ABSTRACT
Understandings of both the nature of God and power are important and contested in faith experiences and theological practice. This chapter considers my own experiences of privilege and loss in relation to power and tracks the many theological shifts that have taken place as a result. Guided by the autoethnographic work of Elizabeth Mackinlay and others, I look critically at the many aspects that have shaped my faith journey from the white male privilege I first experienced under Apartheid in South Africa, to an escapist eschatology and desire for certainty I found in Pentecostalism, to the life-changing experience of cancer. Challenged to rethink patriarchal doctrines of power, I then turned to feminist and process theologies, specifically to the work of Catherine Keller, whose definition of God’s nature as non-coercive and persuasive rejects traditional formulations of omnipotence and challenges not only God’s supposed masculinity but also the concept of God as changeless. Beyond letting go of an omnipotent God in favour of a more complex, open and relational image, this theology allows the possibility to imagine and rethink the need for certainty, perhaps even in an age of social and economic tumult brought about by a global pandemic and ecological collapse.
