Back to the Garden

Intro – A Loss of a Sense of Place Starting in the late 60s, as the collapse of colonial powers was felt around the world, theologians began to pay renewed attention to the role of land and place in theological reflection. As the particularist identities of indigenous peoples reasserted themselves against the universalist epistemologies of the old-world empires, Christians became acutely aware of the role certain tendencies in their theology had played in supporting the hegemonies that were now being dismantled. Beginning in the late 60’s, therefore, there began to be a renewed interest in issues of land and place in the Christian academy, particularly in Australia and North America. It is into this context of scholarship and global politics that English theologian, Oliver O’Donovan wrote an article “The Loss of a Sense of Place,” in 1989. What’s interesting about O’Donovan’s article is how clearly it identifies the sense that Western society had lost any notion of placed particula...