The New Process Theology
​international, multireligious, practical, theopoetic
Jay McDaniel
John Cobb visiting China in 2018
The Becoming of Process Theology
In order to understand process theology today, you need to think globally and beyond John Cobb. He is extremely influential and always will be, but his many ideas and interests have lives of their own,
Put simply, process theology is in process. There was once a time when, when people spoke of process theology, they really meant Christian process theology. That time has now passed. It is now a multi-faith movement with Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Daoist, and “secular” proponents. One of the two most influential process theologians in the world – Rabbi Bradley Artson – is Jewish. The other is John Cobb.
There was also a time when, when people spoke of process theology, they meant Whiteheadianism. That time has passed, too. Process theologians today are influenced by Whitehead’s philosophy in varying degrees and ways, but often they do not mention Whitehead at all in their writings. Even John Cobb references Whitehead in some of his writings but not in others. His is not the approach of funneling everything through a “Whitehead box.”
Finally, there was a time when, when people spoke of process theology, they had in mind primarily a cognitive framework -- that is, a worldview -- that would be understood and then applied. Process theology began in the head. That time has passed, too. Process theology has become an attitude toward life and way of living that can include a worldview, but is much more, including practices.
Amid all this process theology is beginning to appeal to a new generation, many of whom are more interested in practice than in metaphysics. Process theology is becoming less exclusively "theological" in a formal, rigid academic sense and more "theopoetic" in the spirit advanced by ARC: A Creative Collaborative for Theopoetics: This new theopoetic spirit can include more formal theology, but it also finds its home in the living of life: in the kitchen, the meditation hall, the rock concert, the community clinic, the hospital, the dance hall, the local pub, the community garden, the workplace, and the senior citizen's center. Life itself is the text of the new process theology.
What Do People Mean by Theopoetics?
The History of Theopoetics
Theopoetics Journal
Process​ Theopoetics
Process theopoetics has ten characteristics.
An expanded understanding of primary texts: Its primary texts go beyond the written text to include music, visual art, poetry, sculpture, film, dance; lived human experience; and the natural world. It takes life and art, not written texts alone, as its primary texts.
Multiple ways of knowing: It affirms many ways of knowing: verbal, mathematical, musical, kinesthetic, empathic, bodily, introspective, imaginative, conemplative. It does not privilege verbal knowing alone as primary.
Social engagement: It is socially engaged and seeks social transformation: that is, the creation of communities that are creative, compassionate, participatory, humane to animals, ecologically wise, inclusive of diversity, and spiritually satisfying – with no one left behind. In this spirit it partakes ot the prophetic imagination: the capacity to say "no" to injustice and "yes" to compassion. It speaks of its ultimate hope as ecological civilization: beloved community with ecology added.
Multiple forms of spirituality and emotional wisdom: It affirms the subjective worlds of emotion and feeling that are at the heart of lived experience. It understands"spirituality" is the activity of becoming fully alive and awake, in the immediacy of ordinary life, and recognizes many different spiritual modes: attention, beauty, being present, compassion, connection, devotion, enthusiasm, faith, forgiveness, grace, gratitude, hope, hospitality, imagination, joy, justice, kindness, listening, love, meaning, nurturing, openness, peace, play, questing, reverence, (openness to) shadow, silence, transformation, unity, vision, wonder, X-factor (mystery), Yearning, You (self-affirmation), and zeal (zest for life). *
Materiality and physicality: It affirms the material and physical side of life: the bodies of people and animals, hills and rivers, trees and stars. Interfaith theopoetics does not draw a sharp distinction between body and spirit, but instead sees body in spirit and spirit in body. At the same time it is open to the possibility that we live in a multi-dimensional universe in which "spirits" and "ancestors" and a "continuing journey after death" are real possibilities. We understand "body" very widely.
Respectfully Conferessional: An interfaith theopoetics can be uniquely Christian, or uniquely Jewish, or uniquely Muslim, or uniquely Buddhist, or uniquely Hindu, or uniquely "Spiritual but not Religious."
Interfaith outlook: An interfaith theopoetics understands that we live in a world with multiple wisdom traditions (religions) and that all should be included in beloved community. Today wisdom traditions include humanism, secularism, and spiritual independence as well as traditional forms of religious affiliation.
Theistic and Non-Theistic: It welcomes and explores different ways of thinking aboug God, personal and transpersonal, but also includes forms of religious life that do not include reference to God: e.g. secular, Buddhist, humanistic. It is open to the horizontal sacred (felt relationships) as well as the vertical sacred (something more.)
​Can be practiced by academics and non-academics. It can be practiced by many different people from many walks of life, of various ages, genders, races, religions, and sexualities. ​​
Yes, But What Are It's Basic Ideas?
I realize that from what I've said above some readers might well wonder: But what are its ideas? Of course this is very important. In another page on this site I have identified what I take to be the Twenty Key Ideas of Process Thinking: creativity, interconnectness, intrinsic value, process, faith, withness of the body, and others. I will repeat them here:
Process: The universe is an ongoing process of development and change, never quite the same at any two moments. Every entity in the universe is best understood as a process of becoming that emerges through its interactions with others. The beings of the world are becomings.
Interconnectedness: The universe as a whole is a seamless web of interconnected events, none of which can be completely separated from the others. Everything is connected to everything else and contained in everything else. As Buddhists put it, the universe is a network of inter-being.
Continuous Creativity: The universe exhibits a continuous creativity on the basis of which new events come into existence over time which did not exist beforehand. This continuous creativity is the ultimate reality of the universe. Everywhere we look we see it. Even God is an expression of Creativity.
Nature as Alive: The natural world has value in itself and all living beings are worthy of respect and care. Rocks and trees, hills and rivers are not simply facts in the world; they are also acts of self-realization. The whole of nature is alive with value. We humans dwell within, not apart from, the Ten Thousand Things. We, too, have value.
Ethics: Humans find their fulfillment in living in harmony with the earth and compassionately with each other. The ethical life lies in living with respect and care for other people and the larger community of life. Justice is fidelity to the bonds of relationship. A just society is also a free and peaceful society. It is creative, compassionate, participatory, ecologically wise, and spiritually satisfying - with no one left behind.
Novelty: Humans find their fulfillment in being open to new ideas, insights, and experiences that may have no parallel in the past. Even as we learn from the past, we must be open to the future. God is present in the world, among other ways, through novel possibilities. Human happiness is found, not only in wisdom and compassion, but also in creativity.
Thinking and Feeling: The human mind is not limited to reasoning but also includes feeling, intuiting, imagining; all of these activities can work together toward understanding. Even reasoning is a form of feeling: that is, feeling the presence of ideas and responding to them. There are many forms of wisdom: mathematical, spatial, verbal, kinesthetic, empathic, logical, and spiritual.
The Self as Person-in-Community: Human beings are not skin-encapsulated egos cut off from the world by the boundaries of the skin, but persons-in-community whose interactions with others are partly definitive of their own internal existence. We depend for our existence on friends, family, and mentors; on food and clothing and shelter; on cultural traditions and the natural world. The communitarians are right: there is no "self" apart from connections with others. The individualists are right, too. Each person is unique, deserving of respect and care. Other animals deserve respect and care, too.
Complementary Thinking: The rational life consists not only of identifying facts and appealing to evidence, but taking apparent conflicting ideas and showing how they can be woven into wholes, with each side contributing to the other. In Whitehead’s thought these wholes are called contrasts. To be "reasonable" is to be empirical but also imaginative: exploring new ideas and seeing how they might fit together, complementing one another.
Theory and Practice: Theory affects practice and practice affects theory; a dichotomy between the two is false. What people do affects how they think and how they think affects what they do. Learning can occur from body to mind: that is, by doing things; and not simply from mind to body.
The Primacy of Persuasion over Coercion: There are two kinds of power – coercive power and persuasive power – and the latter is to be preferred over the former. Coercive power is the power of force and violence; persuasive power is the power of invitation and moral example.
Relational Power: This is the power that is experienced when people dwell in mutually enhancing relations, such that both are “empowered” through their relations with one another. In international relations, this would be the kind of empowerment that occurs when governments enter into trade relations that are mutually beneficial and serve the wider society; in parenting, this would be the power that parents and children enjoy when, even amid a hierarchical relationship, there is respect on both sides and the relationship strengthens parents and children.
The Primacy of Particularity: There is a difference between abstract ideas that are abstracted from concrete events in the world, and the events themselves. The fallacy of misplaced concreteness lies in confusing the abstractions with the concrete events and focusing more on the abstract than the particular.
Experience in the Mode of Causal Efficacy:Human experience is not restricted to acting on things or actively interpreting a passive world. It begins by a conscious and unconscious receiving of events into life and being causally affected or influenced by what is received. This occurs through the mediation of the body but can also occur through a reception of the moods and feelings of other people (and animals).
Concern for the Vulnerable: Humans are gathered together in a web of felt connections, such that they share in one another’s sufferings and are responsible to one another. Humans can share feelings and be affected by one another’s feelings in a spirit of mutual sympathy. The measure of a society does not lie in questions of appearance, affluence, and marketable achievement, but in how it treats those whom Jesus called "the least of these" -- the neglected, the powerless, the marginalized, the otherwise forgotten.
Evil: “Evil” is a name for debilitating suffering from which humans and other living beings suffer, and also for the missed potential from which they suffer. Evil is powerful and real; it is not merely the absence of good. “Harm” is a name for activities, undertaken by human beings, which inflict such suffering on others and themselves, and which cut off their potential. Evil can be structural as well as personal. Systems -- not simply people -- can be conduits for harm.
Life is a Journey: Human life is itself a journey from birth (and perhaps before) to death (and perhaps after) and the journey is itself a process of character development over time. Formal education in the classroom is a context to facilitate the process, but the process continues throughout a lifetime. Education requires romance, precision, and generalization. Learning is best when people want to learn.
Religion and Science: Religion and Science are both human activities, evolving over time, which can be attuned to the depths of reality. Science focuses on forms of energy which are subject to replicable experiments and which can be rendered into mathematical terms; religion begins with awe at the beauty of the universe, awakens to the interconnections of things, and helps people discover the norms which are part of the very make-up of the universe itselff
God: The universe unfolds within a larger life – a love supreme – who is continuously present within each actuality as a lure toward wholeness relevant to the situation at hand. In human life we experience this reality as an inner calling toward wisdom, compassion, and creativity. Whenever we see these three realities in human life we see the presence of this love, thus named or not. This love is the Soul of the universe and we are small but included in its life not unlike the way in which embryos dwell within a womb, or fish swim within an ocean, or stars travel throught the sky. This Soul can be addressed in many ways, and one of the most important words for addressing the Soul is "God." The stars and galaxies are the body of God and any forms of life which exist on other planets are enfolded in the life of God, as is life on earth. God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere. As God beckons human beings toward wisdom, compassion, and creativity, God does not know the outcome of the beckoning in advance, because the future does not exist to be known. But God is steadfast in love; a friend to the friendless; and a source of inner peace. God can be conceived as "father" or "mother" or "lover" or "friend." God is love.
Faith: Faith is not intellectual assent to creeds or doctrines but rather trust in divine love. To trust in love is to trust in the availability of fresh possibilities relative to each situation; to trust that love is ultimately more powerful than violence; to trust that even the galaxies and planets are drawn by a loving presence; and to trust that, no matter what happens, all things are somehow gathered into a wider beauty. This beauty is the Adventure of the Universe as One.
Theopoetics is a form of theology that invites us to take many different forms of life, and not simply written texts, as primary texts. These can be divided into three kinds. In the first place, the primary texts of theopoetics can come from the arts: music, visual art, poetry, sculpture, and film, for example. In the second place, the primary texts of theopoetics can also be the concrete experiences that people suffer and enjoy in daily life itself, in concrete social settings. In the third place, the primary texts of theopoetics can come from the more-than-human world: the hills and rivers, trees and stars. We might speak of these three kinds of primary texts as artistic, social-existential, and ecological.
Theopoetics does not replace theology with its focus on the “big book” or the “written text” as a primary text. But it simultaneously invites and encourages a stretching of the idea of what counts as a primary text. Along the way it also rejects the idea that a “text” is necessarily something distant and external from a “reader,” such that the basic function of a text is to be analyzed from a distance in a critical way. To understand a text in this distanced way is to build upon a certain relationship that readers can have with written texts. My instructor in the class on Augustine wanted me to have this relationship with his Confessions, and I hope I succeeded.
But there are many kinds of texts available to theopoetics that invite and require respectful engagement, and whose meanings are completely missed if approached only as objects of detached scrutiny. If you want to understand a piece of music as a primary text, you must listen to the music, hearing its rhythms and melodies, and you may well need to listen with more than your ears. If you want to understand the life-experience of your neighbor as a primary text, you must listen to your neighbor, feeling her feelings and doing your best to understand the world from her point of view. And if you want to understand a mountain as a sacred text, you must look at the mountain, walk on it, understand the plants and animals that live on it, and learn to think like it. The methods of sociology and anthropology seem more relevant: participant-observation.
Moreoever, the very word "text" may not be helpful, insofar as it so often points to something that is supposed to supply information. The "texts" of theopoetics -- other people, for example, and their life situations -- are not simply resources for understanding something about life; they are subjects of their own lives with value of their own. They are not "texts" in the information-giving sense. Thus a shift is required in the mind of one who has studied theology but then turns to theopoetics. She must shift from thinking about theology itself as primarily communicated through texts (although certainly they can be) to theology as primarily concerned with life.