who's Christian?

[Doug Millison]

Thanks for your kind and thoughtful reply, Thomas. I'm still working through
the posts that have accumulated since Friday morning (California time).

I posted those excerpts as examples of serious critics who find specific
attitudes towards religion in Pynchon's works, as a partial response to the
notion that Pynchon neither endorses nor condemns religion in his writing.
There is especially a body of critical literature that finds in Pynchon's
writings a condemnation of some forms of institutional religion, especially
those that align themselves with worldly governments and take part in the
oppression of the human spirit and specific individuals, part of the System
-- that's hardly a neutral attitude towards religion, but is instead a
specific position vis-a-vis a certain form of religion. 


"As I stated
before, the notion of a conscious earth is not reconcilable with at least
orthodox Christianity. It is a pagan idea and people have been burned on the
stake for implying that this might not be so bad a "Weltanschauung" after
all.
The Christian concept of life after death is fundamentally different from
the
view that "all nature knows is transformation" and that therefore there can
be
no extinction."

I point you to Matthew Fox's writings on Meister Eckhart and Fox's own work,
beginning with his book _Original Blessing_, wherein he traces the
Scriptural underpinnings for "creation spirituality" (which incorporates a
strong version of the Gaia theory, equating the Earth and the visible
universe as tangible expressions of God's spirit), and in which he discusses
the lineage of specific individuals and institutions within the Christian
church that have kept this "creation spirituality" alive throughout the
centuries, despite the strong opposition of the Church especially beginning
in the Middle Ages with the posthumous condemnation of Eckhart's writings
and the execution of Giordano Bruno. It is correct to say that creation
spirituality -- which includes the notion of a conscious universe, living
Earth -- is not favored by orthodox Christianity. Indeed, Matthew Fox had to
leave the Catholic church and is now an Episcopal priest. But it is not
correct to say that the notion of a universe which is alive, animated by
God's spirit, conscious, is alien to Christianity; indeed, even in the most
conservative traditions, 

I don't see how "the Christian concept of life after death is fundamentally
different from the
view that "all nature knows is transformation" and that therefore there can
be
no extinction."  Christianity does not ground its views of resurrection and
after-life in a scientific explanation, so there is that difference.  But
the notion of the essential continuity of life is not altogether different.
You might want to read what somebody like physcist, Brian Swimme, has to say
about the transformations we see in nature fit into a Christian worldview,
or more broadly into the non-denominational worldview (Fox's Deep Ecumenism)
which sees a living, conscious universe in all major faith and pagan
traditions.