A Neglected Resource for Process Theology: Bernard Shaw's <i>The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God</i>

Abstract The playwright and Nobel Prize winner George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) often wrote on subjects touching on philosophy and religion, but one would not ordinarily associate his name with process theology. However, his allegory, The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God (1932), and his reflections on the meaning of the story, contain so many themes friendly to process thought that they should be considered as vital resources and as a literary introduction for some of the concerns of process theologians, or at least as a springboard for thinking of religious ideas in processive ways. Adventures elicited many responses in the forms of parody and imitation, but discussions of its theological themes are surprisingly sparse in the critical literature. Falling far short of a fully articulated dipolar theism, Shaw's work is nevertheless a beginning along the path to process thought, an indication of a certain direction that is valuable, not least because it is presented in such a delightful, imaginative, and sometimes contrarian tale.