God in Things

This book is founded upon the understanding that things matter to people. Exploring the renewing of practical theology through critical attention to the values and practices of everyday life, this book looks at how recent cultural and epistemological shifts have generated new agendas for theological thinking. Engaging with recent debates in many disciplines that have explored the relationship between persons and objects, Walton advocates a theological methodology which is radically incarnational, though proposing that incarnational theology itself must be rethought in the light of shifts in our understandings of materiality, epistemology and embodiment: when we speak of God integrally present in the material world, God as Word or God in flesh we can no longer assume that these affirmations carry the same meaning they once did. Introducing the work of new materialists focussing in particular on Miller and Bennett and their critique of materiality and appreciation of the sacred potentiality of things, Walton then explores the possibility of an affirmative approach to the created order - including material objects - which is based upon the radically incarnational aspects of the Franciscan tradition. Drawing upon insights offered in the work of Walter Benjamin, Michel de Certeau, Gaston Bachelard and others to construct a theological anthropology that celebrates the significance of things in human life, Walton goes on to argue that there can be discerned within the work of 20th century women writers a mystical appreciation of materiality which is congruent with the incarnational theology being developed within this work. Examples are drawn from the writings of Virginia Woolf, Ettie Hillesum, Elizabeth Smart and Michelle Roberts in order to establish how everyday material objects may become hugely spiritually significant to people. Finally, the book explores how habitual material interactions with things can be understood as sites of potential personal or political renewal.