Atheism for Lent: Derren Brown

Tonight at "Atheism for Lent," we split into two groups (there were about 14 of us total) to watch Derren Brown's "Messiah." We spent a bit of time marvelling at how good he is at reading and predicting human behaviour, and wondering how the programme is edited to best showcase his talents. Bracketing his atheistic scepticism about whether or not God exists and whether or not psychics are charlatans, we thought about what his suspicion about why we believe what we believe and why we behave as we do might mean for our faith. In particular, we thought about Brown's presentation of the "false logic" at work in magic (see here), in which we miss certain elements in the trick, thinking they are unimportant and therefore not consciously recognising their existence. Might this also be happening in religion? What might the steps be that we are not aware of, or that we repress?

Discussing Brown's perspective on magic made me think about Slavoj Zizek's reflections on Jesus, in The Monstrosity of Christ, where he links the sequence of a magic trick in Chrisopher Nolan's (2006) movie The Prestige to the crucifixion.

'...when a magician performs a trick with a small bird which disappears in a cage on the table, a little boy in the audience starts to cry, claiming that the bird was killed. The magician approahches him and finishes the trick, genlty producing a living bird out of his hand - but the boy is not satisfied, insisting that this must be another bird, the dead one's brother. After the show, we see the magician in the room behind the stage, brining in a flattened cage and throwing a squashed bird into a trash bin - the boy was right.' (The Monstrosity of Christ, p.286).

This squashed bird is part of the magic trick that the skilled magician doesn't let us see, the step that we miss.

So in the context of tonight's discussion about magic and religion, I remembered this aspect of the movie and wondered whether there are steps in the "false logic" of religion that we miss either because they seem unimportant or because, like the squashed bird, they are too traumatic to bring into consciousness.

Zizek writes of Jesus as the 'supreme squashed bird' (The Monstrosity of Christ, p.291), and perhaps the crucifixion is one of the traumatic steps in religion that we too often repress, preferring to focus on what Derren Brown calls 'the easier pattern' of Jesus' life and resurrection.

For the material I prepared on Derren Brown, see

Religion as Trickery: Brown (1)

Religion as Trickery: Brown (2)

Religion as Trickery: Brown (3)

Religion as Trickery: Brown (4)

Religion as Trickery: Brown (5)

Although I'm off to the States on Tuesday for a conference, I've lined up some posts about Ricky Gervais, and we'll be watching his film "The Invention of Lying" next week at Journey.

Atheism for Lent in Birmingham: Introduction

In the run-up to the start of Journey's "Atheism for Lent" Course in Birmingham next Sunday (March 13th), I'm going to post sections of the Course Booklet that I wrote as preparatory material. This means that you don't have to be in Birmingham to read what we're looking at each week.

NOTE: This Course relies heavily upon Merold Westphal’s Suspicion and Faith: The Religious Uses of Modern Atheism (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007[1998]), as well as print publications and online media by Pete Rollins. A very good book which introduces various theories of religion (including Freud and Marx) is Daniel L. Pal’s Eight Theories of Religion (Oxford University Press, 2006).

We start with an Introduction to the Course in general and some Commitments:

Giving up God for Lent means that we will...

contribute to a supportive group environment in which we can experience together the trauma of wrestling with perceptive criticisms of religion and God; read the often demanding preparatory material before the group meets; let these critics judge us (as well as critically judging them), allowing our faith to be put into question; reflect on our experiences of the absence of the presence of God; and commit fully to this Lenten process of purging and to see the Course through to the end.

The Role of the Facilitator(s) IS NOT to refute atheist criticisms of religion and God; and NOT to reassure the group that faith can withstand these criticisms.

The Role of the Facilitator(s) IS to enable the group to get the most out of the events; to join the group in the process of questioning and self-reflection; to facilitate understanding and discussion; and to experience with the group the possibility that "the atheist other" can be an instrument of our own transformation.

Introduction: Atheism for Lent

From Peter Rollins, The Orthodox Heretic, pp.104-106:

There was once a world-renowned philosopher who, from an early age, set himself the task of proving once and for all the nonexistence of God. Of course, such a task was immense, for the various arguments for and against the existence of God had done battle over the ages without either being able to claim victory.

He was, however, a genius without equal, and he possessed a singular vision that drove him to work each day and long into every night in order to understand the intricacies of every debate, every discussion, and every significant work on the subject.

The philosopher’s project began to earn him respect among his fellow professor when, as a young man, he published the first volume of what would turn out to be a finely honed, painstakingly researched, encyclopaedic masterpiece on the subject of God. The first volume of this work argued persuasively that the various ideas of god that had been expressed throughout antiquity were philosophically incoherent and logically flawed. As each new volume appeared, he offered, time and again, devastating critiques of the theological ideas that had been propagated through different periods of history. In his early forties, he completed the last volume, which brought him up to the present day.

However, the completion of this work did not satisfy him. He still had not found a convincing argument that would demonstrate once and for all the nonexistence of God. For all he had shown was that all the notions of God up to that time had been problematic.

So he spent another sixteen years researching arguments and interrogating them with a highly nuanced, logical analysis. But by now he was in his late fifties and had slowly begun to despair of ever completing his life project.

Then, late one evening while he was locked away in his study, bent wearily over his old oak desk, surrounded by a vast sea of books, he felt a deep stillness descend upon the room. As he sat there motionless, everything around him seemed to radiate an inexpressible light and warmth. Then, deep in his heart he heard the voice of God address him:

“Dear friend, the task you have set yourself is a futile one. I have watched all these years as you poured your being into this endless task. Yet, you fail to understand that your project can be brought to completion only with my help. Your dedication and single-mindedness have not gone unnoticed, and they have won my respect. As a result, I will tell you a sacred secret meant only for a few… Dear friend, I do not exist.”

Then, all of a sudden, everything appeared as it was before, and the philosopher was left sitting at his desk with a deep smile breaking across his face. He put his pen away and left his study, never to return. Instead, in gratitude to God for helping him complete his lifelong project, he dedicated his remaining years to serving the poor.

From Ikon, "The God Delusion," Greenbelt Arts Festival, Aug 26 2007:

My first encounter with this secret occurred a number of years ago while I was walking home, late one evening. As I weaved my way through the half-dead trees that inhabited a piece of wasteland connecting my origin to my destination, I heard an inner voice calling my name. I stood still and listened intently to what I took to be nothing less than the solemn, silent voice of God. As I stood there, rooted to the ground, God spoke to me, repeating four simple words, “I do not exist.”

“I do not exist”? What could this possibly mean?

One thing for sure was that this was not a simple atheism, for it was God who was claiming God’s nonexistence. In that wasteland, I was confronted with something different. I was confronted with the erasure of God by none other than God. I was confronted with the idea that, while God may not be something, that did not imply that God was nothing.

Up until then I had considered God to be just one more thing in the world, albeit the greatest. But after this event, I wondered whether this was an inappropriate way of approaching God. Perhaps God ought not to be thought of as an object in the world, but rather as that which transforms my interaction with all objects in the world.

What if I was being taught that every time I affirm God I simultaneously affirm something less than God? What if this God I affirm is always a delusion formed from the materials of my imagination and desires?

Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche are three of the great atheist critics of religion and ‘we stand accused by their critique of being Pharisees, of practicing a self-serving religion that is idolatrous by our own standards’ (Westphal, Suspicion and Faith, p.59). These same criticisms of religion can be found within Christianity itself, issued by prophets like Amos and Isaiah – who have God say, “I hate your church; what I want is justice” – the Apostle James, Saint Paul, and Jesus himself. These biblical and philosophical figures share, then, a protest against what can be called ‘instrumental religion, the piety that reduces God to a means or instrument for achieving our own human purposes with professedly divine power and sanction’ (Suspicion and Faith, p.6).

This means that engaging with the work of Freud, Marx and Nietzsche as critics of instrumental religion can form part of a Lenten practice of purging ourselves of a faith in which God and religion are used as masks for self-interested desire and aggression, as crutches to cope with the uncertainties and hardships of life, and as legitimation for the oppression and persecution of others.

Key to this process is thinking about the differences between our ‘apparent motives’ and our ‘operative motives,’ between the rationalisations or reasons we give for our beliefs and actions (to ourselves as well as to others) and the motives that are revealed when we direct attention to the functions or operations of those beliefs and actions (Suspicion and Faith, p.29). How do our religious beliefs and actions function? Do these functions reveal ‘the anxious concern for happiness, the dread of future misery, the terror of death, the thirst for revenge, and appetite for food and other necessaries’ (David Hume, The Natural History of Religion, p.31)? Do they reveal, in other words, a mature faith, or a faith ‘formed from the materials of [our] imagination and desires?’

Since ‘religion can hide from us as nothing else can the face of God’ (Martin Buber, Between Man and Man, p.18), we attempt through this “Atheism for Lent” Course a careful self-examination, to perhaps discover a richer faith beyond an instrumental religion of immediate self-interest.

Further, we hope to experience something of the Crucifixion story that is too often neglected. Jesus’ cry from the cross – “Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani?” “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” – is a moment of divine abandonment, a moment when even God experiences the absence of God, feeling deserted and alone. At this Easter time, we can recall our own experiences of the absence of the presence of God, knowing that Christianity is a religion which recognises and remembers these very real experiences.

Doubt and disbelief are not only for the atheists.

Special Issue on Zizek's Theology

The International Journal of Zizek Studies has a special issue, guest edited by Marcus Pound, on Zizek's Theology. Vol. 4, no.4 (2010) contains the following articles (download them by clicking on titles):

Marcus Pound, "Zizek, Milbank and the Broken Middle"
Mads Peter Karlsen, "From a Perverse to a Suffering God - On Slavoj Zizek's Materialist Reading of G.K. Chesterton"
Jayne Svenungsson, "Wrestling with Angels: Or How to Avoid Decisionist Messianic Romances"
Daniel R. Boscaljon, "Zizek's Atheist Theology"
Thomas Lynch, "Religion and Revolution: Slavoj Zizek's Challenge to Liberation Theology"
Dan Webb, "The Unbearable Truth of the Image: Zizek's Iconoclastic Reading of Iconoclasm and Peter Brown's Holy Man"
Adam Kotsko, "Christian Experience Continues: On Zizek's Work Since The Parallax View"
Marcus Pound, "Comic Subjectivity: Zizek and Zupancic's Spiritual Work of Art"
Marika Rose, "A Modest Plea for a Chestertonian Reading of The Monstrosity of Christ"

Milbank-Zizek debate in Expositions

Villanova's Expositions vol.4 2010 (no2.1-2) contains an academic roundtable on the philosophical and theological issues being debated by John Milbank and Slavoj Zizek in their The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?

You can view the table of contents here or download the articles below by clicking on the relevant PDF:

Academic Roundtable
Introduction to the Academic Roundtable
PDF
Gregory Hoskins
87-88

The Monstrosity of Protestantism
PDF
Jeffrey W. Robbins
89-94

To Enchant or Disenchant? A Plea for Ambiguity in the Contrasting Musical Ontologies of Slavoj Žižek and John Milbank
PDF
Brian D. Robinette
95-104

The Faith of Job and the Recovery of Christian Atheism
PDF
Frederiek Depoortere
105-113

Monstrosity Exhibition
PDF
Clayton Crockett
114-122

Missed Encounter, Missed Opportunity
PDF
Adam Kotsko

Hauerwas and Milbank

I couldn't make it to this event since it was too close to my trip back from Missouri, so I was really glad to learn that there is a recording available to download from here: "Stanley Hauerwas, John Milbank and Luke Bretherton in Conversation," marking the launch of Hauerwas' autobiography Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir (recorded Oct 18 2010, Faith and Public Policy Forum, King's College, London).

Attending to the Other Round-Up: Part One

I got back yesterday from the International Society for Religion, Literature and Culture conference, "Attending to the Other: Critical Theory and Spiritual Practice," hosted by the Faculty of Theology at St. Catherine's College, Oxford. Here's a (very long) round-up of the event:




After drinks in a splendid room in the Bodleian Library, the first night consisted of a dinner and a keynote address by Amy Hollywood (Harvard University), "A for Antigone: Reading Derrida's 'Differance' Again" - which was hard to follow not only due to the content, but also because of the aforementioned drinking and because she spoke very quickly and often too quietly, and, ultimately, wasn't particularly "audience friendly" in her presentation style, which was disappointing. Pamela Sue Anderson (University of Oxford) chaired the session, and it was nice to catch up after meeting her at the inaugural conference for the Association for Continental Philosophy of Religion (Liverpool Hope University) last year.

I stayed at my uncle and aunt's house "near" (40 min train ride, 30 min walk) Oxford to try to keep the cost of the conference down, but on Saturday morning someone had stolen copper off the railway line or something, so my uncle very kindly drove me in so I wasn't late for the start of the day. After a quick cup of coffee from the refectory, I went to Modern Theology panel of the first parallel sessions of the conference, chaired by Trevor Hart (Universiy of St. Andrews). I particularly enjoyed Natalie Wigg's paper, "Christology as Crucible: Practising Wisdom at the Intersection of Church and Academy," which framed theology as a component of ecclesial practice, but was primarily a methodological reflection on her positioning within the church community she is studying.

She began with an introduction to Pierre Bordieu's notion of "habitus" and by characterising the ethnographer's task as that of identifying the objective structures and governing forces that shape participants. The ethnographer has to also, however, develop the subjective experience of possessing the habitus him/herself. However, unlike researchers such as Loic Wacquant, who himself became a student of boxing in order to study the habitus of prizefighting in American black ghettos, Natalie is already a part of the community she is studying. Thus she already inhabits the habitus. Her research methodology therefore involves teaching classes at her church, wherein the group explore together their shared habitus, to bring their habitus to light, to reflect upon why they think what they think, why they do what they do, why they say what they say, why they desire what they desire, etc.

After a coffee break, we all reconvened together for the second keynote address, "Critical Theory and Spirituality: Restless Bedfellows," from Graham Ward (University of Manchester). In this address, Graham not only addressed the relationship of critical theory to spirituality, but of "critique" to "theory," since critique is necessarily parasitical on the theory it criticises. He began by recounting Descartes' experience during the 30 years' war of being in a dense forest. Imagining being lost, Descartes reasoned that the decision/choice/wager of the direction in which to walk could be a moment of conviction only. From this, therefore, the forging of a method, tool or theory could likewise only be based upon conviction. Graham enumerated the differences, however, between critical theory - which he defined as a practice - and spirituality - a discipline, since it aims to form particular types of persons, i.e. disciples - as:

1. The telos of Christian spirituality is worship. Therefore it's orientation is liturgical, soteriological and doxological. In contrast, critique is orientated around the immanent structures of the world and not, therefore, towards a transcendent redemption that will necessarily ever arrive.
2. Christian spirituality is not the enemy of, neither does it withdraw from, materiality. Spirituality begins with an entrance into the material more profoundly, and - following the central narrative of Radical Orthodoxy - only metaphysics of transcendence can grant meaning to the immanent. Critical theory, in its refusal of the transcendent, makes the immanent nihilistic.
3. Rather than the attainment of mystical feelings or knowledge, Christian spirituality is a discipline and not just an emotional or intellectual practice. It is a submission to being governed and formed by an authority, a disciplining and discipleship.
4. Spirituality is not an end in itself, but a means to conformity to Christ, the resurrection of the body and the redemption of the soul.
5. While spirituality concerns immanence, it arises from transcendence, and therefore moves across boundaries of immanence and transcendence, secularity and sacrality. In contrast, critique (parasitic on theory, which it exposes as contradictory) is itself generative of contradictions, tensions and dualism - e.g. individual versus social, natural versus ideological, the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie.

Graham's paper, therefore, exhibits the central structuring motif of many arguments by those associated with Radical Orthodoxy - only Christianity! Only Christian spiritual practice (understood properly as a discipline that forms disciples) can perform the kinds of critiques that critical theory itself attempts and fails. Victor Seidler (Goldsmiths, University of London), who's own keynote later took up the image of walking, asked why exactly Graham rejects "walking" or the practices of theorising - philosophy, as well as theology - as spiritual. To my mind, this question was never really answered.

At lunch, I had a good catch up with Steve Shakespeare. Chatting with various people at lunch, meant I was late for the first ("Theological Materialism") of the panels organised by the Association for Continental Philosophy of Religion (Liverpool Hope), which Steve was chairing. I missed the gist of - and had to stand up for! - Jeff Kauss' paper, "Slavoj Zizek and Dynamic Incarnationalism: Towards a Lived Material Theology of Personhood," and then wasn't familiar enough with Meillassoux or Bataille to get much out of the other papers. Hopefully I can get Jeff to email me a copy of his paper, though. After lunch, I went to two panels on "Theological Humanism," but I was too tired to concentrate and decided to go back to my uncle and aunt's early to have a rest and go over my paper for the next day. It did mean, though, that I missed Toril Moi's keynote, which others said was much more "audience friendly" than Amy Hollywood's.

On Saturday morning, I went to the second Continental Philosophy of Religion panel ("Phenomenology and Deconstruction") where I was keen to hear Dan Miller - a student of Jack's from Syracuse who finished his dissertation, on radical democracy as religious affirmation, earlier this year too - give a paper on Milbank, and to catch up with Neal DeRoo (Dordt College, Iowa) whom I met at the Society for Continental Philosophy and Theology's "Postmodernism, Truth and Religious Pluralism" conference in April 2008.

Dan's paper, "Synchronicity and the Flattening of Materiality: Evaluating the Phenomenological Turn in John Milbank's Theology," framed Milbank's work in terms of a shift from a non-realist narrative philosophy to a phenomenological and materialist realist philosophy, arguing that the philosophy thus produced is open to a deconstructive criticism since it requires a metaphysical supplement to preserve the integrity of the material. While Milbank asserts that when we attend to the world (the phenomenological shift Dan identifies in Milbank's theological method) we see a "harmonious synchronicity" of the transcendent in the material. However, this must be a harmony that is eschatlogically given, since, if we attend to the world as it is given to us now, harmony is not synchronically present but diachronous with traumatic disruption, fragmentation and brokenness.

While I enjoyed Dan's paper and largely agree with his assessment of Milbank's project, I disagreed with how he presented what he regarded as Milbank's earlier work of "suspending the material," since this suspension is explicitly not one of "putting the material aside" (as Dan suggested) but of demonstrating that only participation in the transcendent can "suspend the material" over and against the void (as in a suspension bridge). Further, I wanted to know whether he had engaged with Gavin Hyman's book on Radical Orthodoxy - The Predicament of Postmodern Theology: Radical Orthodoxy or Textualist Nihilism? which argues that Don Cupitt's (non-realist) critique of Radical Orthodoxy distorts it into a realist framework when Radical Orthodoxy attempts to overcome such dualisms as non-realist/realist. I felt that the shift Dan identified in Milbank's theological method (from non-realist narrativity to realist materialist phenomenology) risked the same distortion.

Dan took these points constructively, acknowledging that he possibly hadn't fairly represented the meaning of the phrase "suspending the material" and that the language of realism and non-realism is problematic in relation to Radical Orthodoxy. However, he maintained that, even at points where Milbank stresses that the Christian narrative is not grounded in anything other than itself (hence, Dan's characterisation of this position as non-realist), he is left - as a reader - unconvinced that Milbank doesn't "actually believe" the narrative is a realist one. As a project, Radical Orthodoxy depends upon the persuasive powers of its story... I guess it has a way to go to convince Dan, then... or me.

Neal's paper, "Phemoneology as Eschatological Materialism," reflected upon broader questions of the nature of phenomenology. How can phenomenology - the study of "things themselves" - talk of God without turning God into a thing? Neal suggested that phenomenology's recent so-called "turn" to eschatology enables us to see that, rather than eschatology adding to phenomenology "from without," we might say, phenomenology is revealed as inherently eschatological. Specifically, not only does phenomenological reflection on intentionality reveal a two-fold notion of time as horizontal and diachronic, but that this two-fold notion of time is what phenomenology is. It is, therefore, inherently eschatological. This means, further, that the eschatological turn in phenomenology is, rather, a making explicit of what is already central to phenomenology. One of Neal's edited collection adds to these suggestions: Phenomenology and Eschatology: Not Yet in the Now.

After Paul Fiddes' keynote, "The Sublime, the Conflicted Self, and Attention to the Other: Neglected Contributions from Iris Murdoch and Julia Kristeva," I took myself off to read through my paper before presenting in the late afternoon. This has already been a rather long post, so I'll leave my reflections on the rest of Saturday's events, as well as on the panel I was most looking forward to - Sunday morning's "Political Theology" panel from the Association of Continental Philosophy of Religion - for another day.

Religion, Literature and Culture conference

The 2010 International Society for Religion, Literature and Culture conference, "Attending to the Other: Critical Theory and Spiritual Practice," starts at St. Catherine's College, Oxford, tomorrow, hosted by the Faculty of Theology, so I'm off to stay some (relatively) local family tonight. I'm particularly looking forward to Graham Ward's keynote, "Critical Theory and Spirituality: Restless Bedfellows," and panels on Theological Materialism and Political Theology that will both include papers on Zizek.

My paper, "How to 'Eat Well' in Church: Saying 'Yes' to the Other and Becoming Nothing in Derrida, Paul and Emerging Christian Discourse," is on Saturday afternoon, on a Modern Theology panel with some other papers that promise to explore questions that overlap with my interest in the "ecclesial" performance of contemporary theo-philosophies:

Mark Godin (Glasgow) "Situated Liturgies: A Theology of Worship Meets the Philosophy of Michele Le Doeuff."
Ben Kautzer (Durham) "When Faith Gets a Body: Sacramentality and the Order of Charity."

But I'm also looking forward to the end of the conference, when I get to see my Mum!

Apple 7, Subverting the Norm, Žižek, and the Holy Spirit

So I've had an interesting and exciting few days. I managed to get down to London for Apple 7, "Is the Institutional Church an Out-Moded Organisational Technology?" (which was recorded and is available for free download here). I had to buy (and, obviously, consume) a bottle of wine because of a £10 lower limit on cards and that, along with the mango vodka shots, lemon and mint warm vodka "tea" and wine I had with my meal earlier in the evening, meant that I was probably a bit embarrassing. Never mind. It was only recorded for posterity, right?

Then I got back yesterday to news that, due to incredibly generous donations from local churches in the States, I'm now able to present a paper at Subverting the Norm: The Emerging Church, Postmodernism, and the Future of Christianity conference in Missouri next month (Oct 15-16, Drury University, Springfield, Missouri), which features Jack Caputo, Pete Rollins, and Karen Ward, among others.

I'll post more details of my presentation as it gets written (!) but it'll be entitled "An Emerging A/Theistic Fighting Collective? A Caputian Introduction to Žižek’s Pneumatology." Hopefully it'll get scheduled near to Pete's "To Believe is Human, To Doubt Divine: Introducing Žižek’s Christology."

The Liturgical Turn

I'm going to try and apply for a three week seminar series next summer with James K.A. Smith at Calvin College. It's called "From Worldview to Worship: The Liturgical Turn in Cultural Theory" and stems from Smith's interest in "arguing for the importance of practices, and particularly liturgical practices, as the "site" or "topic" of philosophy of religion," with which I completely agree. Not only do I also want to be working at the intersection of theo-philosophy and the empirical study of religion, but it would be great to meet Jamie, whose work I used in my PhD thesis, as well as to experience American postgraduate culture.

Here's the seminar description:

""Religion" has received increased attention from both social scientists and journalists over the past decade. But the phenomenon of religion has also been reconceived: rather than focusing simply on beliefs and doctrines, sociologists, anthropologists, and philosophers of religion are increasingly attentive to the role of practice and ritual as fundamental to religious identity. So rather than merely distilling the "worldview" of religious communities, scholars exegete the understanding implicit in worship practices. Thus one could speak of something like a "liturgical turn" in "cultural theory" –an appreciation for the formative role of cultural practices in constituting communities of meaning. This can be seen in the philosophical work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Charles Taylor; the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu and Christian Smith; research in social psychology as seen in the work of Timothy D. Wilson and John A. Bargh; and the theological developments in the work of Stanley Hauerwas, Graham Ward, and Craig Dykstra. This has important implications both for the study of religion, including Christianity, as well as for critical reflection on faithful religious practice."

Thesis to Book

Currently engaged in transforming my doctoral thesis into a book, I have now finished drafts of Chapters One and Two, which basically set the scene for the book's central argument by introducing Radical Orthodoxy (particularly James K.A. Smith's "postmodern catholicism"), deconstructive theology (especially Jack Caputo's "weak theology"), and the emerging church (as a milieu organised around several diversely understood discrusive and practical commitments).


There are, of course, several publications on the market aimed at helping academics at this stage in their career, including William Germano's From Dissertation to Book and Getting It Published; Eleanor Harman's The Thesis and The Book; and Revising Your Dissertation: Advice from Leading Editors, edited by Beth Luey. I haven't read any of them, but I have been tracking down advice for PhD students from publishers such as Ashgate (here) and researching formats for book proposals.

There are several questions that I'm asking myself at the moment, particularly:

• "is my thesis best suited to publication as a book, or as a journal article or series of journal articles?"

and,

• "to what audience would my book be addressed?"

Attending to the Other - conference programme

The provisional conference programme for "Attending to the Other: Critical Theory and Spiritual Practice" is now available from here. My paper, "How to Eat Well in Church: Saying 'Yes' to the Other and Becoming Nothing in Derrida, Paul and Emerging Christian Discourse," is on one of the Theology Panels and will be (provisionally) at 3.30pm on Saturday 25th September 2010.

The conference, which runs from Thursday 23rd until Sunday 26th with Amy Hollywood speaking on the 23rd, Graham Ward and Toril Moi on the 24th, Paul Fiddes on the 25th, and Victor Seidler on the 26th, has several Zizek papers (thanks to the Continental Philosophy of Religion Panel conveners) that I'm looking forward to. And they don't clash with my panel, yay!

• Jeff Keuss "Slavoj Zizek and Dynamic Incarnationalism: Towards a Lived Material Theology of Personhood"
• Thomas Lynch "Zizek and Liberation Theology: A Lacano-Marxist Revival"
• Ian Pattenden "Beyond the Death of God: The Open Eschaton in Bloch and Zizek"

Anyone interested should take a look at Adam Kotsko's Zizek and Theology.

Now, I just need to find nearly £400 to afford to go. Hmmm.... maybe I should sell some books?

Theology and the Arts Conference

I spied this conference a while ago but it took ages for more details to be forthcoming. In April (12-14th) the Society for the Study of Theology's annual conference will be hosted at Manchester University on the theme of "Theology and the Arts." The conference calls for short papers on the conference theme and seminar sessions on other topics (both 20 mins, 20 mins Q&A). The only details I can find online is this small amount of blurb:

"What is the relationship between different art forms and other modes of theological interpretation? Is art true, or subjecive, or both? What are the limitations of artistic representation? How may art be employed in teaching, whether in church or academy? What are the places of art in prayer and liturgy?"

Abstracts of about 200 words should be emailed to Oliver Crisp, who I met in Ireland last Nov, by Feb 18. There is a bursary fund, which you should also apply to via Oliver.

The cost of registration is £90, and then there are several accommodation and meal options to choose from when you log-on to the site here. Full residential is £170, with one night B&B £30. Early registration ends March 4 and the registration deadline is March 23.

I'm thinking that if I submit an abstract it will be on the "a/theology of the event" and the notion of "transformance art" in the UK emerging church milieu.

Young Theologians publication

Just a quick post to say that some of the proceedings from the "Interface: Being a Young Theologian in the World" conference (see my blog posts here, here, here, here, and here) are going to be published. We've been asked to submit our papers for consideration, so fingers crossed for another book chapter. It was a great conference and from my perspective many of the papers linked really neatly, particularly in relation to asking important questions about who we are and where we're going as young theologians. My paper was about not knowing who we are and whether we are theologians, so everything sparked off a lot of interesting thoughts. So we'll see what happens with that.

Attending to the Other

The Faculty of Theology at Oxford University are hosting the 2010 biennial International Society for Religion, Literature and Culture from 23rd - 26th September, at St. Catherine's College (where I went in 2007), on the topic of "Attending to the Other: Critical Theory and Spiritual Practice."

The full registration fee is a hefty £385 (+ compulsory ISRLC membership, £10)! But the keynote speakers are Amy Hollywood (Harvard University) - check out her Sensible Ecstacy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference, and the Demands of History, which I used in my medieval lesbian studies period - Toril Moi (Duke University) - Sexual/Textual Politics - Paul Fiddes (University of Oxford), and Graham Ward (University of Manchester), which explains it! The good news is that there are bursaries to contribute towards these costs for postgrad students and (what I may well be by then, as I'm for sure not going to still be doing my thesis) unemployed academics!!! Who knows, I may even be an employed academic and not need the help!!! Yeah, right.

Anyway, there are several panels being convened for this conference, including one by the Association for Continental Philosophy of Religion. The conference organisers invite short papers for these panels (20 mins paper, 10 mins Q&A), and ask for proposals (title and 500 word abstracts) to be sent to the convenor of the panel for which it seems most appropriate. The deadline is March 30 2010. The call for papers includes the information about panels, as well as details of who to submit proposals to. There are quite a few panels, so I'm only going to post details about the ones I'm most interested in. For details about the others download a Word doc from here.

Modern Theology (panel leader: Trevor Hart; abstracts to tah@st-andrews.ac.uk). "Reponsible handling of Christianity's doctrinal commitments today demands that they be revisited in the light of critical theory and its particular insights and claims, an engagement in which we might reasonably anticipate insights and questions flowing in both directions. This panel will concentrate on such encounters, welcoming papers that will seek to relate concrete doctrinal loci constructively to the central concerns and claims of critical theory. Topics might fall within areas such as the following:

• Christology (e.g. history, particularity, universality; the body, crucifixion and resurrection; kenosis and the other; the divine image, imaging and incarnation)
• Trinity (e.g. otherness, mystery and apophasis; perichoresis and the boundaries of personhood)
• Creation (e.g. gift, givens, openness, and the place of human poiesis; ‘reality’ as divine donation and human construct)
• Revelation (e.g. language, analogy, metaphor, imagination; re-enchantment, experience, nature and culture; scripture, inspiration and authority)
• Redemption (e.g. sin, evil, guilt, notions of atonement, reconciliation and forgiveness)
• Worship (e.g. liturgy, sacraments, ritual, embodied performance, meaning and presence)
• Church (e.g. tradition, continuity and interruption; community, truth and meaning; encountering Christ in the body; the church as ‘habitus’)
• Eschatology (e.g. hope, promise and the shape of the self; hope as imagination; apocalypse and deconstruction)

Proposals on any relevant topic are welcomed."

Continental Philosophy of Religion (panel leaders: Steven Shakespare and Patrice Haynes; abstracts to shakess@hope.ac.uk and haynesp@hope.ac.uk. "This panel invites submissions which consider the turn to religion in recent continental philosophy and the implications this has for understandings of religion, reason and spiritual practice. If philosophy is called, driven or solicited to think its other, does this mean that philosophy itself is compelled by a religious dynamic? A particular focus will be on the debate around theological and dialectical accounts of materialism. What kind of thinking does justice to the passion of reason, the integrity of matter and the injunctions of ethical and political commitment? Relevant thinkers and themes might include:

• Jean-Luc Nancy,
• Radical Orthodoxy,
• Slavoj Žižek,
• Grace Jantzen,
• phenomenology (Henry, Chrétien, Lacoste, Marion),
• speculative realism/materialism.

However, other relevant submissions will be considered.
The panel is being convened by the Association for Continental Philosophy of Religion."

I might submit an abstract to the Modern Theology panel that focuses on the ways in which UK emerging church milieu participants (particularly collectives) are "attending to the other" in the creation of ecclesial spaces (the church and worship streams of this panel). I'm working at the moment on the concluding sections of chapter six of my thesis, which use Derrida (particularly Of Hospitality and "Eating Well" in Points) and Badiou (Saint Paul) to argue for a Pauline ecclesiology of literally "attending to the other." As I complete my thesis, then, I'll be playing with the idea of presenting something at this conference.

Photographic Evidence of my "Being" a Theologian!

Despite the protestations to the contrary in my On-Not-Wanting-to-Be-A-Theologian theology conference paper (actual title, "On the Question of (Rightly?) Passing for A/Theologian," there appears to be more evidence that I "am" a theologian here. Dang.

Young Theologians: On Readiness

Thanks to the generous support of some Bishops (or, more accurately, I guess, a kind bunch of people working for the Bish'es) I've just come back from a (very) quick trip to Ireland. Sadly, I both arrived and left in the dark, so I didn't get to see a whole heap of either Dublin or Maynooth.


The conference ("Interface: Being a Young Theologian in the World") was hosted by the beautiful St. Patrick's College, Maynooth. Here's a photo of the impressive Pugin Hall where we had a wine reception on the first night. Sadly, I was not able to indulge too much as I had to go finish my paper!

I'm going to post several reflections on this conference (not sure how many yet), but this is the first one on the keynote address given by Professor Michael Paul Gallagher, "Mediators of God's Meaning: A Challenging but Consoling Call."

In his paper, Professor Gallagher he suggested that the role of the theologian is a translator of God's meaning to culture. He argued for the importance of imagination, the faculty of possibility that (as for Newman) makes God real, and quoted Paul Ricoeur on imagination: "we can experience redemption only through imagination." He called for theologians to be instruments of the imagination, communicating in parables and poems that are "provocations to wonder," provocations to transformation.

With this aspect of his paper, I couldn't agree more. Theology has to be poetic. It's point is to inspire, to transform, to turn around (metanoia). I find Jack Caputo writes of poetics in contrast to logics. For him, poetics is "a certain constellation of idioms, strategies, stories, arguments, tropes, paradigms, and metaphors - a style and a tone, as well as a grammar and a vocabulary, all of which, collectively, like a great army on the move, is aimed at gaining some ground and making a point" (The Weakness of God, p.104). While logic is tied to the literal discourses of the world, and try to instantiate their propositions through representation, poetics attempts to bring to mind the event of being addressed and transformed.


However, I have a problem both with Ricoeurian hermeneutics (in which we read to determine the meaning to a text) and with Professor Gallagher's own implied assumption of the existence of a single, eternal, unchanging, unified message that is in need of contextual translation into multiple media. For Gallagher, however, unlike for Marshall McLuhan, the medium is not the message; the medium in which we "tell about it" does not impact the message.

He spoke about humanity's having a "receptive imagination," receptive to God's meaning, which means we should, as Mary Oliver writes in "Instructions for living a life" (and as Gallagher quoted) "pay attention, be astonished, tell about it." I have a problem with Gallagher's assumption that there is one message, one meaning of God, for the theologian to translate into a medium in which culture would understand it. "How might God's meaning be discerned?" "How is it determined to be unitary or unified?" "Is the theologian's meaning God's meaning?"

And, while we might be able to pay attention to and be on the look out for an eternal, unchanging message in the midst of different translations of it, of different tellings about it, of different performances of it, how are we ever to be truly astonished by it, if in some sense we already know the message, if the message is not going to change? We can only be truly astonished by that which we cannot be prepared for, that which we cannot look out for, that which we do not know to pay attention to. On the other hand, however, as both Derrida and Caputo argue, we would not be truly astonished by something completely other, because such a wholly other would completely pass us by, we would not pay it heed.

Therefore, we have to pay attention, but remember that we know not to what such attention must be paid. We have to be prepared for something for which we cannot be prepared, on the look-out for something but we know not what! If, as Gallaher also quoted, "the readiness is all" (Hamlet, Act V scene ii), then this means we cannot restrict what Derrida calls our "horizons of expectation," that to which we "pay attention," to the cultural translation of an eternal message.

We have to pay attention both with and without expectation. We who wait wait with expectation, how could we not? But this should also be a readiness, a paying attention, a looking-out for, without expectation. It should be a readiness that does not know what it is to be ready for, that does not know what the message might be.

Getting Out of Being a Young Theologian Today

I posted earlier about the call for papers for a conference in Ireland on "Being a Young Theologian in the World Today." I reflected there about my reasons for submitting an abstract that was basically about not wanting to be a young theologian in the world today. I was concerned that it wouldn't get accepted. Here's what I sent in:

On the Question of (Rightly?) Passing for A/Theologian

By nature, religious studies departments nurture young students of religion. These students might draw their markers of self-identity from any of the disciplines such departments incorporate. They might be(come) sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, textual scholars, scholars of culture, politics, sexuality, or gender. Perhaps, theologians. In my interdisciplinary doctoral studies, I felt at home in such a diverse academic environment, but I balked whenever my supervisor either described my work as theology or suggested that I might even "be" a theologian.

This paper stems from an interrogation of my own reactions to such designations, as well as undergraduate students' perceptions of the nature and role of theology in western society. While a contemporary context of de-traditionalisation and individualisation might seem at odds with the public religiosity of theologians, the societal trends of pluralisation and sacralisation suggest a simultaneous post-secularism that seemingly levels the playing field for religious confession within and beyond academia.

I introduce the work of (reluctant?) deconstructive theologian John D. Caputo as an appropriately nondogmatic and "weak," even hypothetical, yet robustly confessional theology, negotiating both historical association with the Christian tradition and messianic dissociation from it. In conversation with Caputo's "a/theological" project, I reflect upon Jacques Derrida's confession that he "rightly passes for" an atheist, in the face of his reluctance to say "I am" an atheist, and suggest the aptness of these sentiments for thinking about disciplinary affiliation today. In contemplating the question of rightly passing for an "a/theologian," I re-consider my relationship to both theology and religious studies.

Although my abstract got accepted, I am having to pull out of the conference because it costs too much to get there. "Budget" airlines (naming no names) have stuck so many extras on to a ticket from Birmingham to Dublin that I can't afford to go. I'm going to write the paper anyway, as it is basically a section of my methodology chapter reflecting on interdisciplinary. At least my partner Sim won't now be jealous that I'm going to Ireland without him!

[Update: October 21 2009 - Eoin O'Mahony, a PhD student, blogger, and researcher with the Irish Catholic Bishops' Conference, has organised for my travel expenses to be funded, so I'm off to Ireland after all! This is really exciting... Sorry, Sim!]

The Shack: Concerning Closure and Inaction

So I managed to read The Shack by William Paul Young inbetween my other reading assignments (the fact that I am still reading is a rather dire situation considering I am trying to finish a first draft by the end of the month!). It tells the story of Mackenzie Allen Philips (Mac), the daughter (Missy) of whom has been abducted, her body never found. Four years after this horrific experience, Mac receives a note from God asking him to come to the deserted and isolated shack where Missy's blood was found. What follows is a meeting between Mac and God.

At the monthly discussion group that I go to at a local church here, Theologically Speaking, we reacted to the so-called "radicality" of the theology that permeates this fictional narrative, the disappointing "did it happen or not" aspect to the story, the lucrative nature of the publication of a book initially written for his children, and the level of "closure" offered by its ending.

We remarked that narration is a useful means of engaging readers with theological issues. But we felt that, in this case, we were very cognisant as we read of the fact that the story was intended as a vehicle for theology. We found that the story contains theology that was "radical" fifty or so years ago, remaining radical for only a certain kind of Christian (and atheist, given many atheists perceptions of Christianity).

We also felt that the narration itself suffered from a disatisfying ambiguity. We felt that we were comfortable with this story being a parable of meeting God, and that it did not need the "real-world" explanation ("it was all a psychological event caused by massive physical trauma") that was provided. Why not just tell the story of a man meeting God? Did Young really think that such a story would be unpalatable without a "get-out" aetiological option? We displayed a level of comfort and familiarity with parable as a means of communication and an understanding of the narratival nature of communication today that suggested that more readers than just us would have prefered a simple parable, uncomplicated by such ambiguities.

It left us disappointed and (too?) keen to ask whether or not the events narrated "actually happened." The point of Jesus' parables were never to get the listener to ask, "did this happen or not?" If that is the first question, then the point of the tale has been missed. This is how we felt about The Shack. The preoccupation with the "did this actually happen?" question, evoked by Young's decision to include a "real-world" explanation alongside a "religious" one, meant that questions of theology (the whole "point" of the narrative) were not asked immediately.

We were also suspicious of Young's motivations for publication. What started out as a story for his children is now a multi-million-copy-selling (some websites say 6 or 7 million) phenomenon of "grass roots" publishing. I have absolutely no problem with this aspect of the book. Good for "ordinary" story tellers using their own finances to fund projects they, their families, and their friends feel passionate about.

But, at the end of the book, there is a page advertising "The Missy Project." Rather than being a charitable organisation raising funds to support the families and friends of abducted children, The Missy Project (not to be confused with The Missy Project, a nonprofit organisation promoting awareness of brain aneurysm disease in children) is a means of promoting The Shack. Very far from a not-for-profit organisation, The Missy Project is precisely designed to increase profit!!!

The page advertises the fact that film producers are interested in purchasing the publishing rights - but only after a certain number of copies are sold!!! It then suggests ways of helping the book "gain traction in the wider culture," such as posting promotional jpgs on your websites and blogs, asking radio stations and podcasters to invite Young as a guest speaker, and, of course, buying it for your friends and families. The Missy Project site says: "Don't make it an advertisement, but share how this book impacted your life and offer people the link to The Shack website." Certainly don't advertise... but talk about how personally valuable you found the book and then link to a place where readers can buy it - as I've just done... How is that not an advertisement?!? Surely, by linking to Amazon.co.uk in the first sentence of this post, I am engaging in precisely an advertising campaign for The Shack?

So I was personally disgusted that the book included a page advertising itself and suggesting ways readers could engage in the books' promotion, and not a page of information pointing readers to a not-for-profit charity where they could contribute to the support of families and friends of missing children, and to the individuals and organisations that help in the search.

Finally, I was also repelled by the ending of the book. Without revealing the precise nature of the ending and thereby "spoiling" the reading experience of those who have not yet personally bought and read a copy (follow the links in this post to purchase your very own book!!!), Mac and his family find a level of "closure" that, sadly, many parents of abducted children experience do not. Madeleine McCann's family do not have such closure. The parents of most missing children do not experience the levels of media attention and charitable funding that her parents have experienced - which leads me back to my earlier point about the (missed) opportunity that The Shack offered for raising awareness about means of financial support. The Find Madeline website includes a page linking to Missing Children Organisations throughout the world. Why do copies of The Shack not include a page of such information? Why does The Shack website not include such information? After reading The Shack, I was left with the distinct impression of an "it'll be all right in the end" theology. Mac's relationships, with his father, his daughter, his wife, the rest of his family, his friends, with God, are ultimately reconstructed, repaired, rebuilt, restored. He is no longer broken and shattered, but whole. No longer angry, but peaceful. I feel that such a "everything will be fine" theology is disingenuous and very far from the day-to-day experience of most people, including most Christians, let alone from the experience of those whose lives are marked by the abduction of a loved one.

I feel strongly that the purpose of this book was to use the experience of child abduction as a vehicle for theologising and for the promotion of a particular theological outlook that appears to promote "righteous" complacency in a divine plan rather than Just action for change.

Viewed in such a light, this book is in no way radical.

Please ignore the links I have made to places where you can purchase The Shack. Instead, please follow the links to the following missing children organisations, and donate generously.

Missing People
Parents and Abducted Children Together
International Centre for Mssing and Exploited Children
Missing Children Europe

Also, visit the Don't You Forget About Me channel on Youtube.com to view videos of missing children.

The (Shocking?) Shack

Over our summer hiatus, "Theologically Speaking," the theological discussion group that I'm part of at my local Anglican church, has been reading The Shack by William P. Young. Although I have very little time to read anything that I don't have to read for my doctoral studies, I'm going to try reading a few chapters of this a night, ready for our meeting towards the end of September (also when I hope to have a finished "first final draft" of my thesis for my supervisor to read!).

I'm not particularly looking forward to reading it. I've only ever read Brian McLaren's "Christian fiction" (A New Kind of Christian, The Story We Find Ourselves In, and The Last Word and The Word After That). I found the quality of writing rather disappointing, even though the theological perspectives put forward (not necessarily all held by McLaren himself - this is fiction, after all, and aims at provoking indepdent thought rather than instilling a particular line) were moving closer to my own position. However, I find the fragments of fiction in the work of someone like Pete Rollins (now collected here) and in the liturgical practices of communities within the emerging church milieu must more inspirational than I imagine any single sustained work of ficiton could be (as it often entails the systematization of perspectives into a unified narrative). Anyway, my presuppositions about The Shack (based only on a quick reading of a few reviews, see here and here for example) are that it is going to be theologically "daring" only from the perspective of conservative Christianity. I don't think it is going to be that radical - i.e. it is not so audacious to imagine God as a black woman - and so will end up, I imagine, coming off as a bit pedestrian from the perspective of my own thinking.

But, I stress, I haven't even opened it yet. I am prepared to be shocked by The Shack. In fact, I hope it does surprise me out of my own presumptions. It would be great for it to stimulate some thinking for me and, hopefully, in conversation with everyone else at my discussion group, it will. I imagine that some of the others at Theologically Speaking will also be hoping that The Shack doesn't still domesticate whilst seeking to radicalise. I'll have to wait and see. Anyone else read it?

[Post Update: Having read it, you can now read my reflections on The Shack here.]

The Culture of "Giving a Paper"

Further to my experiences of philosophical/theological conferences ("Postmodernism, Truth and Religious Pluralism," and "Towards a Philosophy of Life"), in contrast to more sociological conferences ("Gender and Religion," and "Religion, Media and Culture"), I found a copy of an article on academic presentations that we were given at a recent event for aspiring academics that I went to. It's called "How to Give an Academic Talk: Changing the Culture of Public Speaking in the Humanities," by Paul Edwards, and you can download it here.

I was reflecting (here) that the unfortunate norm at philosophical/theological conferences seems to be to read out pieces that have been written to be read, rather than written to be heard. This means that, even if you are familiar with the subject matter, it can be very hard to follow what is being said. Although there were some very well presented papers at the most recent conference I went to (Philip Goodchild, Jack Caputo, Don Cupitt, Neil Turnbull, John Milbank, Todd Mei, etc.), many others would have benefited from reading Edwards' short article.

Edwards notes two reasons academics resort to the literal meaning of "giving a paper," i.e. reading out an article rather than giving a presentation: fear - "it's easier to hide behind the armor of a written paper, which you've had plenty of time to work through, than simply to talk" and it's part of academic culture, which is "something we can deliberately change." Edwards continues by pointing his readers to what effective talks must do, by providing rules of thumb for how to make a presentation "usually better" and "usually worse", and by suggesting important principles for success.

I usually don't actually write a "paper" in the conventional sense until after I've done the presentation, so that's my tip: write a presentation, as a presentation (not as a paper) and then write the paper. Good pointers that Edwards gives and that I've found helpful include:

• talk, rather than read;
• stand up;
• vary the pitch of your voice;
• emphasise key words in your sentences;
• make eye contact with the audience;
• use visual aids (to highlight key points and main arguments, so your audience know where you are going and how you are going to get there)

Something else that I was taught was that you've only really ever got time to make three central points in twenty minutes. Try to do more than that and you'll lose people in details or move too fast.

Edwards makes another good point, too: emulate excellent speakers. I will always remember that Linda Woodhead gave the first academic paper (rather than lecture) I ever heard, in a small informal seminar series at Lancaster University. Her presentation style was friendly but focused and formal, with useful visual aids (okay, so it was Over Head Projector rather than PowerPoint, I'm not going to moan too much about that!). She had a slow but caring speed, and a clear structure. It was on the gender puzzle of the Kendal Project (why are 80% of people involved in the holistic milieu women?) and I was fascinated and enraptured. I wanted to be like her and I still do. I love the way she presents.