"The problem is not that Americans do not love nature, but that they are enmeshed in a success story- the consumer one - that is ruining the planet" (Life Abundant, p. 199). Once again Christian theologian Sallie McFague urges her reader to see things differently and to acknowledge our role in the care for our world and what is happening to it. This is the theme of McFague's latest thought provoking and inspiring book, Life Abundant. This is the lens
with which McFague provides the reader and advocate in her latest writing.
Having read three of her previous books, Models of God, The Body of God, and most recently, Super, Natural Christians, I can proclaim again what new insights McFague brings to her writing. As in Super, Natural Christians in particular, McFague is able to be both a systematic theologian and a pilgrim of faith at the same time. This combination is a winning one for the reader and religion student as well.
If you are new to McFague's writing, then you are in for a real treat. Rarely in my experience has a writer of such depth, wisdom, truth and scholarship been so readable. As in The Body of God, and Super, Natural Christians, in the Preface McFague gives her reader a road map for her book. She gives permission to her reader (particularly useful when this reader is a teacher) to pick and choose chapters as will be most helpful to her interests and purposes. Summarizing this road map will be useful for our purposes here in recommending this book for high school teachers of religion.
Life Abundant is part of an ongoing series McFague has written that reflect her emerging theology, what she calls in this 2001 publication, a "planetary theology." Building on her previous work, McFague states in the opening lines of the Preface, "I realized love was not enough. I realized that we middle-class North American Christians are destroying nature, not because we do not love it, but be because of the way we live our ordinary, taken-for-granted high-consumer lifestyle"(xi).
Setting out to rectify the inadequacies of The Body of God, McFague seeks to show that North American middle-class Christians need to live differently in order to love nature. And to live differently, we need to think differently. Thinking differently has to do, according to McFague, with the current dominant American world view that reflects a consumer-style "abundant life." Undermining this economically driven thinking will become part of her
"credo." The book then, has a twofold aim to describe McFague's journey in her own theology and to describe a Christian theology of the good life that is not based on economics for some, but in justice and sustainability for all (xii).
The first three chapters are about how McFague got to this place in her own journey of faith. She gives permission for the reader to skip chapters 2 and 3 if one does not have the interest in her extensive theological description.
Chapters 4 and 5 are the heart of the book. They lay out two major economic models - the "neo-classical" one that assumes God , like the human being, is an individual, and the ecological model, which claims that God is radically present in the world ("transcendence is immanence," 131). These very different worldviews affect the way we think about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and how we live our lives in accordance with these beliefs.
. The final part of the book (chapters 6 - 8) describes the two theologies that come forth from these two markedly distinct worldviews. There is no question where McFague is headed with these descriptions. She makes a cogent and urgent argument for the ecological model. She argues that this model is a more appropriate interpretation of the teachings of Jesus as he sought to reach out at table to those usually excluded from the feasting most North Americans enjoy. The striking examples she employs at the end are her final zingers.
John Woolman, eighteenth-century Quaker, and Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, both lived in the "wild space," a place to stand in order to see the world differently, and having seen differently, then acted on it (188). "Each saw the need for a thorough-going restructuring of society's present economic arrangements as central to their religious vision." (188) "...these 'wild' marginal, radical prophets on behalf of society's outcasts-especially the poor-saw something so remarkable that it changed them completely, down to the nitty-gritty of where they lived, what they ate, how they dressed, how they spent their time and money. (188) "They saw the world differently, they saw it as hidden in God, and then everything else followed." (189).
"The wild space and seeing the world "hidden in God" are images with which McFague ends this latest call to ecological discipleship. She has done it again. She has given me and other teachers, particularly teachers in the field of Christianity, a compelling argument of how to live the abundant life in accordance with the Gospel. Her mindfulness of our place in a consumer-driven, non ecologically centered North America is sobering. Her description of her own path as an ecological pilgrim was, for me, the final hook.. Not many theologians are both writer and advocate.. McFague's superb organization of her argument, her deft descriptions, the fascinating examples of John Woolman and Dorothy Day, as well as wonderful imagery, make her writing, deep and rich, and like the life she seeks to live, very abundant, with plenty for everyone.
But the question remains, for this is still a dream, and not a guarantee, "Could the wild space become the whole space - the household of planet earth where each of us takes only our share, cleans up after ourselves, and keeps the house in good repair for future dwellers?" (204)
Begin a course with this final question - which is more like a plea, and follow McFague through Life Abundant, using her Preface as a guide. I plan to do this with an adult study group at my church. I look forward to lively discussions, heartfelt commentary, and new ways to see our world, hidden in God.

review ©2003 by Anita Schell-Lambert and RSiSS