Makeesha put me onto this very good interview with Peter Rollins of Ikon Community in Belfast. You gotta love that Irish accent (“suspended space”), not to mention his explanation of “hypernonymous”.
I’ve the sudden urge to pick up and read his book, How (Not) to Speak of God — Marks of the Emerging Church. The book includes more explanation of what he means by “hypernonymous,” but I enjoyed so many of the threads in this interview that I’m sure the book must be more of the same… like flipping believe-behave-belong to become belong-behave-believe. Originally the title of the book didn’t grab me, but now I’ll have to track down a copy. I confess I’m not as familiar with Rollins as I should be. He’s no intellectual slouch, and I like what I’ve heard so far. For good measure, here’s an interview by Becky Garrison at The Door and another interview at Emergingchurch.info, where one of Rollins’ responses is:
Be cynical. The original cynics where a dusty group of people who questioned ethics not because they hated ethics but because they loved ethics so much. They questioned God and religion not because they where sceptical but because they where obsessed with God and religion. Questioning God is not questioning God, but only questioning ‘God’ – in other words our understanding of God. In the same way that Marxism helped liberation theology to find a voice so deconstruction (which is very cynical) will help revolutionise Western Christianity.
I love this idea of cynical revolution — now there’s something I can participate in!
By the way, this post is my way of marking St. Paddy’s Day (a day late) — along with picking up a used copy of Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization last night after stepping out with a friend for dinner and Guinness, of course.
If you are not wanting to spend the cash now, feel free to borrow my copy of “How (Not)…”. Let me know.
Jamie, did you review the book anywhere? What did you think of it?
Somehow I was in a cone of silence and didn’t know about this book until a few weeks ago. Then, the cone lifted and I’m hit with it in all sorts of directions. I”m going to pick it up too.
Until then, I’m going to reserve my judgments. I do like what he says, but I think he’s going in an ultimately fruitless direction. I’m not a philosopher by any means but I think that trying to wrestle emerging theology into a continental postmodernism isn’t going to be the answer. Yes, that philosophy is saying a lot, but it’s not unlike the Matrix trilogy. At first, as with the first movie, it’s so fascinating and asking really great questions and coming up with lots of fun imagery. Deconstruction is cool! But, the second and third movies descend in to confusion and frustration.
There are no answers or directions or satisfaction. You’re left isolated more disappointed, even with the first movie.
This is no less true for Liberation theology and Marxism. Yes, marxism gave liberation theologies words and tools they used to build their theology. But where is liberation theology today? The Base communities that sparked in 70s and 80s are no longer near the movement they were. There is still tremendous poverty. The Catholic Church, led by men who grew up in and near communism, sharply attacked liberation theologians, but not for their core message, rather for what the marxism itself led to.
So, liberation theologians like Gustavo Gutierrez made a huge shift in the 80s. They put aside their marxist language and moved onwards, embracing what is truly Christian about such emphases on the poor and set aside the conection as being distracting rather than helpful. Marx was needed because Christianity lost its own language about the poor, but Marx wasn’t a good or satisfying continuing resource, especially given the real damage that Marxism has caused to the most needy.
We have to not only decontruct we have to construct, as Paul calls us to do in 1 Corinthians. Edifying (to construct) is the very task of the gifts of those who make up a church. That’s why, ultimately, we need to move away from the continental postmodernism (who are presently cool like the first Matrix movie) and find better resources in other forms of postmodernism like Alasdair MacIntyre.
Try being a Nazarene and just finding out about this? I am so angry, I have got together with my pastor and we are going to start with our church and and work our way up to the General Church if we have to. This is nuts! God said he is the same yesterday,today, and tomorrow. Why are we changing? He didn’t! Get back to basics church!
Lynne god may not change but his children do