Parable of the Talents (Earthseed, #2) 
by 

Octavia E. Butler

 

Much More Than Sci-Fi

Neither Amazon nor the Library of Congress has a classification in which The Parable of the Talents fits easily. So it typically gets dumped into science fiction by default. But while the book does take place in the future, and extrapolates some of the possible consequences of things like climate change and computer-controlled weaponry, there is nothing unrecognisable as probably existing on somebody's drawing board, somewhere. There is certainly no typical sci-fi bending of the rules of Newtonian physics, or speculation about time travel, or revolutionary technology. 

The Parable of the Talents is in fact, as the title suggests, a work of theology, specifically political theology, the study of the link between community and individual belief. And although it overtly criticises evangelical Christianity, particularly the militant American brand, its target is really the monotheistic religions of the world - notably Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - not because they are monotheistic but because they are dogmatic, and consequently sectarian, and therefore useful for political manipulation, especially in modern democracies. The tale that Butler spins (in 1998) is eerily prescient of not just Donald Trump and his collusion with the American evangelical Right, but of Vladimir Putin's manipulation of Russian Orthodoxy and any number of Muslim politicians' tactics from Turkey to Indonesia. Monotheism, at least in its dogmatic forms, is clearly susceptible to political co-optation from Moses to Constantine to Khomeini. 

It may not be obvious to those outside the theological community that the great monotheistic religions are heresies of each other. All other religions are merely pagan. The Christian Trinity is a polytheistic heresy to Judaism and Islam. Muslim views of Jesus are variants of the Arian heresy of the 3rd century. Jewish rejection of Jesus as more than a not untypical rabbinic preacher is also a heretical rejection of the Christian doctrine of supersessionism which claims that the Christian Church is the true Israel. The theological complexity of all dogmatic religion is such that each of these distinguishing heresies, as it were, promote further differences and ultimately conflicts and schisms within each major religion ad infinitum. 

Butler is acutely aware of the role of monotheistic religion in the creation of her American dystopia, and in its reconstruction. Her main character is descended from a fundamentalist Baptist minister; her brother is a congenital religious fanatic. It is the diversity of dogmatic views that has caused, in the first instance, the disintegration of the American polity, and is, in the second, the rationale for the election of a dictator and the violent persecution of all who do not the doctrinal position of this Trump-like figure and his sympathisers.

The spine of the novel, introducing each chapter and referred to continuously throughout, is the 'new faith' of Earthseed, which is the invention or, if you prefer, the revelation, of the protagonist as an antidote to dogmatic monotheism and its consequences. There are historical allusions to Ann Lee, the Shaker leader who brought that proto-feminist faith of Northern England to America, and to Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist, whose life-long concern was the primal religion that appears perennially throughout the world in various symbolic manifestations. But the main influence on Butler is clearly the so-called Process Theology that was developed originally by Alfred Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne in the 1920's and 1930's. 

The central insight of Process Theology, one can hardly call it a dogma, is that it is an essential attribute of God to affect and be affected by temporal processes. Although not consistent with some developed theology, this insight is not at odds with the fundamental scriptures of any of the monotheistic religions, which all present an acting, feeling, mutable God who apparently learns about human beings as they learn about Him. Process Theology does not deny various monotheistic tenets such as divine eternity, omnipotence or even the immutability of the 'core' of God, as it were. It just doesn't care about these dogmatic issues.

Butler presents her theology in the form of a poem which develops as her story unfolds, a poem that Whitehead and Hartshorne would not, I am sure, be ashamed to have written. A single verse is enough to give the substance of the piece: "All that you touch You change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change." Change for Butler is not a fetish such as that proposed by current-day management consultants and psychological improvement merchants. Change is simply that which is inevitable and necessary for life, divine as well as human. We shape change which shapes us. This includes of course the shape we mould God into, which certainly in turn affects the shape we assume.

The fashion for Process Theology comes and goes with hemlines, but it has become an abiding force in academic religious thinking and affects many of the mainstream schools of theological thought. The fact that it is a somewhat esoteric discipline means that its relevance for practical affairs isn't immediately apparent. Quite apart from its literary value, which is considerable, Butler's work is important because it makes explicit both a fundamental issue in American, indeed modern European and Middle Eastern, society, namely the religious foundation of national unity, and a way in which that issue can be dealt with in an intellectual but practical way. For this achievement alone her brilliance must not be under-appreciated.