"For process thinkers, the life well lived is one that is open to the divine Heart. Openness of this sort is faith, and it is an art rather than a science. It involves trust in a Presence who cannot be manipulated through conscious control and whose depths cannot be fully exhausted by conceptual formulas or religious doctrines. The fruits of openness include value-pluralistic thinking, care for others, a hunger for justice, the enjoyment of relational power, a union of thought and feeling, a discovery of one's self as creatively integrative, an appreciation of nature as organic and evolutionary, and a reverence for life.
"Postpatriarchal theologies within Christianity are a promising sign that such transformation can occur in at least one religion. In this chapter I have explained the nature and function of postpatriarchal theology, and I have illustrated one version of it: a process postpatriarchal perspective. In fact, within Christianity and elsewhere, many versions of postpatriarchal theologies are needed: some created by women, some by men, and some created jointly. Furthermore if these changes in religious self-understanding are to influence society, they must be complemented and enriched by new ways of thinking that emerge in other sectors of society, including scientific communities. In our time the lure of the divine Heart is itself a beckoning toward new, imaginative visions that elicit compassion as well as understanding. 'Where there is no vision,' the Bible tells us, 'the people perish' (Prov. 29:18, KJV). The question of our age is whether such vision will emerge in time to stem the tides of ecological destruction, social injustice, and war. I believe that the ways of thinking endorsed in this work can help. It can help to think in terms of a God who loves pelicans, to adopt an ethic that stresses reverence for life, to practice a spirituality that stresses the interdependence of all things, and to move in thought and deed toward a postpatriarchal Christianity. It is good for us, and for God, that the future is open to such possibilities."
