The Insurgency of the Spirit: Jesus's Liberation Animist Spirituality, Empire, and Creating Christian Protectors

The Insurgency of the Spirit taps mutli-disciplinary methodologies of post-colonial biblical scholarship and anthropology, liberation theologies, indigenous studies, grief/trauma research, and nature-meditation writings to shape a constructive retrieval of the animist Jesus. The vision that emerges is one that sets forward an Earth-loving Jesus who challenges r Christians in particular to mobilize against the destructive relationship that exists between imperial religion and political systems. The author offers a constructive understanding of the Spirit and animist spirituality, which ground the portrait of the Earth-loving Jesus. Jesus’ animist experiences provide the foundation for God’s kin-dom where the non-violent inherit the land as divine gift and live a wilderness gift economy of mutual reciprocity. Jesus’ animist liberation spirituality promoted resistance against empire, and he suffered a horrific death that traumatized his followers. Jesus’ female followers in their grieving rites empowered a resilient dangerous memory to empower resistance to empire. They modeled the transition from grief to empowered resistance. This provides crucial contemporary spiritual and ethical resources for facing environmental grief to generate resilience for direct action and restoration of the environment. Recovery of the Earth-loving Jesus uncovers for Christians a path to undoing imperial Christianity’s escapist spirituality that allows harmful exploitation of the planet and ecocide.