Rewilding Faith: A Walk Between Two Worlds

These days, I spend a lot of time walking along the coastline not far from our home. We are fortunate to live near a stunning stretch of marine preserve with a well-maintained path between the ocean and the bush.

The path winds along the top of a limestone outcrop with a thin sliver of white beach sand at the base on one side and dense coastal bush on the other. Walking this path at first or last light is one of my favourite things to do, as it can be nothing short of awe-inspiring.

Not only have I been treated to some of the most spectacular sunrises and sunsets, but along the way, I’ve met many of the local inhabitants, including owls, snakes, pelicans, dolphins, ospreys, parrots, crows, lizards, mice, and an unusual resident marsupial called a Potoroo. 

Part of what I love about this path is that it lies between two worlds: the dense green-grey coastal scrub on the one side, representing the start of the land that stretches out into what eventually becomes the brutal Australian outback, and the turquoise shallow reefs of the other side, marking the beginning of the vast expanse of deep blue ocean.

These two worlds could not be more different, yet they are inseparably connected.

The stretch of coastline between them is the convergence point (called an ecotone) where the two “worlds” meet. Walking between them feels like a metaphor for my life and spiritual journey. 

I was born and raised in a conservative, evangelical, Pentecostal Christian tradition and have spent a significant part of my life being formed by it. I have also always had a profound love for nature beyond mere admiration or appreciation. I feel an overtly spiritual connection to it, in a sacred sort of way. 

As many of you would be aware, Conservative Evangelical Pentecostal Christianity and Ecospirituality don’t exactly mix well (for all sorts of theological reasons I won’t bore you with here), so I have found myself constantly navigating the tension created by living in these two worlds.

To add to the complexity, the former is a world I feel increasingly disconnected from as I have found it no longer capable of sustaining my faith (for lots of different reasons I won’t elaborate on here).

That’s not to say that there isn’t any good within that world or that there isn’t an army of amazing people doing valuable work there. Of course, there is. It just means that I can no longer support all of the core theological convictions that shape that world or the practices and priorities that have emerged to define it. I also find it increasingly incapable of addressing the reality and complexity of our human experience, but more on that another day. 

As a result, I feel like I am what Terry Tempest Williams calls an “Edge Walker”; a person who travels the narrow space between the religious tradition that has forged their soul and the very personal experiences in nature that have revealed a truth of their own. I occupy a tradition that has brought many people deep joy and fulfilment but has also brought many people deep pain. I recognise now, however, that I am on the edge of that tradition, as I no longer represent the masses at its centre. 

While that realisation has been unsettling at times, it has also been incredibly liberating, as it has given me the freedom to engage in what has been a life-giving process I call “rewilding my faith.”

Rewilding is the word environmentalists use for the process of ecological restoration aimed at increasing biodiversity and restoring natural processes by reducing human influence on ecosystems. 

By allowing myself the time and space to reconnect my faith and spirituality to our primal natural world, I have reconnected with an ancient revelation of Divine Presence untouched by human influence that I suspect those who have gone before us knew well. 

For many Christians living in the twenty-first century, their only experience of the sacred is what they see and hear being mediated in a church service or a Sunday mass.

The assumption is that if you’re looking for God, you’ll find him there. 

Ministers unwittingly reinforce this idea (and I’ve been guilty of this, too) when they welcome people to “the house of God” or encourage people to respond to the apparent arrival of “the Presence of God” during a service. 

However, when we turn our attention to the scriptures, we see that throughout the Old and New Testaments, there are many defining moments of encounter with God that take place “in the wild”, and by “wild”, I mean the untamed environment of nature.

We see Moses receiving a divine mandate through a burning bush. Israel enjoys God’s supernatural provision in the wilderness. Moses receives the Ten Commandments on a mountain. Jesus gets baptised in the river and is empowered for public ministry in the desert. Mark’s recollection of this moment is my favourite: “He was with the wild animals, and angels ministered to Him.” (Mark 1:12). After the resurrection, Jesus restores a disillusioned Peter on the beach. 

When we read these experiences as twenty-first-century, city-dwelling, technology-loving, building-occupying humans, we tend to think of the context of those encounters as incidental or contextual (i.e., premodern). 

But what if there is something significant about the context itself? What if the natural environment in which those encounters take place is a prerequisite for the encounter itself? What if God directing people to go into the wilderness, up the mountain, into the valley, or down to the river is entirely intentional and profoundly spiritual?

It would not be a stretch to say that most people experience some sense of transcendence when immersed in the beauty, complexity, and mystery of the natural world, even if they aren’t particularly religious. Research shows that as many as two-thirds of people experience some degree of spiritual awakening when in nature, regardless of their faith tradition.

The problem is that many people have become so disconnected from their natural surroundings that they no longer consider themselves part of nature. They live as though they somehow transcend nature when, in reality, they are very much a part of it and deeply dependent on it. 

That way of thinking inevitably causes us to separate our spirituality from the environment that sustains us. When we do, we miss the Divine revelation made available to us through creation. 

The truth is that Sunday morning church services are not the only place we can encounter God. Of course, I’m not opposed to church gatherings on Sunday (or any day for that matter). Believe me, I have spent more time in Sunday church gatherings than most. Still, if I’m totally honest, I think much of what gets passed off as “the Presence of God” in those settings isn’t much more than an entirely predictable emotional response to moving music and inspiring rhetoric.

My suspicion is that we all know this to be true, even if some don’t want to admit it, but those things aren’t bad at all. There’s nothing wrong with inspiring rhetoric or moving music—I love both—but they aren’t “God.” God might well act and speak in these settings (and I believe God does), but not everything that goes on in church is God at work. I think you get my point and hear my heart.

What I am discovering, though, is that outside the confines of the church walls and beyond the various dictates and demands of our church services (if you think about it, for many people, church is just an hour and twenty minutes of being told what to do: when to stand, when to sing, when to sit, how to give, what to think, how to live, and when to leave), there is a rich experience of God deeply rooted in the world God made, that is unmediated by men and untouched by human influence. I think our spiritual ancestors understood this experience all too well. It is expressed perfectly and poetically in the words of the Psalmist, who said, 

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” (Psalm 19:1-4).

And through the words of the apostle Paul, who said,

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

Here, the biblical authors remind us of a profound truth: the entire universe is engaged in what Thomas Berry called The Great Conversation, an ongoing dialogue between all created things that serves as a dynamic revelation of God’s existence and goodness.

What a stunning and utterly captivating idea!

So maybe it’s time for more of us to return to the place we were made to occupy, the world we were designed to depend on and rejoin that Conversation.

Perhaps, if we allow ourselves to tune in again to the sound of the wind and the water, we will hear the still, small voice of our Creator.

Maybe, if we spend more time walking the coastlines, hiking the mountains, and swimming the oceans, not just for the sake of pleasure, but for the sake of encounter, with open hearts and attentive minds, we will rediscover our ability to see God afresh.

If you feel like your faith has been framed and tamed by mediated man-made religion, then maybe it’s time for you to rewild your faith, too.