where God as creator does not stand ‘over against’ the creation tends to shift the focus away from God as personal. In which Jesus is a paradigm individual rather than the unique bearer of godlikeness. The role of the Spirit
is emphasised in her theology, though there is little sense in which this is uniquely the spirit of Jesus. God as Spirit is not primarily the initiator of creation, but ‘the empowering, continuing breath of life’.
It follows, too, from this metaphor of God as involved in the world that traditional notions of sin and evil are discarded. God is so much part of the process of the world and its agencies’ or entities’ ‘becoming’ that it is difficult to speak of ‘natural disasters’
as sin: they are simply the chance (as viewed by human observers) trial-and-error ways in which the world develops. As McFague sees it, ‘within this enlarged perspective, we can no longer consider evil only in terms of what benefits or hurts me or my species. In a world as large, as complex, and with as many individuals and species as our planet has, the good of some will inevitably occur at the expense of others’. And because the world is God’s body, evil occurs in and to God as well as to us and the rest of creation.
Correspondingly, the notion of the individual in need of God’s salvation is anachronistic in a world ‘from’ which that individual no longer need to be saved, but rather ‘in’ which he or she need to learn how to live interrelatedly and interdependently. Redemption is downplayed, though not excluded: McFague emphasises, characteristically, that it ‘should include all dimensions of creation, not just human beings’ and that it is a fulfilment of that creation, not a rescue from it. This of course brings about a radical shift in the significance of the cross and resurrection
of Jesus, whose resurrection is primarily if not exclusively a validation of continued human embodiment. There is, too, an insistence on realised, not final, eschatology. The earth becomes the place ‘where we put down our roots’, and we live with ‘the hope against hope’ that all will participate in the resurrection of all bodies. However, God is presently and permanently with humankind: we are ‘within the body of God whether we live or die’.
tradition, within which McFague herself situated her early work, claims her approach, while it seeks to develop images that resonate with ‘contemporary experiences of relatedness to God’, shows her to be ‘cutting herself loose from the moorings of Scripture and tradition’ and appealing only to experience and credibility as her guides. Human constructions determine what she will say about God – her work is mere anthropologising. The lack of a transcendent element to her work is criticised by David Fergusson
as ‘fixed on a post-Christian
trajectory’.
McFague defends her approach as simply being about a refocusing, a ‘turn of the eyes of theologians away from heaven and towards the earth’. She insists on a relevant theology, ‘a better portrait of Christian faith for our day’, and reminds us that her approach is not intended as a blueprint, but a sketch for a change in attitude. It remains to be seen whether the disclosive power of such a shift in emphasis will be tested, and can successfully influence Christians’ approach to caring for the earth and all its inhabitants.
Sallie McFague is the author numerous books and articles.
Speaking in Parables: A Study in Metaphor and Theology. Philadelphia: Fortress Press (1975)
Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language. Philadelphia: Fortress Press (1982)
Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age. Philadelphia: Fortress Press (1987)
The Body of God: An Ecological Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press (1993)
Super, Natural Christians: How we should love nature. London: SCM (1997)
Life Abundant: Rethinking Theology and Economy for a Planet in Peril (Searching for a New Framework). Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress (2000)
A New Climate for Theology: God, the World and Global Warming. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress (2008)
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
theologian
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
, best known for her analysis of how metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
lies at the heart of how we may speak about God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
. She has applied this approach in particular to ecological
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
issues, writing extensively on care for the earth as if it were God’s ‘body’.
McFague was born in May 1933 in Quincy, Massachusetts
Quincy, Massachusetts
Quincy is a city in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. Its nicknames are "City of Presidents", "City of Legends", and "Birthplace of the American Dream". As a major part of Metropolitan Boston, Quincy is a member of Boston's Inner Core Committee for the Metropolitan Area Planning Council...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. She gained a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature in 1955 from Smith College
Smith College
Smith College is a private, independent women's liberal arts college located in Northampton, Massachusetts. It is the largest member of the Seven Sisters...
, and a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity School
Yale Divinity School
Yale Divinity School is a professional school at Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S. preparing students for ordained or lay ministry, or for the academy...
in 1959. She then went on to gain a Master of Arts degree at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
in 1960 and was awarded her Ph.D. in 1964 - a revised version of her doctoral thesis being published in 1966 as Literature and the Christian Life. She received the Litt. D. from Smith College in 1977.
At Yale, she was deeply influenced by the dialectical theology
Neo-orthodoxy
Neo-orthodoxy, in Europe also known as theology of crisis and dialectical theology,is an approach to theology in Protestantism that was developed in the aftermath of the First World War...
of Karl Barth
Karl Barth
Karl Barth was a Swiss Reformed theologian whom critics hold to be among the most important Christian thinkers of the 20th century; Pope Pius XII described him as the most important theologian since Thomas Aquinas...
, but gained an important new perspective from her teacher H. Richard Niebuhr
H. Richard Niebuhr
Helmut Richard Niebuhr was one of the most important Christian theological-ethicists in 20th century America, most known for his 1951 book Christ and Culture and his posthumously published book The Responsible Self. The younger brother of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, Richard Niebuhr taught for...
, with his appreciation of liberalism's concern for experience, relativity, the symbolic imagination and the role of the affections. She is deeply influenced by Gordon Kaufman.
The language of theology
For McFague, the language of Christian theology is necessarily a construction, a human creation, a tool to delineate as best we can the nature and limits of our understanding of God. According to McFague, what we know of God is a construction, and must be understood as interpretation: God as father, as shepherd, as friend, but not literally any of these. Though such habits of language can be useful (since, in the Western world at least, people are more used to thinking of God in personal than in abstract terms), they become constricting when there is an insistence that God is always and only (or predominantly) like this.Metaphor as a way of speaking about God
McFague remarks, ‘theology is mostly fiction’, but a multiplicity of images, or metaphors, can and should enhance and enrich our models of God. Most importantly, new metaphors can help give substance to new ways of conceiving God appropriately ‘for our time’, and more adequate models for the ethically urgent tasks humankind faces, principally the task of caring for an ecologically fragile planet.McFague remarks that: ‘we construct the worlds we inhabit, but also that we forget we have done so’. In this light, her work is rightly understood as about ‘helping to unmask simplistic, absolutist, notions of objectivity
Objectivity (science)
Objectivity in science is a value that informs how science is practiced and how scientific truths are created. It is the idea that scientists, in attempting to uncover truths about the natural world, must aspire to eliminate personal biases, a priori commitments, emotional involvement, etc...
’ in relation to the claims language makes about God. And such images are usually not neutral: in McFague’s understanding (and that of many feminist theologians), images of God are usually embedded within a particular socio-cultural and political system, such as the patriarchal one feminist theology critiques extensively - she asserts that ‘there are personal, relational models which have been suppressed in the Christian tradition because of their social and political consequences’. But the 'trick' of a successful metaphor, whether in science or theology, is that it is capable of generating a model, which in turn can give life to an overarching concept or world-view, which looks like a coherent explanation of everything – looks like ‘reality’ or ‘truth’. In McFague’s view, this is how the complex of ‘male’ images for God has long functioned in the Christian West – but it has done so in a way that is oppressive for all but (privileged) men. So, the notion of God as 'father', 'lord' or 'king' now inevitably and seemingly unavoidably conjures up oppressive associations of ‘ownership’, obedience and dependency, and in turn dictates, consciously or otherwise, a whole complex of attitudes, responses and behaviours on the part of theistic
Theism
Theism, in the broadest sense, is the belief that at least one deity exists.In a more specific sense, theism refers to a doctrine concerning the nature of a monotheistic God and God's relationship to the universe....
believers.
McFague’s sources of new metaphors and models
This understanding of the shifting nature of language in relation to God underpins McFague’s handling of the 'building blocks' that have long been considered foundational to accounts of belief, primarily ScriptureReligious text
Religious texts, also known as scripture, scriptures, holy writ, or holy books, are the texts which various religious traditions consider to be sacred, or of central importance to their religious tradition...
and tradition. But neither is privileged as a source of conversation about God for McFague - both ‘fall under experience’, and are, in their different ways, themselves extended metaphors of interpretation or ‘sedimentations’ of a linguistic community’s interpreted experience’. The experience of Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
- his parable
Parable
A parable is a succinct story, in prose or verse, which illustrates one or more instructive principles, or lessons, or a normative principle. It differs from a fable in that fables use animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as characters, while parables generally feature human...
s, table fellowship and healing ministry in particular - makes him a rich source of the ‘destabilising, inclusive and non-hierarchical’ metaphors Christians might profitably borrow from him as paradigmatic, a ‘foundational figure’. But he is not all they need. Experience of the world, and of God’s relationship to it, must add to that illustration and re-interpret it in terms and metaphors relevant to those believers, changing how they conceive of God and thus care for the earth. As McFague remarks: ‘we take what we need from Jesus using clues and hints…for an interpretation of salvation
Salvation
Within religion salvation is the phenomenon of being saved from the undesirable condition of bondage or suffering experienced by the psyche or soul that has arisen as a result of unskillful or immoral actions generically referred to as sins. Salvation may also be called "deliverance" or...
in our time’.
God as mother
Though McFague does use biblicalBible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
motifs, her development of them goes far beyond what they are traditionally held to convey. She uses others, such as the notion of the world as God’s body, an image used by the early church but which ‘fell by the wayside’ (according to British theologian Daphne Hampson
Daphne Hampson
Margaret Daphne Hampson is a British theologian. Educated at Oxford and at Harvard, she held a personal Chair in 'Post-Christian Thought' at the University of St Andrews. Hampson's distinctive theological position has both gained her notoriety and been widely influential...
), in her search for models ‘appropriate’ to our needs. She stresses that all models are partial, and are thought-experiments with shortcomings: many are needed, and need to function together. Her work on God as mother, for example, stresses that God is beyond male and female, recognising twin dangers: exaggeration of the maternal qualities of the mother so as to unhelpfully essentialise
Essentialism
In philosophy, essentialism is the view that, for any specific kind of entity, there is a set of characteristics or properties all of which any entity of that kind must possess. Therefore all things can be precisely defined or described...
God (and by transference, women as well) as caring and self-sacrificing; or juxtaposition of this image to that of father, unhelpfully emphasising the gender-based nature of both male and female images for God. Nonetheless, she sees in it other connotations, which she maintains are helpful in re-imaging God in terms of the mother metaphor.
In particular, God as mother is associated with the beginning of life, its nurture, and its fulfilment. These associations allow McFague to explore how creation of the cosmos as something ‘bodied forth’ from God preserves a much more intimate connection between creator and created than the traditional model whereby the world is created ex nihilo
Ex nihilo
Ex nihilo is a Latin phrase meaning "out of nothing". It often appears in conjunction with the concept of creation, as in creatio ex nihilo, meaning "creation out of nothing"—chiefly in philosophical or theological contexts, but also occurs in other fields.In theology, the common phrase creatio ex...
and sustained by a God distanced and separate from the creation. However, this same ‘mother’ who ‘bodies forth’ the cosmos cares for it with a fierce justice, which demands that all life (not just humankind) has its share of the creator’s care and sustenance in a just, ecological economy where all her creatures flourish. For McFague, God is the one ‘who judges those who thwart the well-being and fulfilment of her body, our world’.
Care for creation – the world as God’s body
From this metaphor develops another: the metaphor of the world (or cosmos) as God’s body. McFague elaborates this metaphor at length in The Body of God: An Ecological Theology. The purpose of using it is to ‘cause us to see differently’, to ‘think and act as if bodies matter’, and to ‘change what we value’. If we imagine the cosmos as God’s body, then ‘we never meet God unembodied’. This is to take God in that cosmos seriously, for ‘creation is God’s self-expression’. Equally we must take seriously our own embodiment (and that of other bodies): all that is has a common beginning and history (as McFague puts it ‘we are all made of the ashes of dead stars’), and so salvation is about salvation of all earthly bodies (not just human ones) and first and foremost about living better on the earth, not in the hereafter. Elaborating further, McFague argues that sinSin
In religion, sin is the violation or deviation of an eternal divine law or standard. The term sin may also refer to the state of having committed such a violation. Christians believe the moral code of conduct is decreed by God In religion, sin (also called peccancy) is the violation or deviation...
, on this view, is a matter of offence against other parts of the ‘body’ (other species
Species
In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...
or parts of the creation) and in that sense only against God, while eschatology
Eschatology
Eschatology is a part of theology, philosophy, and futurology concerned with what are believed to be the final events in history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity, commonly referred to as the end of the world or the World to Come...
is about a better bodily future (‘creation is the place of salvation, salvation is the direction of creation’), rather than a more disembodied spiritual one. In this metaphor, God is not a distant being but being-itself, a characterisation that has led some to suggest McFague’s theology is a form of monism
Monism
Monism is any philosophical view which holds that there is unity in a given field of inquiry. Accordingly, some philosophers may hold that the universe is one rather than dualistic or pluralistic...
. She defends her views as not monist but panentheist
Panentheism
Panentheism is a belief system which posits that God exists, interpenetrates every part of nature and timelessly extends beyond it...
. The world seen as God’s body chimes strongly with a feminist and panentheist stress on God as the source of all relationship, while McFague’s understanding of sin (as essentially a failure of relationality, of letting other parts of the created order flourish free of our control) is also typically panentheist.
Analysis – the nature and activity of God in McFague’s thought
McFague’s panentheistic theology stresses God as highly involved in the world (though distinct from it), and concerned (as seen in the life of the paradigmatic Jesus, for example) to see all of it brought to full enjoyment of the richness of life as originally intended in creation. This is not the omnipotent, omniscient and immutable God of classical theismClassical theism
Classical theism refers to the a form of Theism in distinction to modern ideas about God such as Theistic Personalism, Open Theism and Process Theism. Classical Theism began with the works of the Greek philosophers, especially Platonists and Neoplatonists and was developed into Christian Theology...
and neo-orthodoxy: for McFague, God is not transcendent
Transcendence (religion)
In religion transcendence refers to the aspect of God's nature which is wholly independent of the physical universe. This is contrasted with immanence where God is fully present in the physical world and thus accessible to creatures in various ways...
in any sense that we can know. This has led some critics to ask whether McFague’s theology leaves us with anything that may properly be called God at all. British theologian Daphne Hampson notes ‘the more I ponder this book [Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age], the less clear I am that it is theistic’.
A theology where God as creator does not stand ‘over against’ the creation tends to shift the focus away from God as personal. In which Jesus is a paradigm individual rather than the unique bearer of godlikeness. The role of the Spirit
Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit is a term introduced in English translations of the Hebrew Bible, but understood differently in the main Abrahamic religions.While the general concept of a "Spirit" that permeates the cosmos has been used in various religions Holy Spirit is a term introduced in English translations of...
is emphasised in her theology, though there is little sense in which this is uniquely the spirit of Jesus. God as Spirit is not primarily the initiator of creation, but ‘the empowering, continuing breath of life’.
It follows, too, from this metaphor of God as involved in the world that traditional notions of sin and evil are discarded. God is so much part of the process of the world and its agencies’ or entities’ ‘becoming’ that it is difficult to speak of ‘natural disasters’
Natural disaster
A natural disaster is the effect of a natural hazard . It leads to financial, environmental or human losses...
as sin: they are simply the chance (as viewed by human observers) trial-and-error ways in which the world develops. As McFague sees it, ‘within this enlarged perspective, we can no longer consider evil only in terms of what benefits or hurts me or my species. In a world as large, as complex, and with as many individuals and species as our planet has, the good of some will inevitably occur at the expense of others’. And because the world is God’s body, evil occurs in and to God as well as to us and the rest of creation.
Correspondingly, the notion of the individual in need of God’s salvation is anachronistic in a world ‘from’ which that individual no longer need to be saved, but rather ‘in’ which he or she need to learn how to live interrelatedly and interdependently. Redemption is downplayed, though not excluded: McFague emphasises, characteristically, that it ‘should include all dimensions of creation, not just human beings’ and that it is a fulfilment of that creation, not a rescue from it. This of course brings about a radical shift in the significance of the cross and resurrection
Resurrection
Resurrection refers to the literal coming back to life of the biologically dead. It is used both with respect to particular individuals or the belief in a General Resurrection of the dead at the end of the world. The General Resurrection is featured prominently in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim...
of Jesus, whose resurrection is primarily if not exclusively a validation of continued human embodiment. There is, too, an insistence on realised, not final, eschatology. The earth becomes the place ‘where we put down our roots’, and we live with ‘the hope against hope’ that all will participate in the resurrection of all bodies. However, God is presently and permanently with humankind: we are ‘within the body of God whether we live or die’.
Criticism
Trevor Hart, a theologian from the BarthianKarl Barth
Karl Barth was a Swiss Reformed theologian whom critics hold to be among the most important Christian thinkers of the 20th century; Pope Pius XII described him as the most important theologian since Thomas Aquinas...
tradition, within which McFague herself situated her early work, claims her approach, while it seeks to develop images that resonate with ‘contemporary experiences of relatedness to God’, shows her to be ‘cutting herself loose from the moorings of Scripture and tradition’ and appealing only to experience and credibility as her guides. Human constructions determine what she will say about God – her work is mere anthropologising. The lack of a transcendent element to her work is criticised by David Fergusson
David Fergusson
David A. S. Fergusson is a Scottish theologian. He is Professor of Divinity at New College in the University of Edinburgh. He is a minister of the Church of Scotland.He was born in Glasgow....
as ‘fixed on a post-Christian
Postchristianity
Postchristianity is the decline of Christianity, particularly in Europe and Australia, in the 20th century, considered in terms of postmodernism...
trajectory’.
McFague defends her approach as simply being about a refocusing, a ‘turn of the eyes of theologians away from heaven and towards the earth’. She insists on a relevant theology, ‘a better portrait of Christian faith for our day’, and reminds us that her approach is not intended as a blueprint, but a sketch for a change in attitude. It remains to be seen whether the disclosive power of such a shift in emphasis will be tested, and can successfully influence Christians’ approach to caring for the earth and all its inhabitants.
Sallie McFague is the author numerous books and articles.
Select bibliography
Literature and the Christian Life. Yale: Yale University Press (1966)Speaking in Parables: A Study in Metaphor and Theology. Philadelphia: Fortress Press (1975)
Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language. Philadelphia: Fortress Press (1982)
Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age. Philadelphia: Fortress Press (1987)
The Body of God: An Ecological Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press (1993)
Super, Natural Christians: How we should love nature. London: SCM (1997)
Life Abundant: Rethinking Theology and Economy for a Planet in Peril (Searching for a New Framework). Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress (2000)
A New Climate for Theology: God, the World and Global Warming. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress (2008)