ABSTRACT
How does the impact of climate change change our image of God? And with that, change the theological climate too? Poet Brendan Kennelly progressed beyond perceiving the need for such a change in the light of its effects to envisioning an alternative. For him, the need is evidenced in ‘the shot bride’, victim of the systemic criminal violence in modern city culture and in the ‘demented soldier’, representative of structural military violence inflicted indiscriminately by and in modern warfare. Implicit and often complicit in the latter is the symbolic violence of an imperial image of God: of one who possesses the power to wreak vengeance on his enemies and to punish those who disobey his commands – and who uses that power towards these ends.
