Abstract
A microscopic virus has upended life for all of us everywhere, creating not just a health crisis, but economic and social crises that are highlighting global disparities and calling into question systems and ways of life that we take for granted. Could it be that this virus, also part of creation, is holding up a mirror to us and calling us to a new humility, and a radical transformation of our ways? Is there a larger perspective to God’s willingness to suffer with and for creation that calls into question our identification with God as a supreme being and the hierarchical systems that we have constructed based on that identification that has privileged a very few to dictate the fate of so many and have such a negative impact on creation? Can this virus help us to understand God and our place in creation differently? This chapter explores how the COVID-19 pandemic could help us reframe our ‘masters of the universe’ thinking and prepare us for a new era where living in harmony with creation will be ever more necessary.
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Notes
- 1.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/world/coronavirus-domestic-violence.html accessed 9/24/2020.
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Clyde W. Yancy, “COVID-19 and African Americans,” Journal of American Medical Association, 323.19 (2020): 1891-1892, https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2764789 accessed 8/20/2020.
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https://www.wave3.com/2020/04/03/behind-forecast-covid-s-environmental-impact/ accessed 8/20/2020.
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https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/08/22/how-viruses-shape-the-world accessed 8/28/2020. The accompanying essay (https://www.economist.com/essay/2020/08/20/viruses-have-big-impacts-on-ecology-and-evolution-as-well-as-human-health) gives an even more fascinating insight into the world of viruses and how all of creation both depends on them and is shaped by them.
- 10.
There are different accounts and interpretations of this apocryphal story told of King Canute (King of England, 1016–1035) drawing on the story told in the twelfth century by Henry of Huntingdon in ‘The Chronicle.’ All of them speak to the vanity and limits of human power.
- 11.
Ed. David Noel Freedman, Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (Grand Rapids and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000), 511–513.
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Marcelo Gleiser, The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning (New York: Basic Books, 2014).
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David Chidester, Christianity: A Global History (London: The Penguin Press, 2000), 195–214.
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Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah, Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2019), 21.
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COVID-19 Dashboard, Johns Hopkins University, https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 accessed 9/24/2020.
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Charles and Rah, Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery, 69–81.
- 17.
Most succinctly spelled out in the following Study Paper from the WCC Commission on World Mission and Evangelism on ‘Converting Discipleship: Dissidence and Metanoia’: ‘Western colonial missionaries … used imperial expansion as a means to Christian expansion and in proclaiming Christ, rather asserted the “salvific”, “civilizing” power of Whiteness and a White Christ. Mission is now understood to be from everywhere to everywhere.… But, many missionaries from the South are still in the ‘colonial’ mode perpetuating certain forms and norms of Christianity. The old ways of offering financial inducement, privilege in leadership, “love” dependent on conversion, promise of future blessing and the benefits of a superior faith and civilization are still the core evangelism tactics of these “new” missionaries. In this way the discipleship paradigm of White Supremacy has morphed into “Christian Supremacy”’ (https://www.oikoumene.org/sites/default/files/2020-11/STUDY%20PAPER%20on%20Transforming%20Discipleship_0.pdf).
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Diarmuid O’Murchu, Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics (New York: The Crossroads Publishing Company, 2004).
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O’Murchu, Quantum Theology.
- 20.
Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology Volume 1 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951), 155–157.
- 21.
John B Cobb, Jr. and David Ray Griffin, Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition (Louisville and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 1976).
- 22.
Thomas Berry, The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (New York: Bell Tower, 1999), 3.
- 23.
Berry, The Great Work, 3.
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Woods, P. (2023). Anthropocentric and White Supremacist Notions of God. In: Kaunda, C.J. (eds) World Christianity and Covid-19. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12570-6_9
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