Jacob J. Erickson

"[W]hat is needed is a new ecological spirituality of technology.  As ethicist Kate Ott argues, Christian theology needs to reimagine contemporary technological age with the affective, relational feel of the sacred earth in mind.  She writes, “Theological interconnectivity is a bit more abstract, yet no less real, and calls for an aesthetic relationship to creation can be disrupted by and also enhanced by digital technologies.” Various technologies behave similar to the digital in one’s discernment of the call of the sacred body of the planet.  What is needed in the midst of these disruptions and enhancements is an especially slow ecospirituality of technology.  What I mean by slow is not necessarily that we grind to a halt to technological production, though there may be processes we choose to halt.  Instead, a slowed down attentiveness to the textures and earthly collaborations technology might make attending to the imaginative honoring of creation more possible.[7]  In doing so, we might in fact begin to pay spiritual attention to the ethical flows of human creativity, the deep material time of technology, the tragic beauty of the earth, and we may also cultivate, then, an attentive moral pleasure in our technological making."

Drawing on the creativity of the nascent field of “queer ecology,” I argue for a kind of irreverent ecocriticism (Nicole Seymour) and a constructive theological posture of irreverence towards the twin metaphysical concepts of “God” and “Nature.” I do so by engaging the work of feminist philosopher of science, Karen Barad.  Barad’s writing is key for enhancing and collaborating the insights of queer theory, philosophies of science, and ecology.  Particularly, I stage an encounter between Barad’s concept of “posthumanist performativity” and the sixteenth-century reformer and monk Martin Luther’s peculiar understanding of the incarnation of Spirit.  What emerges is a queer ecotheology where Luther’s passion for incarnation, critically informed by Barad’s work, offers the potential for a queer incarnation of divinity where that divinity is caught up—even plays several roles—in the performative indeterminacy of the earth and of the cosmos. Creation becomes Divinity in drag.

My intent here is to explore the possibility of a negative zootheology as a corrective to hegemonic theological anthropologies of human exceptionalism, particularly in the wake of violent interpretations of that doctrine of the “imago Dei,” of human beings created in the image of God.  Along the way, I gesture towards a negative zootheological conception of the imago dei and offer the naturecultural image of “wilderness” (in a revised key) as a theopoetic course corrective.  I do so by exploring the imago dei as a wild immanence of the Spirit in created life, a deconstructive movement in the midst of creaturely relationality.  Such a Spirit-image is neither stagnate nor a fixed essentiality, but follows, migrates, moves, and unsettles the dust of our creatureliness in the divine wake of biodiversity.

I'm including in this bibliography monographs and edited volumes explicitly engaged with (predominantly) Christian religion and theology (with some nods to biblical studies and pastoral care) since about 2000 (with a couple important exceptions). It is not meant to be comprehensive, but rather takes in a limited vista. This list engages significant queer spaces, voices and queer theologies in such a way that opens to even more. Go for those lines of flight. Bibliographies should be queerly mysterious and performative too, no? Think of this list as an invitation to a conversation rather than the final word. Some voices will take queer liberationist lenses. Others more traditionalist. Also, consider: to be folded into these conversations are a number of important modern/contemporary queer theorists who impact on theology though wouldn't be considered theologians:

In the spring of 2020, when the pandemic hit our shores, we were told to stay home. We listened to public health advice and to experts debating the measures required to protect us. Scientific terminology crept into our daily conversations. But in addition to the ongoing uncertainty about the long-term impacts of the virus on our health, many of us were struggling with the uncertainty that now emerged in our everyday lives. What did the pandemic mean to us, beyond its medical impact, in a cultural and social sense? To consider this question, the Trinity Long Room Hub launched a Covid-19 blog series, in which contributors reflected on how we might cope with the loss of physical contact and human connection (Courtney Helen Grile, p.16) and how we could feel both 'urgency and fatigue' (Jacob Erikson, p.8). We heard from author Caitríona Lally on how our understanding of 'essential work' changes at a time like this (p.5), and Sam Slote talked us through Ulysses as a guide...

Drawing on the creativity of the nascent field of "queer ecology," I argue for a kind of irreverent ecocriticism (Nicole Seymour) and a constructive theological posture of irreverence towards the twin metaphysical concepts of "God" and "Nature." I do so by engaging the work of feminist philosopher of science, Karen Barad. Barad's writing is key for enhancing and collaborating the insights of queer theory, philosophies of science, and ecology. Particularly, I stage an encounter between Barad's concept of "posthumanist performativity" and the sixteenth-century reformer and monk Martin Luther's peculiar understanding of the incarnation of Spirit. What emerges is a queer ecotheology where Luther's passion for incarnation, critically informed by Barad's work, offers the potential for a queer incarnation of divinity where that divinity is caught up—even plays several roles—in the performative indeterminacy of the earth and of the...

This chapter pursues the queerly constructive task of rethinking the strange entanglements of divinity and matter in the wake of the ecological crises of the anthropocene. Seduced simultaneously by the “land art” (especially cairns) of Andy Goldsworthy, the “new materialisms” of Karen Barad and Jane Bennett, and the theophany traditions of Christian thought, this chapter constructs a concept of “theophanic materiality,” where divine energy is entangled in the performance of indeterminate material agencies. Goldsworthy’s artistic process of collaboration with and in place helps theology think anew the fluid possibilities of creativity. That is to say, placing land art in conversation with new materialisms and theologies of creation creates at least one conceptual possibility for the queer intimacy of divinity and earth. To construct such a theology, therefore, might help to effect a reimagined political response to the exploitative systems of human power that bring about our contempo...

We need to recover such a more minute attention and wakeful, expansive storytelling as well.  To construct stories and myths, policies and protests that call forth the creativity of the creeping things of the earth might be one of the most needed spiritual practices for our moment.  Insecto-theology, perhaps.

arlier this year, I sit in the passenger seat of a land rover with my partner driving down a dusty dirt road. We're traversing our way through Kenya's Maasai Mara National Reserve. We're camping, our little tent tilting in the Mara's wind, lit by the most brilliant of stars, and visited by elephants and zebra and buffalo and lions in the night. We've wrecked nearly three tires on the roads, but every breakdown is an occasion to take in the wildness of the place. When it comes to other human creatures, we are alone, hanging out occasionally with Kenyan Forest Service. There are false perceptions that ebola is in East Africa and that terrorism abounds, and the parks have emptied of the usual tourists and missionaries (tourists themselves, in the neocolonial sense). (http://religiondispatches.org/donate/)William and I pack up the tent for the night and we get up early, go for a morning drive, as is our usual custom (he grew up here). The morning breeze whipping by the windows is a kind of relief for the afternoon, which we know will be hot. We are driving down through a fairly empty area of the Mara, the road curves around a mound to the left ahead, when a gure—larger and larger, closer and closer—works its way towards us. We stop the car. The male lion, left side of his face scarred, walks down the road. He walks calmly three feet away from the rover, stops for a good few minutes, breathes deeply, and keeps walking. A chill runs down your spine at this encounter—there is nothing more awe-inspiring and terrifying than a lion's condence. (Some of you may recall the incredible photograph Atif Saeed recently took(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3031329/Let-prey-Fearless-photographer-captures-image-hungry-lion-moments-jungle-king-prepares-pounce.html).)

Perhaps in bringing our crises of climate down to earth, to the very intimacies, desires, and relations of our bodies, Pope Francis’ encyclical offers a way forward. Perhaps when we feel earth, affectively, lovingly in the everyday—in all of its vibrancy and tragic beauty—we’ll be better able to do the work we so desperately need to do.

Fellow creatures like these orphaned elephants—as they live their early lives across the messy and blurry lines of domestic and wild, human and nonhuman, dying and murdered, resilient and living—confront us with ecological histories known and unknown. They confront us with our living desires; they confront us with what we as humans, somehow complicit, have done to them. They sometimes confront us with ourselves in a kind of nonviolent resistance (at least in this case). They sometimes pose dangers in their wildness. They sometimes exhibit remarkable empathy for humans in their wildness. They complicate and indict our lives and the lives of those who have gone before us. And they cause us to ask what healing looks like structurally for our inter-species relationships.

A virtual panel hosted by the Trinity Long Room Hub Centre for the Arts and Humanities at Trinity College Dublin, featuring interdisciplinary perspectives on plagues and pandemics--especially in light of the new global context in the wake of COVID-19

Late at night, while I rework the stories of my lives—the stories I’ve been told, the stories I want to tell, the stories that make up the flesh of my body and the flesh of my imagination, the starstuff of my body and the starstuff of my imagination—there, every once and a while, in the dark glowing on the screen is Sagan, that smile, the hair, that tenor and tone of his voice, inviting, and I rework my fragile story of love again in the world, the shores of wonder feel just fine, and I want to wake up and wade out a little more into the possibilities of love, compassion, and justice—“to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.” However strange it looks to us in the near future.