In March 2005, the United Nations released its Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Among the findings: 2/3 of the world’s ecosystems are seriously degraded; 90 percent of the world’s fish stocks are depleted; and climate change is not just something that might happen, it is already upon us. Many people, including many Christians, will hear this and delude themselves into thinking that technology can and will save the day. A wiser and more helpful response, especially for Christans, is to find a way to step back into the flow of nature from which we have extricated ourselves. In Darwin, Divinity, and the Dance of the Cosmos, Bruce Sanguin shows us the way. Sanguin draws on the latest scientific understandings of the nature of the universe and weaves them together with biblical meta-narratives and frequently overlooked strands of the Judeo-Christian tradition to create an ecological and truly evolutionary Christian theology – a feat few theologians have even attempted. The importance of this accomplishment can hardly be overstated. As Sanguin writes, “It’s time for the Christian church to get with the cosmological program. We need new wineskins for the new wine the Holy One is pouring out in the 21st century. Twenty-first-century science has provided us with new a new story of creation that needs to inform our biblical stories of creation. We now know, for instance, that we live in an evolving or evolutionary universe. Evolution is the way that the Holy creates in space and in time, in every sphere: material, biological, social, cultural, psychological, and spiritual. This new cosmology simply cannot be contained by old models and images of God, or by old ways of being the church.” As his starting point, Sanguin encourages readers to rediscover awe – an attitude very much absent from the modern mindset. “We don’t see what is before us,” he writes, “and as a result, we are plundering our planet at an unprecedented rate.” “If we could see what is before our eyes, day in and day out, the sacred radiance of creation would drop us to our knees and render us speechless.” Central to this recovery of awe is the new Great Story, the 14-billion-year history of the cosmos. Into this Great Story, first told by Thomas Berry and by mathematical physicist and cosmologist Brian Swimme, Sanguin reintroduces the presence God. Heady as all this sounds, it has very practical implications for the mission of the church. Sanguin writes: “In the first centuries after Jesus’ death, his disciples looked around at their world and found that what was needed by way of response to the crisis of their age was hospitals for the sick and food for the poor. This is what compassion required of them. Mission is determined by the context in which the church finds itself in each new age. I am suggesting that, today, there is nothing more critical than a compassionate response to the plight of our planet. The church must be at the forefront of shifting human consciousness away from an ethic of domination for economic gain and toward a spirituality of awe. This book – and more importantly the work of integration it suggests – represents a fundamental challenge to our theological and liturgical models. But for those who are ready and willing to embark on an exciting theological journey of discovery, it also represents a rich opportunity to become reacquainted with the Spirit of God moving in and through the very dynamics of an unfolding universe.

Bruce Sanguin's profile page

Bruce Sanguin is a minister of Canadian Memorial Church & Centre for Peace in Vancouver, BC. He has been a United Church minister for eighteen years. Bruce is the author of If Darwin Prayed, The Advance of Love, and Darwin, Divinity, and the Dance of the Cosmos as well as various other titles.

In Darwin, Divinity and the Dance of the Cosmos, Bruce Sanguin brings together aspects of his personal experiences and intellectual learning to argue for the necessity of an ecological updating of Christian faith and practice. The current phase of Sanguin’s personal journey towards the embrace of green spirituality began in Milton, Ontario, when he was able to appreciate a well-crafted omelette with a sense of wondrous awe. Later, while making a spiritual retreat, reading Brian Swimme’s The Universe is a Green Dragon helped Sanguin to solidify connections amongst such awe, his seminary training and the new cosmology. Despite its title, Darwin, Divinity and the Dance of the Cosmos is much more influenced by cosmological spirituality inspired by the likes of Swimme, Thomas Berry and Matthew Fox than by Darwinian evolutionary theory. As such, while evolutionary consciousness is cited as an aspect of his programming for ecological updating, it is really cosmological consciousness that principally informs the monograph’s suggestions for a greener Christianity. To be sure, Sanguin’s suggestions are grounded in ecological concepts and in the Earth community. However, they also strive to foster an eco-spirituality based upon an understanding of humanity’s location within an enchanted universe that is itself in relationship as the ‘‘kin-dom’’ (rather than the kingdom) of God.

To support this relational model for updating Christianity, Sanguin brings into play what would be, save for his excellent prose, a bewildering number of authors and concepts. For instance, he builds a large portion of his case upon the concept of Sophia (Wisdom), which enters Judaism and, later, Christianity, through cross-cultural contact. The Wisdom tradition applied to the contemporary ecological crisis is used to imply the foolishness of biocide, which he understands as the ‘‘killing’’ of Earth and biological systems. He also references everything from gravity’s correlation with alluring love to the example of scuba divers freeing a humpback whale from crab nets being seen as acting as God’s children. Some of the connections Sanguin makes in this monograph are a bit tenuous, especially when, despite avowed support for a postmodern ethic of acceptance, he applies theories in ways their originators never intended, and shades peoples’ experiences outside of categories to which they would themselves subscribe. Additionally, perhaps as part and parcel of the price paid for crafting an accessible book, Darwin, Divinity and the Dance of the Cosmos is rather under-referenced by academic standards, making it difficult to discern where and when Sanguin might be moving beyond creative synthesis towards a more unique contribution to scholarship in the area of Christianity and Ecology.

Despite such tensions, Sanguin successfully illustrates aspects of the integration of evolutionary cosmological consciousness in his daily life, including examples arising from his frequently referenced practice of Bikram Yoga and his work as a United Church minister at Vancouver’s Canadian Memorial Church and Centre for Peace. In the end, this connection to the material, his sharing of personal anecdotes and the practical suggestions growing from his ministry will likely combine to leave the reader with the impression that Sanguin is genuinely committed to participating in an ecological updating of Christianity. It is ultimately this feature of Darwin, Divinity and the Dance of the Cosmos, along with its accessible prose, that is well poised to hold the interest of both general readers and students assigned this text as part of coursework dealing with issues at the intersection of Christianity and Ecology. In the latter context, Sanguin’s book would be particularly useful for introducing the subject matter of green Christian spirituality because the breadth of Darwin, Divinity and the Dance of the Cosmos is well suited to fostering classroom conversation and will give an instructor numerous points of entry to discuss convergent and divergent suggestions for an ecological updating of Christianity.

Studies in Religion Vol. 41 (3)

Bruce Sanguin. Darwin, Divinity, and the Dance of the Cosmos: An Ecological Christianity. (Kelowna, BC, Canada: Copperhouse Books, 2007), 288 pgs.
A doctrine of creation can come in many forms, from literalist to metaphorical. Bruce Sanguin is a prime example of one who seeks to understand creation in metaphorical terms that allow not just for the accommodation of evolution to the Christian message, but to allow evolutionary theory to be the driving force of a re-imagining of creation. But this isn’t just a book about the intersection of religion and science; it is an attempt to recreate Christianity in a form that is green. As the subtitle makes clear, this is an argument for an “ecological Christianity.”
Sanguin writes from the perspective of a Canadian Progressive Christian pastor who sees his own theology as a living out of what Marcus Borg calls the “emerging paradigm.” Although Borg doesn’t appear regularly in the book, it is Borg’s vision of a new Christianity that drives the book. Metaphor is key to the conversation. And in line with the book’s title, Sanguin believes that “the emerging paradigm requires us to evolve” (pg. 31). Like Borg, Sanguin embraces a panentheistic idea of God’s relationship to Creation and insists that Christian faith and Christian faith language must be updated and outdated beliefs abandoned.
With Borg as a starting point Sanguin’s conversation partners include Creation theologian Matthew Fox, feminist Elizabeth Johnson, and most especially cosmologist and physicist Brian Swimme. From Swimme, Sanguin took the idea that the universe itself is conscious, and thus the universe itself is a “sacred story.” With evolution as the primary driver of the story, Sanguin lays out an understanding of reality that is focused on an interconnectedness of all things. Although evolutionary theory can point to humankind as a natural endpoint of the process, our author insists that humans have been dethroned and need to get over their superiority complex, for we as humans are not the only beings that exist in the image of God – for all things reflect the image of God.
If Christian faith needs updating, then science needs to be reminded that it doesn’t have all the answers. Sanguin is concerned that in our modern world we have “disenchanted” the universe, so that we no longer have a sense of wonder about the world in which we live. And so mystery needs to be re-introduced. Science needs this conversation in part because of our human tendency towards hubris and a separation of science from ethics. This is not an argument for a simple rationalist Christianity. Though at times it seems New Agish, there is much to be said for the call to humility and a recognition that we’re not the rulers of all that exists.
The danger in a conversation between science and religion is that theology becomes reduced to science and God is introduced only as the solution to the gaps in our knowledge. And while he dialogues with science throughout, he insists that it doesn’t have all the answers. Thus, we must turn to mystery, which is “about entering into the interior depths of reality, both known and unknown” (p. 74). Although rejecting the idea of a God who is the grand designer who exists entirely separate from nature, Sanguin insists that the Creation exhibits signs and hints of intelligence. And thus evolution is in itself a “divine unfolding.” It isn’t purposeless, as some would suggest, and it’s not the survival of the fittest, but the survival of the “most loving.” History in his understanding is forward moving and linear – and thus very much Jewish inspired. Beginning from the Big Bang, the Creation has moved towards increasing consciousness.
The God of evolution is as one might expect, an immanent presence, who is not found to be “a controlling presence but as the cosmic urge to self-transcendence” (p. 121). And with such a staring point, one can understand the biblical stories, including Jesus’ parables – which he sees as nature stories. Scripture tells four stories, in his mind: the stories of exodus, exile, temple, and allurement. As for Jesus, he is “greened.” That is, he has been re-imagined from an ecological perspective. Adapting the language of kingdom, he re-envisions the “kin-dom of God.” To understand the divinity of Jesus, he turns to feminism and its claim on the idea of Sophia – Wisdom. Jesus is the embodiment of Wisdom and is also “Sophia’s child.” Again turning to science for help, he finds in Quantum physics and Chaos Theory a way of understanding Jesus of Nazareth to be an expression of divine presence.
In the end the message is one of connectiveness. We are connected to each other – as humans – but not just to the human – but to the entirety of the universe. What we forget, and Sanguin reminds us of, is that reality goes beyond the mere physical/material to the subatomic and deeper. It is here that we understand that Jesus is the one in whom all things hold together.
This is a book that holds evolution in high regard. It is a witness of divine presence. At times it seems to glorify evolution without recognizing the down side. That tendency is in the end recognized and dealt with. Nature is indeed beautiful and thus we see in it signs of intelligence and design, but it can also be brutal and that reality he understands must be acknowledged. Part of that acknowledgment includes a jettisoning of divine omnipotence. Although he is Progressive and wishes to update our faith and our faith language he’s not ready to jettison everything, including the idea of eternal life. With Sophia/Wisdom as the key, he understands eternity as the gathering up of that which is good into the mind and heart of God, who not only remembers but experiences our realities. Such a theology must be lived, and thus there is a place for meditation and liturgy, and service.
At times the book appears almost fanciful, with its embrace of mystery and metaphor taking off in sometimes strange directions. His interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer (Our Father) seemed somewhat odd. Etymology can be helpful, but it also can prove meaningless, as I felt as I read his interpretations of the aramaic that undergirds the sentences of that important Christian prayer. Indeed, at times I found his interpretations of theology and Scripture to be just a bit too far a field. Metaphor, after all, does have its referents. This is not a book for everyone, but for someone who is struggling with faith and how to live faithfully in a confusing world this will be helpful. As a call to consider the sacredness of the universe this is an important statement – even if it goes in my mind a bit too far at times.
This isn’t the work of a professional theologian, but is instead the work of a pastor who seeks to re-envision the Christian faith for a new day. And for that we can be grateful.
Reviewed by:
Rev. Dr. Robert Cornwall
Pastor, First Christian Church
Lompoc, CA

Rev. Dr. Robert Cornwall, Lompoc, CA, http://pastorbobcornwall.blogspot.com/se