"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
In a time of rapid climate change and species extinction, what role have the world's religions played in ameliorating-or causing-the crisis we now face? One can point to Christianity's otherworldly theologies, which privilege our spiritual aspirations over our natural origins, as bearing a disproportionate burden for creating humankind's exploitative attitudes toward nature.
And yet, buried deep within the Christian tradition are startling portrayals of God as the beaked and feathered Holy Spirit-the "animal God" of historic Christian witness. Through biblical readings, historical theology, continental philosophy, and personal stories of sacred nature, this book recovers the Christian God as a creaturely, avian being promiscuously incarnated within all things.
This beautifully and accessibly written book shows that "Christian animism" is not a contradiction in terms, but Christianity's natural habitat. Challenging traditional Christianity's self-definition as an otherworldly religion, Wallace paves the way for a new Earth-loving spirituality grounded in the ancient image of an animal God who signals the presence of spirit in everything, human and more-than-human alike.
Mark I. Wallace is Professor of Religion and Environmental Studies at Swarthmore College and the author, most recently, of Green Christianity: Five Ways to a Sustainable Future.

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