For Halloween I thought I would offer you a trailer for the surreal, disturbing and mesmerizing documentary Hell House directed by George Ratliff. In it we are introduced to a church in which the parishioners passionately re-create their fantasy of hell so as to scare heaven into peoples hearts (although it appears that this phenomenon is more widespread than one particular church). I gotta find me one of these tonight!
To mark the fact that my first ever Twitter parable will be released on the 01/11/2009 (1st November) the parable itself will be structured like this,
01 – My first twitter parable
11 – The length of the title (new title is ‘The Miracle’)
2009 – The length of the parable itself
Because Twitter includes spaces as characters I have also included them.
The parable itself will be split up into three sections that will be posted on three consecutive days (appearing between 11:00 and 12:00 EDT).
I have also created a facebook page for the event where I will write up some post parable commentary and where you can offer comments, criticisms and reflections. If you want to follow the action sign up to my Twitter account today.
I am excited to announce that between 1st and 3rd November I am going to offer a new parable entitled ‘The Miracle Worker’ exclusively via twitter. To get the parable join me on here, oh and if you feel inclined, spread the word! Thanks.
I have been in the US for just over a week now and am settling in well, thanks mostly to the generosity and kindness of those around me. But I must not forget that I am here for a reason other than hanging out in Manhattan! I am here because I have been given the opportunity to concentrate on developing and sharing my work.
Over the last few years I have spent an unhealthy amount of time reflecting upon how we can revolutionize existing church structures and birth new faith communities that will show how Christianity can be a vital, life-giving, liberating force in the 21st century. As such I am keen to work with groups (both those who are part of existing church communities and those who are committed to organizing in new ways) that are willing to explore some of this thinking with me.
My current work has been fueled by my desire to locate an Archimedean point with which to move the church forward and is informed by my grassroots involvement with ikon, my academic study and the research that gave birth to How (Not) to Speak of God, The Fidelity of Betrayal and The Orthodox Heretic.
While I will be unveiling the core of this new work in my upcoming pub tour (the planning of which is now reaching completion after almost a year of dreaming) I want to explore it in other contexts as well. So if you would like me to speak at a conference, university etc. etc. then just click here for more information.
I am currently part of a planning team who are dreaming up a conference that will take place over St. Patrick’s day in Ireland. More information will be following in the next month. But at the moment we have confirmed Phylis Tickle and Dave Tomlinson as keynote speakers. Myself and some others will also be contributing. There will be music from a well known signer songwriter, in depth conversation and transformance art from ikon.
The conference begins on the evening of the 16th March 2010 and finishes on the morning of the 18th. During this time we will be exploring an incendiary idea that houses the power to help us rethink church life. More information to follow shortly
I am going to spend the next few months working hard on completing my next book. I am very excited about it to say the least! As a little teaser here is an outline of the content as it presently stands,
Introduction: The ‘Circumcision Question’
Chapter One: On not knowing what to do (and doing it)
Chapter Two: Avoiding real change by doing something
Chapter Three: To believe is human, to doubt divine
Chapter Four: I believe in the Insurrection
Chapter Five: Neither Christian nor non-Christian
Chapter Six: Convincing the chickens
Chapter Seven: Be sensitive… offend everyone
Chapter Eight: Refusing to lead
Chapter Nine: It’s Sunday, but Mondays coming
Conclusion: There is a fire in the building, please step inside…
In the mean time don’t forget The Orthodox Heretic, she is very lonely in the Amazon store house and is being picked on by the Mark Driscoll books. Please consider giving her a good home!
I have never liked these ‘Britain’s got talent’ type shows. But when my friend Jonny McEwen posted up this video from ‘Ukraine’s Got Talent’ I was just blown away. The artist is Kseniya Simonova and in this video she depicts Russia’s ‘Great Patriotic War’ against the Nazis in the 1940’s. It is simply beautiful,
At sporadic times in the history of the Church a ‘circumcision question’ is raised. By this I mean a question concerning what full participation in the Christ Event requires. I call it a ‘circumcision question’ simply because the issue of circumcision was the first question of this kind for the early church. The debate at that time concerned whether this outward act was required in order to fully participate in Christ.
A circumcision question has nothing to do with disagreements within the shared theological horizon, but rather questions the very horizon itself. It does not revolve around the differences within and between established Christian groups but rather places into question what they all take for granted. It cuts across what is assumed, it short-circuits the existing structures, and it appears to threaten the very essence of Christianity itself.
But the circumcision question, when properly conceived and interrogated, houses the power to expose once more the breathtaking potential that lies nestled within the actually existing church. It is the catalyst that drives us to pry off the centuries of presuppositions that have become encrusted on the Event of faith. It is the white hot fire that consumes the outer shell of Christendom to reveal, once more, the inner kernel of Christianity. As such the circumcision question is never one of addition (what more needs to be added) but rather of subtraction (what needs to be taken away).
I stand convinced that we are facing a circumcision question today of monumental importance. A question that houses a dangerous and potentially devastating power to rupture and re-imagine the present configuration of faith life.
Describing what that question is and detailing its cataclysmic significance is a vital job for us today. And it is one that I am personally wholly dedicated to exploring in the coming year. Primarily via my next book (provisionally entitled, Before the Beginning: Lessons in Theological Insurrection), my 2010 pub tour and some key speaking engagements.
If you are interested in having me speak on this issue, click on ‘About Peter’ for details.
Last night I got a chance to address ikon for the last time before my move to the States. Having said that, ikon remains my primary community, one I will visit regularly and hopefully return to in the not too distant future. But still, it was a deeply significant evening for me.
The night itself consisted of two parts, with a musical interlude from the singer Willow and the DJ Dubh. In the first section I gave a talk that attempted to get to the heart of why I started ikon and why I write what I do. In short, a talk that outlined what drives me. By doing this I wanted to impart something of the underlying values that might continue to inform ikon’s journey in my absence. The talk itself dealt with the idea of Conversion and a non-religious reading of Christ’s Death and Resurrection. The material that I shared last night will make up the main content of the Pub Tour in 2010.
The second half of the evening consisted of a conversation between myself and the BBC presenter William Crawley. This was perhaps the most interesting part of the night as William very quickly began to interrogate me on some of my beliefs.
The first question that William asked was, ‘do you believe in God’?
On the surface this seems like a rather straightforward question. But this seeming straightforwardness is a mere appearance. It can seem as if the question is unambiguous in its meaning and that there are a relatively limited set of responses (’Yes’, ‘No’, weak agnosticism, strong agnosticism, ignositicism).
The first thing to notice however is that the question itself rests on the idea that we all have a shared understanding of what belief is and what we mean by the word ‘God’. And, of course, in our cultural context most of us do have a shared understanding of these terms. If we use Saussure’s linguistics theory of the sign we can begin to isolate what that shared understanding is. For Saussure a linguistic sign is composed of a signifier (word) and a signified (a concept that the word brings to mind). Using this idea the question basically can be broken down as such,
Do you believe in God (the chain of signifiers)
—————————————
Do you believe there is good enough empirical data to assent to the existence of an extra-linguistic Supreme being governing the universe (signified)
The problem here is that my claims about God are fundamentally theological rather than empirical. While I have an interest in the empirical question (as a philosopher) this is not relevant to my Christianity. If I was asked this question in the university I would be happy to discuss it, but being asked it in ikon is problematic as it might suggest to people that ones answer to this question is somehow important to the life of faith. To me it is as relevant in the setting of ikon as the question, ‘do you believe in string theory’. However it is more dangerous because its irrelevance is harder to sound out.
Before answering such a question I would need to spend considerable time showing how the chain of signifers above (’Do you believe in God’) should be heard differently in a Christian setting (i.e. they ought to signify something different to a mere empirical assent).
For example, when I argue that ‘on the Cross the God of religion dies’, I am not saying that some Supreme being literally ceased to exist 2000 years ago. Rather I am pointing out that the body of works known as the New Testament opens up a new and liberating way of understanding the signifier ‘God’ (in Christ a new signification is opened up). Here is one way of rendering it,
Do you believe in God (chain of signifiers)
————————————
Is your entire being caught up in a commitment to transforming the world in love (signified)
Here ‘belief’ takes on the idea of a wholehearted commitment and ‘God’ becomes connected with the idea of generosity, love and grace. The ideas that God should be described as love and that belief in God is intimately connected to how we treat our neighbor are, of course, deeply heretical and one must be wary of even suggesting them. They are incendiary ideas that are unlikely to find a home in any institution where Christian belief is disfigured into gnosticism (where belief is about accepting certain knowledge claims).
So the question remains… as a Christian, do I believe in God? Well, while I am drawn to the idea that there is a Supreme Being I must confess that I don’t believe in God, at least most of the time.
But if you ask me whether I aspire to believing in God then, with all of my being I say yes, yes and again yes.
I would like to share two powerful animations that were created anonymously by a couple of underground artists. The main creative force behind them is an individual who is deeply involved in grass-roots environmental and political action. As a Christian anarchist he has a powerful and incisive critique of the institutional church. Yet it is no armchair assault. Rather he has dedicated himself to actively supporting individuals and groups committed to positively transforming society from the ground up. In his dislike of celebrity culture (particularly of the religious kind) he has no interest in building a personal platform and so remains in the shadows.
In a world where, to quote Kierkegaard, leadership so often reflects the tyrant (the one who leads from their ego) it is rare to find leaders who are martyrs (who have laid down their ego and are driven by something greater). Today Banksy remains one of the few successful artists who has renounced the fame game in the very midst of his fame (indeed, it is not Banksy’s actual work that is his greatest challenge to society -the market has swallowed it up and made it desirable to those it critiques- but rather the fact that he has remained out of the spotlight).
Peter is the founder and co-ordinator of Ikon (a community which describes itself as iconic, apocalyptic, heretical, emerging and failing) as well as being a writer and freelance lecturer in Philosophy
