Building Bridges of Understanding Between the Traditional Church and Gay Community

A year and a half ago, before the enactment of the civil rights law permitting marriage between gay couples the Washington Post noted of progressive evangelical Tony Campolo:

"Campolo, who ran for Congress in 1976 as a Democrat, considers himself to be

theologically conservative but socially progressive. He is against legalized abortion

and  gay marriage while being progressive on issues related to poverty, race and

American diplomacy.

"While not embracing same-sex marriage, Campolo has said the two sides could find

a detente if the government would “get out of the business of marrying people and,

instead, only give legal status to civil unions."

                                                              - Washington Post Report, January 14, 2014

Then, in early June of 2015 before the civil rights law was passed later in the month, Tony Campolo, along with retired editor David Neff of Christianity Today, reversed their positions on heterosexual marriage to recognize the civil rights of gay couples to wed. When they did this Christianity Today was quick to note their change from the traditional views of the evangelical church:

'When a prominent evangelical leader, like Tony Campolo, announces his support for gay

marriage, it’s likely to get reporters’ attention. It is indeed news, in that it is still unusual

to hear an otherwise orthodox Christian announce heterodox views on sexuality. But in the

case of Campolo, it may not be the kind of news that garners much attention. (One reason:

His organization Red Letter Christians has argued for same-sex marriage several times.)

"But we were surprised when former CT editor David Neff on Facebook praised Campolo’s

move. As he put it in an email to me clarifying his comment, “I think the ethically responsible

thing for gay and lesbian Christians to do is to form lasting, covenanted partnerships. I also

believe that the church should help them in those partnerships in the same way the church

should fortify traditional marriages.”

"At CT, we’re saddened that David has come to this conclusion. Saddened because we firmly

believe that the Bible teaches that God intends the most intimate of covenant relationships to

be enjoyed exclusively by a man and a woman. We’ve stated this view explicitly in many

editorials, and it is implicit but clear in many of our feature stories."

                                                                                         - Christianity Today, June 9, 2015

From Wikipedia it is noted:

Tony Campolo and his wife Peggy have participated in very public debates and discussions
about the place of lesbians and gays within church and society. Tony Campolo contended
that homosexuality was a sin in practice, though not in orientation. His wife, Peggy Campolo,
disagreed, holding that committed, monogamous homosexual practice was not a sin; she
supports full equality for homosexual, bisexual and transsexual persons. Regarding marriage,
Tony Campolo states that all couples should have the right to a civil union with all the legal
rights that are associated with such a contract:

"I propose that the government should get out of the business of marrying people and, instead,
only give legal status to civil unions. The government should do this for both gay couples and
straight couples and, leave marriage in the hands of the Church and other religious entities."

On June 8, 2015, Tony Campolo released a statement changing his position on the issue of gay
relationships, and stating that he now supported full acceptance of Christian gay couples into
the Church. He cited several reasons including the institution of marriage primarily being
about spiritual growth instead of procreation, what he had learned through his friendships
with gay Christian couples, and past examples of exclusionary church traditions practiced
"by sincere believers, but most of us now agree that they were wrong."

                                                                        - Wikipedia section on LGBT Sexual Debates

This past weekend my wife and I attended Tony and Peggy's Campolo's discussion of gay marriage originally to be presented as a soft-debate between Tony, as a progressive traditionalist, and his wife Peggy, who speaks the progressive non-traditionalist viewpoint. No less were we attracted to the discussion because we too carry the same soft-division between one another in our own household as a married couple.

However, after scheduling the Campolo's public speaking engagement Tony later declared his support for the gay community around the same time that the U.S. civil law permitted same sex marriage. He therefore spoke apologetically of his reasons for making this personal change from traditional non-acceptance to non-traditional acceptance of gay marriage, rights, fellowship, ministry, and community.

From the audience's perspective one could tell Tony had come to this momentous conclusion in his overwrought spirit thoughtfully and compellingly. That with heavy heart and prayerful spirit he had taken pains to search out his past attitudes towards the gay community and found them to be inaccurate in assessment, and unworthy of the gospel of Christ, as a minister to the redemptive power of Jesus.

It was a courageous act and one requiring public declaration as a former traditional evangelic. As a result one of the first things Tony needed to do was to shutter the very ministry he had founded for "at-risk youth" - the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education. Primarily because it was supported by traditional Christians and churches holding to doctrines against homosexuality. He also quickly discovered public denouncement by former collegial institutions such as the stalwart evangelical magazine Christianity Today which dutifully informed their readers of Tony's change of attitude - even as he shared his great burden of spirit, searching prayers, and multitudinous biblical studies for direction and counsel from the Spirit of God.

Using the recent example of Alan Chamber's own "conversion" as the former director of Exodus International (quoted immediately below), a ministry once committed to "helping homosexual men and women become straight" (to politely quote them), Tony likewise apologized for the deep hurt and misunderstanding he had committed over the many years of his ministry to the gay community. To use the years remaining to him to learn to accept and love all his brothers and sisters in Christ, and not just some, who are to be of one spirit in the unity of the body of Christ.

So when comparing Alan Chamber's own assessments of his ministries with Tony's we may note how difficult these very personal decisions were made - and are being made - by other progressives within the body of Christ. Especially when brought home by the personal identity crisis seen and experienced in the lives of sons and daughters, spouses and friends, and perhaps even one's self.

And when recognizing this reality within humanity, to be very careful not to commit the sins of bullying, gossip, evil, and abuse, within the body of the church. But to be wise in one's words, thoughts, and behavior. And if necessary, to read and understand the latest literature written in psychology, psychiatry, gender studies, and health documents, on homosexuality. That it is more than a derogatory name, or specist condition, but a living and breathing human being standing before God and the world seeking fellowship, care, reflection, and love.

What then can we say in the aftermath of heartache, tears, guilt, and denunciation? But to encourage to err on the side of love. To do no harm. To search out the Spirit of God and seek His peace between our gay brothers and sisters, loving each unconditionally whether we agree with this or not. To be make peace with our fellow gay Christians knowing of their differences but who are likewise actively seeking the same God of love and peace as their non-gay heterosexual brothers and sisters.

For Tony, as for many progressive Christians, this is the right thing to do, and must be encouraged, given the struggle of the traditional church to honor God and His Word in all things. And especially in a day-and-age where politics and brutality would push the hot buttons of our sinful beings advocating intolerance, injustice, and merciless judgment.

To be Christ-like is to chose the harder path. The path of misunderstanding. The path of social criticism. The path which chooses to stand with those suffering injustices from both the world and the unressurected church. To seek the Spirit of God in surrendering pride so as to embrace the loveless, the despised, the reviled, and the broken.

"What would Jesus do?" He would do what should be done. He would chose the narrower path. The hard path of hatred and be found where the self-righteous dare to tread but where the godly go fearlessly to the defense and aide of the afflicted. Peace.

R.E. Slater

November 16, 2015

Wikipedia - Biography of Tony Campolo 

For a full replay of the event we listened to at Mars Hill Church go to this link here.

We thought Tony and Peggy Campolo explained their position kindly, graciously, and

positively, for the questioning church seeking reconciliation to the gay community.

Click here for video link

* * * * * * * * * * *

Group apologizes to gay community,

shuts down 'cure' ministry

http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/20/us/exodus-international-shutdown/

by Ed Payne, CNN

Updated 2:04 PM ET, Mon July 8, 2013

After 37 years, Exodus International, an organization whose mission was to "help" gay Christians become straight, is shutting down. But not before issuing an apology.

"We're not negating the ways God used Exodus to positively affect thousands of people, but a new generation of Christians is looking for change -- and they want to be heard," Tony Moore, an Exodus board member, said Wednesday.

The announcement comes less than a day after Exodus issued a wide-ranging apology to the gay community for "years of undue judgment by the organization and the Christian Church as a whole," a statement from the group says.

"Exodus is an institution in the conservative Christian world, but we've ceased to be a living, breathing organism," said Alan Chambers, the president of Exodus. "For quite some time, we've been imprisoned in a worldview that's neither honoring toward our fellow human beings, nor biblical."

Chambers, who has a wife and children and previously identified as gay, has acknowledged that he has "ongoing same-sex attractions."

"It is strange to be someone who has both been hurt by the Church's treatment of the LGBTQ community, and also to be someone who must apologize for being part of the very system of ignorance that perpetuated that hurt," Chambers said. "Today it is as if I've just woken up to a greater sense of how painful it is to be a sinner in the hands of an angry church."

New focus on a therapy

Exodus, which has promoted "freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ," has de-emphasized conversion therapy in recent years as more of the counselors in its network have abandoned the practice.

The American Psychological Association defines conversion therapy as aimed at changing sexual orientation, but adopted a resolution in 2009 condemning the practice.

In it, the organization said "mental health professionals should avoid telling clients that they can change their sexual orientation through therapy or other treatments."

But the same resolution also encouraged therapists to consider the religious beliefs of clients who say such beliefs are important to their views of homosexuality.

The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1975.

But yet with the apology, some things have not changed, according to Chambers.

"I cannot apologize for my deeply held biblical beliefs about the boundaries I see in scripture surrounding sex, but I will exercise my beliefs with great care and respect for those who do not share them," he said. "I cannot apologize for my beliefs about marriage. But I do not have any desire to fight you on your beliefs or the rights that you seek."

A new ministry

With the closing of Exodus International, the board of directors voted to begin a new and separate ministry called Reduce Fear.

"This is a new season of ministry, to a new generation," Chambers said. "Our goals are to reduce fear, and come alongside churches to become safe, welcoming and mutually transforming communities."

It's meant to align with Jesus' New Testament message found in John 13:34 -- "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another."

"From a Judeo-Christian perspective, gay, straight or otherwise, we're all prodigal sons and daughters," Chambers said. "Exodus International is the prodigal's older brother, trying to impose its will on God's promises, and make judgments on who's worthy of His Kingdom.

"God is calling us to be the Father -- to welcome everyone, to love unhindered."

* * * * * * * * * * *

Building Bridges of Understanding:

Tony and Peggy Campolo on Homosexuality

https://www.gaychristian.net/campolos.php

The Gay Christian Community

Dr. Tony Campolo, professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern College in suburban Philadelphia, is a well-known and highly respected voice in evangelical Christianity today. Dr. Campolo is an ordained Baptist minister, a popular speaker, author of numerous books, and founder of a ministry which reaches out to poor and hurting people worldwide in the name of Jesus.

Dr. Campolo's position on homosexuality is conservative: he believes that the Bible forbids all homosexual activity. However, he does not support attempts to "convert" gays into straights; rather, he advises gay people to pursue celibacy. His position is what some refer to as "Side B."

Peggy Campolo, Dr. Campolo's wife, takes a different view. She supports monogamous, same-sex relationships, and believes that marriages should be recognized in the church for both heterosexual and homosexual couples. Peggy's position is what some refer to as "Side A."

Two committed Christians with two different views - yet they are able to share the same bed each night and respect each other's faith. How do they do it?

Tony and Peggy Campolo have spoken about their divergent opinions on homosexuality to churches and other Christian organizations. In 2003 they addressed a gathering of gay and supportive Christians on this topic. We've been given permission to make this entertaining and enlightening presentation available via the web, so just use the links below to download and listen to Tony and Peggy speak!

Part 1 - Tony (2.86 MB)

Part 2 - Peggy (2.35 MB)

Part 3 - Tony (2.08 MB)

Part 4 - Peggy (0.95 MB)

If you were impressed by this presentation, please consider visiting Tony Campolo's website to learn about supporting his ministry.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Evangelical Progressive Tony Campolo of Red Letter Christians

From Franklin Graham to Tony Campolo, some evangelical leaders are splitting over gay marriage

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/06/09/from-franklin-graham-to-tony-campolo-some-evangelical-leaders-are-dividing-over-gay-marriage/

by Sarah Pulliam Bailey

June 9, 2015

Ahead of a highly anticipated Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage, many evangelicals are wrestling with the question of whether you can support the issue and remain an evangelical.

Evangelicals are America’s least likely religious group to support same-sex marriage, but a handful of leaders and churches within the movement have divided publicly on the issue in recent years. Some are wondering whether the shifts are a signal of what’s to come, whether evangelicalism could fracture or whether divided evangelicals can continue to happily live under the same umbrella.

Just in the past few days, Tony Campolo announced his support for same-sex couples’ inclusion in the church, while Franklin Graham announced that he would pull Billy Graham Evangelistic Association accounts from LGBT-friendly Wells Fargo bank. On top of that, retired editor of Christianity Today David Neff announced his support for gay marriage.

The three recent cases represent different approaches within an older generation of evangelicals, a group that tends to hold financial and theological influence among other religious leaders and institutions.

“This issue will eventually break relationships: personally, congregationally and institutionally,” said Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who called today a “crucial moment.” “There’s not going to be any way around it.”

White evangelicals remain deeply opposed to same-sex marriage. Just 27 percent favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry, while 70 percent oppose it, according to the most recent survey research from the Pew Research Center. The support among evangelicals has still jumped 13 percentage points since 2005.

A shift among older evangelical leaders

Campolo, a progressive evangelical leader who counseled President Bill Clinton through the Monica Lewinsky scandal and is a sociology professor at Eastern University in Pennsylvania, announced on his Web site Monday his support for same-sex couples in the church. Most evangelical churches tend to exclude same-sex couples from membership and within leadership.

“It has taken countless hours of prayer, study, conversation and emotional turmoil to bring me to the place where I am finally ready to call for the full acceptance of Christian gay couples into the Church,” Campolo wrote in a statement.

After years of publicly taking the opposite stance of his wife, Campolo wrote that he changed his position by interacting with gay couples and studying the Bible. Ultimately, it was through his own marriage that he concluded that “marriage should always be primarily about spiritual growth” and that Christian gay couples can reflect that goal.

Campolo, who declined to be interviewed on the topic, announced in 2014 that the organization he founded nearly 40 years ago would close [sic, the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education]. At that time, he remained opposed to same-sex marriage. Campolo’s shift at 80 years old was not a surprise to some, as he stands on the progressive spectrum anyway.

“The less surprising it is, the more mainstream it’s become,” said Matthew Vines, an author and speaker working for evangelicals to become more LGBT inclusive. “Even if you knew it was coming, the fact that it came and it’s not surprising is itself a sign of changes that are happening.”

But Campolo joins a handful of Baby Boomer evangelical leaders who have shifted into supporting same-sex marriage. Just 21 percent of evangelicals who are above the age of 50 favor gays and lesbians marrying legally, compared to 37 percent of evangelicals between 18 and 49, according to Pew.

A domino effect?

After Campolo’s announcement, David Neff, retired editor in chief of Christianity Today who still writes a column for the magazine, indicated his similar support on his private Facebook account, drawing notice from some observers.

Neff confirmed his support for same-sex marriage in a statement. Neff says that he still holds a high view of biblical authority, but that he has learned to read the relevant biblical passages in a different way than he used to.

“I think the ethically responsible thing for gay and lesbian Christians to do is to form lasting, covenanted partnerships,” Neff said in a statement to CT. “I also believe that the church should help them in those partnerships in the same way the church should fortify traditional marriages.”

CT issued an editorial Tuesday, writing that “we’re saddened that David has come to this conclusion,” and “yes, another couple of prominent evangelicals have come out in support of gay sexual ethics.” The magazine that Billy Graham founded reaffirmed their position that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

“We at CT are sorry when fellow evangelicals modify their views to accord with the current secular thinking on this matter,” CT’s current editor Mark Galli wrote. “And we’ll continue to be sorry, because over the next many years, there will be other evangelicals who similarly reverse themselves on sexual ethics.”

While a small number of evangelicals appear to be shifting, including Sojourners’ Jim Wallis (who announced his support in 2013) and ethicist David Gushee (who announced his support in 2014), many evangelicals remain steadfast in their opposition to same-sex marriage.

“Evangelicals are like dominoes,” said Randall Balmer, a historian at Dartmouth University. “We’re seeing one more indication that evangelicals are moving on this issue rather dramatically, as is the rest of the culture.”

Holding the line on gay marriage

On June 5, Franklin Graham urged Christians to pull their financial support from LGBT-friendly companies like Tiffany’s, which advertises wedding bands for gay couples, and Wells Fargo bank, which has used a same-sex couple in its advertising. Graham said he will move accounts from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association out of Wells Fargo.

“This is one way we as Christians can speak out — we have the power of choice,” he posted on Facebook. “Let’s just stop doing business with those who promote sin and stand against Almighty God’s laws and His standards. Maybe if enough of us do this, it will get their attention.”

Graham ended up putting the organization’s money into a bank that that has sponsored a Gay Pride festival fundraiser. Graham’s publicist did not return requests for comment on Tuesday.

One question will be is whether evangelicals who support same-sex marriage will continue to call themselves evangelical or whether they might find a home in more progressive mainline Protestant traditions. With no official doctrine or pope, evangelicals often debate simply who gets to call themselves an evangelical.

There is no universally shared definition of “evangelical,” but one of the ways evangelicals tend to define themselves is by their regard for the Bible as the ultimate authority. For a majority of evangelicals, the concept of LGBT inclusion collides with the authority and proper interpretation of the Bible. Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of white evangelicals see “a lot” of conflict between homosexuality and religious beliefs, the highest religious group to see a conflict between the two.

Overall, the percentage of Americans who support gay marriage is much higher among those who see “a little conflict” between homosexuality and their faith is much higher than those who say they see “a lot” of conflict between the two (54 percent compared to 27 percent).

A small number of evangelical churches have announced their shift on same-sex relationships in church. For instance, a prominent evangelical Christian church in San Francisco announced in March it will no longer ask members who are LGBT to remain celibate. And earlier this year, GracePointe Church in Nashville, Tenn., and Seattle’s EastLake Community Church reversed their celibacy policies.

Evangelicals in the pews don’t always follow what national leaders say publicly. Many of them do not follow what many leaders have said on support for climate change or immigration reform, for instance.

The issue reared its head in 2014 when World Vision announced it would allow its employees to be in same-sex marriages. The policy was short-lived; the $1 billion relief group reversed it within 48 hours after supporters threatened to pull donations.

Mohler also noted the number of evangelical pastors and leaders who don’t speak about same-sex marriage from the pulpit or otherwise.

“Every one of us is going to have to give an answer in short order,” Mohler said. “There are good number of evangelicals who have been trying to fly under the radar. It isn’t going to work.”

John Caputo - "You're Looking for Nothing"

Obviously I have a choice when choosing to read about contemporary radical theology and radical hermeneutics. For many philosophers in this space it seems the choice is that of agnosticism or atheism. But what about the Christian theologian who chooses to approach these subjects as a Christian theist? Who chooses to believe that there is a God and that this God has spoken through both His Word (special revelation) and through His Son Jesus Christ (as incarnate revelation)? A God who has spoken in the language of the people then, and through the language of His church now, of Himself, His ways, His purposes, His salvation?

As such, what then could be the attraction of this radical study if it seems more driven by a/theism than by theism? For myself, it is the potentiality which it holds in opening up the reading of God's Word more dynamically to today's church and societies-at-large so that its core messages may be heard in a relevant way again. That it is this very thing of "language" itself which holds back God's revelation to those seekers today living in contemporary, post-modern, post-secular, post-Christian times seeking to rectify the newer findings of academics to the older classical expressions of Christianity. That for myself, and others, we are finding promise in this task through studies in Continental philosophical thought and explorations of nascent Radical Theology.

But for the scholastic, modernist theologian seeking to know God through biblical study there is any number of hurtles to leap over as presented to him or her through contemporary academia. But knowing that this is a valuable space to struggle over, the earnest theologian works all the harder to bridge this gulf or chasm of message, knowing, and being. Moreover, we're not pretending that the Bible isn't locked within a linguistic time and space (sic, ancient cultures, dialectics, ancient local and regional understandings, philosophies, a plethora of narratives, speakers, and genres, etc) nor that it's temporal language is as universal for all forthcoming eras as it is commonly made out to be by today's classically trained preachers and disciples of the Lord. But what we're asking is how, and in what way, is God now speaking to today's civilizations as differently from past ancient societies 2000 to 4000 years ago?

The struggle then is to rightly identify God's movement of His Spirit across men's hearts and the eras to come - and especially this present era - as ethics and moralities seem to have changed with time and event itself even as God's Spirit seems to move across the spaces of the heart of this world speaking calm and assurance against its many evils and willful oppressions. And so, where one philosophical era appeared sacrosanct for all future eras to come we now know that each generation has its own philosophical struggles it must contend with. And that for this last  era - a secular, modernistic, and industrial one at that - it was its materialism, consumerism, and many gross depravities which seem to have separated the church from its message of God's grace and peace. And that for this present postmodern era which we are now here processing and questioning our past of all things we have been taught and believed, there seems to be yet another gulf or chasm as deep and wide as the one between humanity and person and work of God Himself. That in order to describe ourselves, our beliefs, our connections with this world, we must re-describe everything with a "post+" descriptive phrase attached to everything marking us as distinctly different from our worthy predecessors.

And if we are proposing a new theology of the Bible in the sense of enlarging its core messages which have been as of now hidden by our modernistic theologies, doctrines, and dogmas, than perhaps its time to unlock them with the help of today's more contemporary thought as found in Continental Philosophy and perhaps, Radical Theology. What this means is that today's postmodern biblical study is no longer founded on a Westernized analytic-scientific structure of "biblical systematics and dogmas" but on a post-modern, post-secular, post-Christian Continental approach of biblical poetics, genre, narrative, existentialism, and phenomenological exploration of biblical themes both past and present in making sense of God and His Word for these present times. So that if this postmodern gospel feels and sounds radically different from the previous modernistic one, it really is, based upon the generations it must now minister and connect to.

As such, we must demand of ourselves, as well as our Christian theological communities, to remain open to new discoveries and narratives of how the Spirit of God is now speaking into this world through His postmodern church of today and not of yesterday. In the older language of some, perhaps we are in a new "spiritual dispensation" much different from the one we once knew built on the great tragedies and distortions of sin and evil, failure and lapse, unto a postmodern generation seeking new studies, witness, and connections with the Divine and with the antiquated world of classic Christian teachings. This is the great difficulty the postmodern theologian now must embrace in order to re-speak God's Word to humanity. It is not an easy task made all the harder sin's adamant blindness and refusal to relent of the securities it once knew in Christianity past. But for the a/Christian wishing to find God in the rhetoric of today's dogmatic churches it seems an impossible task even as it can be for the postmodern theologian looking for new words, categories, and connections to present the God of all grace and mercy in the bible even as it had come through Christ Jesus our Lord and Saviour.

So that for the Christian theist, ultimately we struggle with the meaning and message of Jesus. Certainly, to today's Millennial generation we now see the Christian gospel revisiting its missions to the lost, the poor, the lame, and the sick. As a result the church itself is also moving into a heightened sense of this mission in representing the oppressed, addressing the injustices of this world, and seeking to uplift those who have the least societal or political power as mediators between the harsh cold world of capitalism to that of social justice and democracy. That ultimately the outcomes of Jesus message, if measured in earthy terms of the here-and-now, is that of a gracious, merciful humanitarianism. Of a gospel that seeks to bring in the kingdom of God now and not latter. That lives its Christian lives in the present tense of work-witness as versus seeking to escape this life through a journey of mysticism and escapism. That the works of faith must rival the belief of faith if faith is to be meaningful at all. And that without works faith is dead and religion rules by its empty creeds and confessions.

And so, we must ask ourselves, can we find value through continental philosophy and radical theology in helping the church re-discover the God of the bible through employing a new form of radical hermeneutics? Of questioning what we thought we knew by what we really don't know without defacing the past work of the church in its many past doctrines and historic struggle to be faithful to the God of the bible? If yes, than we do approach these subjects as Christian theists wishing to uplift not only the Name but the Person and Work of Jesus Christ who is more than a myth to our faith. To be able to read a/theists like Jack Caputo in the accompanying article below and to understand his struggle with the bible has been removed by his own philosophical logic and words. To understand why he has such a great dissonance with uncharitable Christian dogma even as he stretches out for words to find the inherent power of the Creator not only outside His creation but resident within it through Christ's death and resurrection.

No, it is not hard to see the questions rolling out of Jack's questioning spirit even as the world's many atrocities and civil wars have thrust the innocent to ask "Why, O God, have you forsaken us in our hour of need?" Seeking to find the transformative power and spiritual engine of God's faithfulness only to find Him seemingly absent to our deep personal needs. And so, the postmodern theologian says, "Perhaps, God has forsaken us." Or, "Perhaps we have forsaken Him to find the judgment of sin upon our heads." Or, "Perhaps, God has come as the Both/And. As both an external power-and-presence as well as a renewed internal power-and-presence heretofore unknown except by Jesus' resurrection (what Jack will dutifully call "the insistence of God"). As the Creator-Redeemer God we creatures would expect no less than to be amazed at the "both/and" contingency of God who through His Spirit speaks to our troubled hearts in tones of silence and plenty, want or need, austerity and judgment, mercy and forgiveness. For the willing seeker lost in the darkness of this world it can be overwhelming even as much as it is for the questioning observing asking "Why?"

Who then is this Creator God come to this infinitely amazing world we live in? Who has given to us the gift of life to live in-and-for Him with all the promises of His presence, grace, and mercy in our lives against all the heartaches, defeats, and harms that this wicked world can provide in His place? Who speaks through the lives of modern day Pauls like the German Theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, having died for his faithful confession by Nazi oppression. Or who speaks through the countless lives of Christian martyrs at the hands of brutal oppression in these wicked days of our seemingly pointless world we live in? Can doctrines mean anything when we see such evil?

For many, the answer is no. At which point an a/theism arises to be measured in the sifting words and stratagems of men and women seeking a God who is silent - if He is there at all. But for the Christian theist this direction does little good, and so we cling to the bible all the more, and to the incarnate life of the Christ we have come to know as personal Saviour. If we must substitute men's words for the bible than let it be on the basis of questioning past misdirections of Christian dogma rather than the very God Himself who has communicated to us by word and by deed. Not in the pre-postmodern forms of past classical doctrines but in an expanded postmodern thought and communication of examining God's Word to our own words, and thoughts, and beliefs. And it is in this exercise perhaps we may come to hear the Spirit of God afresh questioning the church's harsher doctrines of judgment when the very God Himself had spoken in the language of love to all who would come to Him through His life of ministry and the cross.

And so, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, we might come to learn to speak of a "religion-less religion." Or, with Frank Schaeffer, having rejected a hard nosed conservative Christianity, discover a kind of a/gnosticism or a/theism towards the irreligious institutions of the Christian church. Or, with Peter Rollins, born into the times of the Irish Troubles of warring Belfast between Catholic and Protestant faiths, to see past his existential search for non-dogmatic forms of Christianity to a risen church preaching a humanitarian Jesus marked by personal death and resurrection. If so, than perhaps we have a post-modern Christian message to yet determine, deliver, and preach of God's Words, doctrines, and teachings as servants of Christ. To be post-modern day apostles committed to deconstructing God's Word in order to re-construct His beauty, majesty, and glory to come.

R.E. Slater

November 9, 2015
revised November 12, 2015

John Caputo and Peter Rollins in live debate

You’re Looking For Nothing:

John Caputo Responds to My Work

by Peter Rollins

(Updated) July 07, 2015

*[additional comments mine added for better clarity - r.e. slater]

John Caputo has long been a monumental influence in my life and work. From the first time I randomly picked up one of his books (On Religion) in a little bookshop in Belfast back in 2000, to the present day where I’m working through his stunning philosophical memoir Hoping Against Hope (I’m honored to be writing the forward), he has been a constant guide, mentor and conversation partner. Not only this, but over recent years I have been able to get to know him personally and come to know him as a friend.

Recently, while at a conference in Turkey, John was asked about my work and he expressed some concern about the Lacanian turn I had made, particularly with my interest in Žižek. This comment was posted up on the “What is Pyrotheology” Facebook page and generated some interesting dialogue.

I must admit that when I read the comment I was very pleased. The idea that John was commenting on my work, let alone engaging seriously with it, meant the world to me. He had already publicly endorsed me in 2011 when he, controversially, put together a panel dealing with my work at a philosophy conference he facilitated called, “The Future of Continental Philosophy of Religion” (his last conference in Syracuse before retiring). But the fact that he was still taking my work seriously was very affirming.

Yet he was concerned that the comment might be taken out of context. So today he clarified what he meant on the “What is Pyrotheology” page.

His comments might be of interest to those of you who are keeping an eye on the direction of my work. In addition to John’s comment I have also included my small and inadequate response, as well as a link to a short post I wrote in the aftermath of John playfully claiming I was a crypto-Calvinist at my Belfast festival in April 2015.

Update: John recently sent me an email response to my comments that I have added below

John Caputo’s comment:

As my comment about regretting the influence of Žižek on Pete’s work has drawn some comment, I think it’s a good idea for to clarify what I am saying, lest anyone think I was criticizing Pete, whom I love dearly and have always supported as best I can and was decidedly not criticizing. In fact, it was the opposite. I was in the middle of saying that my hope is that Pete’s work will catch a wave, a big book, say, that will move him on to the next level and widen his circle of influence. I then added that my main fear is that, under the influence of Žižek, his audience will be narrowed to the radical death-of-God set and that will confine him to a narrower niche. I think his own native genius has a broader appeal than that. [One] that I have understood to lie in exploring the dynamics of undecidability, the undecidable tensions between faith and doubt, theism and atheism, fidelity and betrayal, how to speak and not-speak of God, orthodoxy and heterodoxy, and the underlying sense of life that subtends these oppositions. I think that has a wider reach and it would nourish a growing number of people today, like the “nones,” some of whom still go to church but are wondering why, some of whom no longer go to church but still believe something, they just do not know what, people who are “inside/outside” religion. In my view that undecidable flux is crushed by Žižek, where the dialectic is reduced to a dogmatic double negative, no, no. So I was talking about audiences.

But over and beyond this question of strategy, of reaching an audience, lies an interesting philosophical question, condensed in the “crypto-Calvinism” comment someone made in the Belfast Tricksters meetings. This Pete has glossed in terms of [Lacan's] radical “lack,” which is a lot better than [the extra-biblical systematic term of] “total depravity.” This raises a really good question which, as I see it, concerns how to address our “finitude”—we are conditioned and limited beings who come to be and pass away, fluctuating between being and non-being, as Augustine liked to say. One way is through the myth of Original Sin, a fall from a state of pristine peace and innocence into sin so that we pass our lives in the aftermath of the fall. Freud and Lacan, I think, give us the secularized counterpart to this Jewish myth by way of the Greek myth of fate, of Oedipus, of the impossibility of maternal plenitude, where we pass our lives in the aftermath of this loss. I greet the first myth, which is mostly due to Augustine and grows even larger teeth with Calvin, with incredulity. There never was—either structurally or historically–any such original purity to lose. I greet the second myth with no less incredulity; there never was any such Oedipus triangle to contend with, a point which is developed with some vigor in Deleuze’s Anti-Oedipus. I greet any myth of a originary fall or loss with incredulity, as a mythologizing of our finitude. I am a heretic about both these orthodoxies.

How then should we think finitude? In terms of our primordial temporality by which we are structurally turned toward the future, and therefore in terms of the “perhaps,” of an originary possibility. To be born therefore does not mean to “fall” into time from eternity, or to “lack” eternity and to be stuck with time. We are originally, and originarily, temporal beings, and that while decidedly finite is nothing to wring our hands over. Time is our first and last chance. To be born is  [to] find oneself in a nascent state, neither sinful nor sick, but in a state of beginnings, of natality (Hannah Arendt), in an originary open-endedness to what is to-come, for better or for worse. To be sure, this is a risky situation. From the outset, we stand before the promise/threat, and nothing guarantees a good outcome. We have not fallen from somewhere; we do not “lack” anything, which means we are missing something we are supposed to have at this point; we have not “lost” something we were originally given. These myths of fall and loss don’t ring true to me. They’re just too downbeat but more importantly they reflect a misunderstanding of temporality. Rather, our finitude is our dependence. The child is a new beginning and so just beginning and not an articulate autonomous agent. But the world is not just beginning. As soon as we come to be we find the world is already running. That is the first case, our first encounter, with the injustice of an unjust world, and our first, harsh lesson in the logic of the “perhaps,” of the promise/threat. The first injustice is an accident of birth—the terribly deprived and desperate condition in which some children are born, while others have every advantage, immersed in love and in an environment by which they are supported on every side. There is the true lack and loss, the first case of missing something that is supposed to be there, viz., the misfortune of being born abandoned, neglected or in desperate poverty. There is nothing mythic about that, no grand récit about some primordial Ur-event of loss, no metaphysics of the void, thank you very much.

So on my accounting the being of finitude is may-being. That means, on the one hand, that there is no Divine Providence to ensure a good outcome, nothing to guarantee life may not be a disaster, just as, on the other hand, nothing says we are born sick or in sin, living in the aftermath of some mythical lost plenitude or innocence. The temporality of our lives was well described by Kierkegaard as a “repetition forward,” producing what we repeat by the repetition, like a songwriter picking at a guitar trying to find something that does not yet exist, a gradual up-building or on-going construction of the set of fragile, contestable and deconstructible meanings we call our lives. The temporality of this process is not structured around a primal fall, loss or lack, nor around a total or even partial depravity. On the contrary, it structured around an archi-faith in the coming of what we cannot see coming; an originary hope against hope that the future will be better; an originary love of the possibility of the impossible. These three, faith, hope and love, to which I add a fourth, a specter that spooks the whole thing, and sees to it that it may turn out to be a disaster. So these three, plus a little luck, bon chance, which the theologians call grace, and I qualify as the “nihilism of grace,” the grace of life, which is a finite, risky, bracing business.

Whether our difference here is a difference of emphasis I will leave to others to judge, because in the end Pete and I are on the same page, affirming the “difficulty of life” as I called it in Radical Hermeneutics, in the face of which we must learn to laugh through our tears.

My response (John goes by “Jack”):

I’m keen to respond to Jack Caputo’s beautifully written reflections and might do so in more depth on my website. But I’ll say a couple of things now. Before I do though, let me just say that I realize the ridiculousness of me responding to Jack when his work is so much more thought through and penetrating than my own. I am here to learn from Jack, and am so profoundly grateful that he would engage in this way.

Firstly, on the comments related to strategy/reach, Jack is right that my influences at the moment do limit me somewhat. I’ve missed out on at least one very big platform as a result, and it is something I need to reflect on more as I attempt to vulgarize (hopefully in the positive sense of the term) Radical Theology.

Secondly, I just want to make one quick point about the ‘lack.’ I fully agree with Jack that there is nothing we have lost. The point that I steal from Lacan is that the loss comes first (Original Sin), and the sense of loss generates the idea of something that was lost. Loss is constitutive of subjectivity. But nothing lies behind the loss (i.e. no Original Blessing).

I am drawn to Jack’s incredulity toward grand narratives, including the grand narrative of absolute negation. However I tend to see the Lacan/Žižek lack as something primarily related to a logical necessity in the birth of the subject. Anyway, just wanted to clarify that I agree with Jack that there is nothing lost. Indeed the sacrifice is pure gain… the birth of the subject. Just as some pre-societal idilic state of nature is not what was lost by the development of society, but is actually a fantasy created by it. In other words, our castration (as individuals and subjects in society) is not a loss but a pure gain that is experienced as a loss.

John Caputo’s second response:

My view is that the loss does not come first, and to think so is to adopt a corrupt view of finitude and temporality. That’s the truth behind the crypto-Calvinism quip. As Nietzsche said, the “Christian” schema is to think that in producing human beings, nature produced sick animals, and if they are not born sick Christianity will make them sick and pass itself off as the physician. I think psychoanalysis is a lot like that. The paradigm is beings born with a loss (sick, sin) which can be healed by the physician (priest/psychoanalyst).

To say the loss is first is to embrace this very paradigm. The very idea of “loss” is a missing wholeness. It is by definition the absence of something that is supposed to be there but is missing. That is not corrected but brought to its logical conclusion by then adding that the whole is a fantasy, and that we should just learn to live with the sickness/loss and treat it as a gain. That is good advice to someone born with a life-long illness or handicap, a way to try to turn their disadvantage into an advantage, but it is not a paradigm for being human. If it is, it adopts a paradigm of sickness.

L/Z are saying: as there never was a wholeness, treat the loss as a gain. I say: As there never was a loss, there never was an implied completeness. The whole schema—of loss and completeness—is a fantasy. It proceeds from a corrupt or distorted view of finitude and temporality. Or, if that is too strong, it at best describes an aberration or pathology, since some people really are born sick, in body or in mind. In that case it makes up what Heidegger would call a “regional ontology,” a local and contingent condition, not a fundamental ontology. Not a description of being human as such.

The fundamental—I would rather say radical—ontology is the ontology of finitude and temporality. There is nothing about finitude and temporality as such that implies that it is a loss or should be described as a loss (lack, fall, etc). To come to be in time is, as far as I know, the only way to come to be all. It is, in principle, good news, not a loss. It is not a loss that, since it cannot be remedied, should be regarded as a gain; it never was a loss at all. In temporality, what comes first is the beginning, and the beginning is not a loss, but a beginning, a nascence, an openness to the future, and what is made of that nascence all depends… For one thing, it depends on whether this beginning is made under the most desperate and deprived conditions, or under the conditions that would allow it to flourish. Whether the beginning is all but shut down from the start by oppressive circumstances or kept open-ended and futural. We are not born sick, but we are too often born oppressed.

So the question of the poverty, neglect and abandonment into which children are born is vastly more important problem than what for me seems to be a narrow preoccupation with the psychological fantasy of completeness. If perchance, and I say this only half in jest, this pathology really is such a big problem, and if Lacan is the answer, then we are in bigger trouble than I thought, since only a relatively few specialists have the time, talent and opportunity to figure out what he is saying, and still fewer people have the financial means to afford the treatment!

I am not saying that there are no sick people, no people who need help, and I am not denying that there people who can help them. I think there are genuine counselors, people with discernment and empathy, who in one-on-one sessions and without a big overarching theory of “the” unconscious,” as if there [is] just one, can help us out in a time of need. I actually think Jesus was one of those people and that was part of his success as a healer. Lacanian psychoanalysis is at best a local therapy, not a fundamental ontology.

I am all for denying the big Other, but I think the more radical, the more philosophical way to deny the big Other, which means to break the tyranny of certitude—a project we all share—is what Heidegger calls “overcoming metaphysics,” that is, twisting free from big overarching stories or deep accounts of how things are. A big Story, a big Other, is one of several ways to “arrest the play,” as Derrida said, all of which are variously metaphysical. I think that psychoanalysis for Freud was meant to be science, the final story, the end of the illusion of religion. I take it that in Lacan’s post-modern Freudianism, in particular, the “non-all,” breaks with Freud’s scientism. Right on. Nonetheless, psychoanalysis is a regional critique of foundationalism, focused on the unconscious, indeed on a particular highly sexualized account of the unconscious, not a fundamental analysis of being-human at large. Denying the big Other is only part of the critique of centered, certain, founded, grounded, overarching, ahistorical accounts.

What about Christianity? This I think is really interesting. I think I am the truer Christian in this debate. Unlike psychoanalysis, Calvinism, and the Christian Right—you see the association?—the Gospels seems to me to be singularly unconcerned with sexuality. What concerns them? They are mostly preoccupied with poverty, marginalization, imprisonment, and economic redistribution, which are the very terms in which Jesus announces his ministry (Luke 4:16-21). I’m with Jesus and the kingdom of God on this one.

Lastly, what about Hegel? I also think I am the truer Hegelian in all this. Žižek’s Hegel is very clever, I’ll grant that, but it is at bottom a philosophical corruption of Hegel. Hegel did not try to knock things down or slam them with a “no, no, there never was such a thing.” Hegel thought that whatever is, is true, and that whatever is true is to that precise extent real, but everything has to take its “time” in becoming true. That is an Aristotelianism (which I got from my Catholic Thomism, which explains my aversion to Calvinism) that I share with Hegel, along with Hegel’s deep distrust of Platonic (and Kantian) dualism, which treats time as—you guessed it—a “fall.” So for Hegel, religion is the truth, a form of truth, but it is only the truth in a certain form or figure, and the idea is not to slam it, to declare it an illusion and double negate it, but to figure out this figure, to “interpret” it (hermeneutics), to get at its truth in a way it itself cannot, to “repeat” it in a more radical way. Malabou calls this “speculative hermeneutics,” which is brilliant, because it brings out both the hermeneutics and the lingering metaphysics. I call it “radical hermeneutics,” meaning easy on the metaphysics, please.

Some addition sources:

Here is a short post I wrote that clarifies what I mean by Original Sin

You can follow John Caputo on Facebook here

You can request to join What is Pyrotheology here

Select Comments

I am not very competent at the issues being raised and this area of thought in general. I have some concerns that probably betray a lack of understanding of the work of these great thinkers. I only have skimmed the work of Caputo and Rollins, and an limited to only a few Zizek lectures. Please guide me, by commenting on the following concerns, thanks.

First, isn’t the idea that this fiction of a “fall” or “loss” enables us to access and express an aspect of our existential phenomenological realities? This saudade evoking narrative is particularly helpful to us and already finds itself in a lot of our aesthetic expressions (literature/art). For us to pretend to lose all illusions is to engage the role of the courageous fool, one who just doesn’t get how things are, who follows the naive logic that losing illusion is gaining clearer reality. However, to lose the fiction is to lose reality itself.

Second, the double negation is not so different from the double affirmation, in that they are both actions describing the nature of a certain reality in light of the absolute. The double negative subscribes to an indifferent Absolute “neither this nor this”; on the other hand, the double affirmation subscribes to a constitutive Absolute “this and this”. The former says that the Absolute is beyond (indifferent to) all relative categories, the latter that the Absolute is a composite of all these categories; while the former would contend that reality itself is beyond the categories of theist and atheist, the latter asserts that reality includes both categories.

Third, a “Caputo event” seems much like a miracle, a transgressing of laws of human nature like the relativity of experience or capacity for dissatisfaction. It also seems to have drunk deep of the modernist ideal of progress. Like Badiou’s “catastrophe is better than non-being”, it seems like an urging to act, and urging to create, a guilt inducing obligation and responsibility of making the future exist. As to miracles, if an event isn’t a moving beyond the rules that are in place, if it is merely a repetition, a new stanza of a song using the same language and grammatical laws (or stretch thereof) of the other stanzas, then what is so great about it, why do we limit Hegel to make place for it? Why do we seek to move beyond the temporal triad of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, to represent the world in an temporal future? The point is that while we may say that Caputo doesn’t really seek to transcend the frame, to limit nature, there is a vibe that he really does want to. This is maybe why we have to introduce a grace, an unknown factor, a chaos or randomness, the possibility of hacking/limiting the laws of nature. This grace is as unnatural and as false as the “fall” or “lack”. It is a fiction that doesn’t work quite as efficiently to access our existential phenomenological realities. In all, the Event thrives in the frame of a cosmopoetics- not of humility but of ambition.

Fourth, there is no future. This is a point of theoretical physics we have yet to contend with. We are limiting the natural realities to make space for our subjective experience. We like to claim that we are not limiting nature and that it is not primarily an anthropoetics but a cosmopoetics. However, where we don’t like it, where “as if I were dead” nature is not convenient, we claim a primacy of the subjective reality, and the importance of factoring it in as well. Why don’t we just say that (just like everyone else) we too are limiting cosmopoetics to make space for theopoetics? Instead of this hair splitting argumentation. Too, is theopoetics a part of cosmopoetics or is cosmopoetics indifferent to theopoetics?

Maybe the true dilemma is one introduced in the second point, about the nature of the absolute. Is it indifferent or constitutive. The Absolute according to what we know of theoretical physics and especially theory of relativity, is open to interpretation: either it is beyond all relatives, or it is constitutive of all relatives. Maybe it is neither of these. Or maybe it is both.

In sum, as you can see, this is from a crude reading, and formulation of what I see the dilemma is, as well as my personal reaponse to these evokative dilemmas. I appreciate your comments. Thanks.

- Anon

Introducing Peter Rollins. Post-Structuralist. Radical Theologian.

About

Peter Rollins is a provocative writer, philosopher, storyteller and public speaker who has gained an international reputation for overturning traditional notions of religion and forming “churches” that preach the Good News that we can’t be satisfied, that life is difficult, and that we don’t know the secret.

Challenging the idea that faith concerns questions relating to belief Peter’s incendiary and irreligious reading of Christianity attacks the distinction between sacred and secular, blurs the lines between theism and atheism and sets aside questions regarding life after death to explore the possibility of a life before death.

Peter gained his higher education from Queens University, Belfast and has earned degrees (with distinction) in Scholastic Philosophy (BA Hons), Political Theory (MA) and Post-Structural thought (PhD). He is the author of numerous books, including Insurrection, The Idolatry of God, and The Divine Magician. He was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, currently lives in Los Angeles and will die somewhere as yet not known.

Born 31 March 1973

Belfast, Northern Ireland

Era

21st-century philosophy/theology

School

Continental Philosophy     Postmodern Philosophy     Postmodern Christianity

Post-Structuralist     Post-Psychoanalysis     Post-Phenomenology

Existentialism     Apophatic Theology     Radical Theology

Main interests

Radical Theology

Notable ideas

Pyrotheology     Transformance Art     Suspended Space

Influences

Dietrich Bonhoeffer     John Caputo     Jacques Derrida     Meister Eckhart     Sigmund Freud

G. W. F. Hegel     Martin Heidegger     Mother Teresa     Søren Kierkegaard     Jacques Lacan

Emmanuel Lévinas     Gabriel Marcel     Karl Marx     Jean-Luc Marion     Friedrich Nietzsche

Saint Paul     Paul Tillich     Slavoj Žižek

Influenced

Jay Bakker     Rob Bell     Brian McLaren

Phyllis Tickle     Emerging Church Movement

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Rollins

Peter Rollins (born 31 March 1973) is a Northern Irish writer, public speaker, philosopher and theologian who is a prominent figure in Radical Theology.[1]

Drawing largely from various strands of Continental Philosophy, Rollins' early work operated broadly from within the tradition of Apophatic Theology, while his more recent books have signaled a move toward the theory and practice of Radical Theology. In these books Rollins develops a "religionless" interpretation of Christianity called Pyrotheology,[2] an interpretation that views faith as a particular way of engaging with the world rather than a set of beliefs about the world.[3]

In contrast to the dominant reading of Christianity, this more existential approach argues that faith has nothing to do with upholding a religious identity, affirming a particular set of beliefs or gaining wholeness through conversion. Instead he has developed an approach that sees Christianity as a critique of these very things. This anti-religious reading stands against the actual existing church and lays the groundwork for an understanding of faith as a type of life in which one is able to celebrate doubt, ambiguity and complexity while deepening care and concern for the world.[4] He argues that the event which gave rise to the Christian tradition cannot itself be reduced to a tradition, but is rather a way of challenging traditions.

In order to explore and promote these themes Rollins has founded a number of experimental communities such as ikon[5] and ikonNYC.[6] These groups describe themselves as iconic, apocalyptic, heretical, emerging and failing[7] and engage in the performance of what they call 'transformance art' [8] and the creation of "suspended space."[9] Because of their rejection of "worldview Christianity" and embrace of suspended space these groups purposelessly attempt to attract people with different political perspectives and opposing views concerning the existence of God and the nature of the world.[10]

Although Rollins does not directly identify with the emerging church movement,[11] he has been a significant influence on the movement's development.[12][13]

Early life and education

Rollins grew up in East Belfast during The Troubles,[14] a period of intense and violent sectarian conflict that erupted in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s and resulted in the deaths of more than 3,600 people[15] before the signing of the Good Friday Agreement on April 10, 1998,[16] which is generally regarded as the end of the conflict, though pockets of violence persist today. He attended Orangefield Boys High School and left at the age of sixteen without the qualifications required for further study. He was unemployed for several years before taking a job as a youth worker in Carrickfergus and working in a homeless shelter run by the Simon Community on the Falls Road, Belfast. He then went on to study an access course on the Castlereagh Campus of the Belfast Metropolitan College (an intensive one-year course designed for disadvantaged students who wish to attend university but lack the entry requirements).[17] Rollins has a B.A. Honors in Scholastic Philosophy, an M.A. in Political Theory and Social Criticism, and a Ph.D dealing with Post-Structural Theory from Queen's University, Belfast.[18]

Academics such as Cathy Higgins have explored how an understanding of Rollins activism requires an appreciation of The Troubles. The development of groups like the Belfast-based ikon collective was at least partially a response to the pervasive atmosphere of violence, economic hardship, rigid identity markers and deep rooted sectarianism in operation in the province. The sectarian violence combined with the use of religion to legitimate injustice, the fundamentalism of many Protestant churches and the sexual abuse scandals of the Catholic Church, played a major role in creating the frame of reference from which Rollins works.[19] The result being an emphasis on creating practices designed so that “participants [could] set aside the various identities that define them" and gather as a gathering of equals to "share stories, struggles, and rituals that help them respond to one another in a Christ-like way.” [20] In contrast to a dogmatic form of religion and she notes that ikon provided a space in which “doubt is viewed as healthy and necessary for owning our material reality, vulnerability and limitedness”.[21]

Career

While operating broadly outside the academy Rollins does work with various academic institutions across the UK and US. He has been a research associate with the Irish School of Ecumenics (Trinity College, Dublin)[22] and is currently on faculty at the Global Center for Advanced Study.[23]

Early writing

Rollins' unpublished PhD (His Colour is Our Blood: A Phenomenology of the Prodigal Father) offers a survey of religious thinking in the aftermath of Marx, Freud and Nietzsche. It engages directly with Martin Heidegger's critique of onto-theology and explores the religious significance of Jacques Derrida's post-structural theory and Jean-Luc Marion's saturated phenomenology (drawing out the points of connection and conflict between them). This manuscript represents Rollins' initial attempt to articulate an approach to faith that would short-circuit the categories of theism and atheism and problematize the various debates that arise from them. In so doing this marks an approach to Christianity that is not related to a system of belief but rather to a particular mode of life.

His first book, How (Not) to Speak of God (2006) popularized the main themes of his PhD by blending the apophatic work of Meister Eckhart[24] and pseudo-Dionysius[25] with the Post-structural work of Derrida[26] and Marion.[27] How (Not) to Speak of God also outlined how the theory was developed and worked out in a concrete way through the ikon collective (the second half of the book outlined a series of 'transformance art' liturgical experiments).[28]

While his early work is marked by themes that continue to play a central role in his later development (such as doubt, complexity and ambiguity), they remain largely within a specifically theistic and mystical register.[29]

Shift to radical theology

The Fidelity of Betrayal (2008) signalled a movement from apophatic and post-structural discussions witnessed in his PhD and How (Not) to Speak of God into Radical Theology.[30] With this work we begin to see a critique of purely theistic forms of faith and witness the growing influence of political philosopher Slavoj Žižek and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in his overall project.[31] The Fidelity of Betrayal is thus a work that bridges the more mystical influence of his first writings toward a theological materialism, a trajectory that was subsequently fleshed out and deepened in Insurrection (2011) and The Idolatry of God (2013). In these later books the influence of Hegel, Žižek, Lacan, later Bonhoeffer and Tillich comes to the fore, though John Caputo remains as an ongoing point of reference.[32]

Story-telling

Rollins incorporates narrative forms into his talks to create a more informal style of communication. In 2009 Rollins published The Orthodox Heretic, a book of 33 short, parable-like stories. He has also written fairytales[33] and a play on the theme of desire.[34]

Current thinking

Rollins' overall project is marked by the themes of doubt, complexity, unknowing and embracing brokenness.[35] More than this, he has been interested in showing that these themes are central to the founding event of Christianity.[36] He is interested in showing how the central scandal of Christianity offers us a critique of religion[37] (including the need to believe) and tribal identity,[38] both of which have been lost in the actually existing church; an institution that he argues represents a fundamental betrayal of the insurrectionary power of faith.[39] His work is an attempt to show that Christianity does not rest on theistic belief, some commitment to supernaturalism or the affirmation of some set of dogmas.[40] Rollins has named his theological program pyrotheology.[41] The name was inspired by the Spanish anarchist Buenaventura Durruti's statement that "the only church that illuminates is a burning church."[42] The phrase has also inspired some of Slavoj Žižek's work related to radical theology.[43]

Rollins’ work operates at the intersection of where Post-Structuralism, Psychoanalysis, Phenomenology, and Existentialism meet and inform each other.[44] What follow are some of the major themes evidenced in his project:

• Humans have a natural and destructive disposition toward the pursuit of satisfaction: By employing insights developed by psychoanalysis, Rollins argues that humans tend to seek some object that would seem to promise satisfaction.[45] This very pursuit is, however, itself destructive, for we either don't get what we seek above all else and thus always long for it, or we do get it and discover that it is actually unable to offer us what we sought.[46]

• Humans have a natural and destructive disposition to seek out certainty: Employing the insights of childhood development in the area of metapsychology Rollins argues that, as children, we identify with false images that help us to cover over our weakness and dependence on others.[47] Rollins claims that adults often remain caught within these false images.[48] Our various beliefs offer us a certain level or security and sense of belonging. But he argues that they ultimately damage us by distancing us from others, causing us to repress doubt and preventing us from being positively impacted by people who think and practice in ways that are different from our own.[49]

• Religion falsely promises to offer the certainty and satisfaction that we seek: While certainty and satisfaction are being offered to us from multiple sources, Rollins argues that the church offers the paradigmatic version of this pursuit. God is offered as that which will give us satisfaction and a certainty not available elsewhere.[50] He argues that anything that we believe offers this type of happiness and confidence is actually nothing but an idol that offers, ironically, the opposite: dissatisfaction and uncertainty.[51]

• The Liberal and Progressive forms of Church are structurally similar to Conservative and Fundamentalist Church: While Conservative and Fundamentalist churches can be seen to fall into the problems Rollins outlines, his main concern lies with Liberal and Progressive communities. He argues that Liberal and Progressive churches verbally advocate doubt, complexity, ambiguity and brokenness, yet generally enact an idolatrous view of faith in their liturgical structures.[52][53]

• Faith is not a system that offers certainty and satisfaction but is a mode of living free from these drives.

Projects

Rollins's project involves attempting to encourage a constant rupturing of ideological forms of Christianity through the development of non-dogmatic collectives that embrace doubt, complexity and ambiguity, open themselves up to critique, and face up to the human experience of lack.[54][55][56] He has stated that these communities have a structural similarity to twelve step programs insofar as they involve facing up to one's issues and working them through in communities where grace and acceptance are fundamental principles.[57] Psychoanalytic ideas, particularly from the school of Lacan, play a fundamental role.[58][59] Rollins has developed a number of "contemplative practices" that are designed to help in this process.[60]

Transformance art

Transformance art is a psychoanalytically influenced approach that combines music, visual imagery, soundscapes, theatre, poetry, storytelling, ritual and reflection to form a space in which people are invited to question their cultural, political, and religious views, let go of the pursuit of wholeness, sensitise themselves to the needs of others, and learn to embrace existence.[61] Central to transformance art events is the creation of suspended space where the various divisions and distinctions that separate people are placed into question.[62] The aim of this is to create a space where people might encounter each other as fellow human beings and expose the structures that promote inequality.[63][64]

* * * * * * * * * *

What if the most diseased element of our religious, political and cultural life could be made to vanish before our very eyes, only to reappear in a fundamentally healthy and liberating form? In The Divine Magician this possibility is precisely what is presented through a subversive reading of Christianity that argues for a faith beyond dogma, doctrine and tradition, a faith that doesn’t uphold a particular religious identity or demand some sectarian allegiance. Instead he employs the structure of a magic trick to offer up an irreligious reading of faith that stands against these very things. Rollins interrogates traditional religious notions from a revolutionary and refreshingly original perspective.

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With sensitivity to the Christian tradition and a rich understanding of postmodern thought, Rollins argues for a radically new form of church that offers a singular, unprecedented message of transformation with the potential to revolutionize the theological and moral architecture of Western Christianity. How (Not) to Speak of God takes its stand on the claim that Christian faith is not simply able to make room for doubt, mystery and unknowing, but rather fundamentally embraces them. In this book the reader is confronted with a type of theory and practice that ruptures the binary oppositions between theist and atheist, sacred and secular, belief and unbelief to provide a truly new vision of future church.

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In this incendiary new work, the controversial author and speaker Peter Rollins proclaims that Christian faith is not an otherworldly faith interested in the possibility of life after death but rather is an invitation to discover the reality of life before death. In order to unearth this truth, Rollins prescribes a radical and wholesale critique of contemporary Christianity that he calls pyro-theology. It is only as we submit our spiritual practices, religious rituals, and dogmatic affirmations to the flames of fearless interrogation that we come into contact with the reality that Christianity is in the business of transforming our world rather than offering a way of interpreting or escaping it - Belief in the Resurrection means but one thing: Participation in an Insurrection.

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What if one of the core demands of a radical Christianity lay in a call for its betrayal, while the ultimate act of affirming God required the forsaking of God? And what if fidelity to the Judeo-Christian Scriptures demanded their renunciation? In short, what would it mean if the only way of finding real faith involved betraying it with a kiss? Employing the insights of mysticism and deconstructive theory, The Fidelity of Betrayal delves into the subversive and revolutionary nature of a Christianity demands us to betray all institutions that claim to arise from it. This is not some argument against structures but rather for a type of church against church. A church that stands opposed to all religious dogmas, that calls into question its own orthodoxies and that invites all people to find meaning in the work of love.

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In contrast to the usual understanding of the “Good News” as a message offering satisfaction and certainty, Rollins argues for a radical and shattering alternative. He explores how the Good News actually involves embracing the idea that we can’t be whole, that life is difficult, and that we are in the dark. Arguing that God has traditionally been approached as a product that will render us complete, remove our suffering and reveal the answers, he introduces an incendiary approach to faith that invites us to embrace our brokenness, face our unknowing and accept the difficulties of existence. Only then, he argues, can we truly rob death of its sting and enter into the fullness of life.

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In this bold new book Peter Rollins presents a vision of faith that has little regard for the institutions of Christendom or the practices of the actual existing church. Yet his uncompromising critique of religion, while often unsettling, is infused with a deep and abiding love for what it means to genuinely live with a concern for the world. The Orthodox Heretic plants thirty-three explosive parables into the hearts and minds of the reader that are designed to blow apart any dogmatic, religious defences that protect us from encountering the subversive core of Christianity. In so doing this subversive text seeks to expose the reader once more to the life affirming and world-transforming violence of faith. A faith that is not concerned with beliefs about the world, but with a different way of being in the world.

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Buy Audiobook (read by Peter Rollins, with music from Dubh)