Back from Paris

So Sim and I got back from Paris, after a very hot few days wandering around looking at pretty things. We loved the Louvre and Musee Rodin, and watched the sunset from the Eiffel Tower. But my French is incredibly rusty and what I've picked back up from reading deconstructive theology isn't exactly helpful. Only the first half of Je ne sais pas, il faut croire is actually useful!!!


I heard back from Sexualities, to whom I had submitted my "Queerying The Spiritual Revolution: Religious Mediation among LGBT Christians" article (see here), and the editor and reviewers asked me to revise a few things. As I'm madly trying to complete my thesis, however, I'm quite uncertain as to whether or not to spend time on it and resubmit it. The revisions they asked for really would transform the piece into something much more socially scientific, with methodology sections and tonnes of data, whereas the piece is more theoretical than that, dealing with broader implications rather than the specifics of my study. My supervisor suggested Theology and Sexuality, but I'm not sure that's quite right either, possibly still too specialist. There are important implications to draw from this piece beyond the boundaries of sexuality studies. I was thinking of aiming high and going for the Journal of Contemporary Religion, which is a broader journal in which more people will be engaged in the mapping of the contemporary religious and spiritual landscape that will bring them in contact with Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead's The Spiritual Revolution in the first place. This means they might be more my audience, than a sexualities journal. JCR deals with

• "classical topics in the study of religion, such as secularisation and the vitality of religion or traditional sectarian movements;
• "more recent developments in the study of religion, including religion and social problems, religion and the environment, religion and education, the transmission of religion, the materialisation and visualisation of religion in various forms, new forms of religious pluralism, the rise of new forms of religion and spirituality, religion and the Internet, religion and science, religion and globalisation, religion and the economy, etc.
• "theoretical approaches to the study of religion;
• "discussions of method in relation to empirical research;
• "qualitative and quantitative research and related issues."

My article seems to fit well here. Here's the abstract (again):

This article uses small-scale studies among LGBT Christians to “queery” the dualistic framework of Heelas and Woodhead’s The Spiritual Revolution. Theories of mediation are required to explain the practices and beliefs of those negotiating both subjective-life and life-as modes of living. Identity integration strategies among LGBT Christians suggest ways in which individuals and communities might navigate these categories of religious significance and authority. Data confirms that different forms of life-as religions-cum-spiritualities are making the subjective turn; that participants nevertheless alternate between rather than ‘fuse’ internal and (albeit reconstructed) external authorities; and that Heelas’ more recent God without/“god” within distinction is a clearer marker of whether practitioners are already affiliated to either transcendent theism or inner-life spirituality and of when a transition from one to the other has been or is being undertaken.

Key words:

• Christianity;
• Heelas and Woodhead;
• LGBT;
• inner-life spirituality;
• spiritual revolution.

Aspiring Academics - Part Two (QAA and Curriculum Design)

At "Aspiring Academics," Dr. David Mossley (the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies manager) gave a workshop on curriculum design. It was actually the first time I had heard of things such as the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), which was established in 1997 to as an independent assessment of HE standards. The website has downloadable subject-specific "benchmark" statements which set out the expectations at each level of degree (click here to download subject-specific statements for undergraduate, and here for Masters level). They set out what any student at any level should be able to do in their discipline. The programme specifications for university courses have to reference these documents, in providing details of intended learning outcomes and the means by which these outcomes are achieved and demonstrated. Also relevant for course design is the Framework for Higher Education Qualifications (FHEQ), which ensures a consistent use of qualification titles that correspond to qualification levels.


David (who works in philosophy) talked about the different ways in which teaching could be linked to research interests; namely, directly and, you guessed it, indirectly. Direct linkage between research and teaching generally comes in the form of relevant content: teaching what you research (i.e. a course of your own design), teaching in the field in which you research, and using your research to directly inform another field. Indirect linkages tend to be drawn through the particular delivery of your teaching: teaching that draws on your research (e.g. using a particular view of autonomy or agency to inform a philosophy of education and actual practice) and teaching that is informed by a more general approach to philosophy, derived from your research.

He also spoke about teaching portfolios. I have a CV (see blog sidebar to left) which I regularly update with my teaching experience, but teaching portfolios are more detailed, including a statement of your teaching philosophy. It coversthe levels of ontology (what is education?), epistemology (how do we know about education?) and ethics (what is the value of education? what is its value in society? why is it a "good"?)

We then moved on to thinking about whether we could design a course around our (current) research interests (the workshop delegates were early career researchers and finishing PhD students). In terms of creating a course that directly links to our research, he asked us to think about what about our research would be appropriate to teach undergraduates, for example, at their level? what criteria could be used to determine how our research fits the needs of an undergraduate audience? and, does it fit with departmental, institutional or national frameworks? He also reminded us that we may need to explore equality legislation and access issues.

My list of courses to offer in an ideal world included:

• Progressive Christianity
• Christianity and Culture
• Christianity and Postmodern Thought
• Deconstructive Theology

Courses to which I could easily adapt my knowledge included:

• Contintental Philosophy of Religion
• Sociology of Religion and Spirituality
• Religion and the Internet
• Religion and Gender
• Research Methodologies

In relation to indirectly using our research, David asked us to think through the following questions. In terms of education and teaching practice,

• What does your research tell you about: the world and beings in it, the contested nature of knowledge, agency and persons, value (ethics, culture, diversity)?
• What implications can you draw from your research for how teaching should be done?

Some useful online resources in this area from the Subject Centre include,"The Qualifications Framework" by George Macdonald Ross and "Linking Teaching and Research" by Danielle Lamb.

The last session of the day ("Career Planning," Rebecca O'Loughlin) basically acted as a round-up of what had gone before. It concluded that the way to maximize academic capital was through publications, teaching and networking. In terms of publications, a strong publishing record is important, but what this means differs across disciplines. For example, Jonathon Wolff (Department of Philosophy, UCL) said journal articles were the way forward in philosophy, rather than monographs. For Mathew Guest (Department of Theology and Religion, Durham) the reverse was true. You can add to your own teaching experience before a permanent position through lecturing, tutoring and doing associated adiministration (e.g. managing modules, designing curriculum, developing curriculum, and working on departmental or module websites). Networking is, as always, important. Becoming part of your academic community (through conferences, discussion lists, etc.) will aid in building a network of contacts who can be a source of feedback on research and let you know about job opportunities, etc. Importantly, departments look for candidates who can integrate their published research with the institution's teaching and the current trends in the discipline.

The powerpoint presentations for Mathew's talk on funding (see my blog post here), and on curriculum design and teaching portfolios can be downloaded from the Subject Centre website, here.

Paris

Sim and I are taking a few days off and heading to Paris for a few days.

We're going to see Antony and the Johnsons tonight at Symphony Hall, Birmingham, staying in a hotel on Brindley Place and then Eurostar-ing it tomorrow.

I'm looking forward to some mellow time wandering around and looking at pretty things... Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, Sainte Chapelle, the Louvre, Musee Rodin... Very excited!

While we're away I'm going to be (re)reading Jamie Smith's Speech and Theology Language and the Logic of Incarnation. Just in case you were thinking I was going to be able to leave work behind for a bit. Oh no. No time, missy!

Panel Review (2009)

So my fourth year panel review went fine. My panel consisted of my supervisor, Deborah Sawyer, and two colleagues from the Department, Shuruq Naguib and Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad. I've not had them on my panel before so was keen to hear what they made of my project documents (including a one page summary of my thesis [here] and an annotated plan [see here for current thesis structure]).

Ram was eager to help me avoid over-engineering my thesis, basically helping me see that I've got internal reasons (i.e. in the interviews) for the theorists that I need to use, so that I don't have to use everyone!!! It's always helpful to hear you can do less than you've been thinking you need to. So it was good to hear the message of less is more!

As I didn't hand in a sample of writing that showed how I would integrate theory and empirical data, Ram was concerned that I not give the impression of over-interpreting what participants are saying, but just to let them speak for themselves. This won't be a problem, as my work inter-weaves theory and data well, I think. It's just I couldn't show Ram that, and he wanted to just make sure. He talked about how it was okay to both a) let the data say it plainly and b) say I am usefully interpreting the data as saying it. Shuruq also asked some interesting questions about the relationship between the data from my participants and my argument, in terms of how I am using my data, and what my relationship is to my participants.

Shuruq was worried that my initial contextualization of the empirical data in the UK gets lost throughout the rest of the structure. I'm not sure what to think about this yet. I need a "what is the emerging church?" section as it is not a widely known phenomenon within academia, but this question is not my research question; just the context in which I ask my questions. But I don't think I am losing that context throughout the rest of the thesis because I am continually coming back to the fact that participants are engaging the postmodern turn culturally and philosophically.

I think she was more concerned about the gender imbalance in both my use of (largley male) theorists and (largley male) participants; but this isn't something that I haven't noticed or plan to ignore! As she didn't know that my MA work had been in Women and Religion, I think she just wanted to make sure that I would mention the implications of this imbalance as and when they arose (which I have and will continue to). But, as Ram pointed out, my thesis isn't on gender.

All good food for thought. I'm sure I'll be posting again shortly with an altered thesis structure and abstract to reflect my thinking after this review.

Aspiring Academics - Part One (RAE, REF, and Funding)

My second (of three!) trips to London this week (here's the first [update: and the third]) was to Woburn House for the HEA Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies career workshop for "Aspiring Academics."

The first thing I have to mention about this day is that the cheap advance ticket I bought for my journey was actually in First Class!!! I've never travelled anywhere First Class before so it was all very exciting. Though I declined the offers of various complimentary goodies (tea, coffee, cooked breakfast!!!) because I wasn't made aware that they were complimentary and I thought someone was going to come round with a chip-and-pin machine and I'd have no where to run and hide! Anyway, I think it was pretty obvious to my fellow First Classers that I didn't really belong there. A very nice man (actually a senior member of staff at one of the other secondary schools here in Lichfield - not Sim's school) got me a free bottle of water from the minifridge (Harrogate Spa, no less!) with the word "complimentary" clearly front and centre so that I didn't freak out! Thanks, nice man.

Anyway, to get my train journey cheap I had to arrive two hours early, so I spent a bit of time reading at Euston (I also had four hours to kill the other end of the day!) before heading off to drink complimentary coffee at Woburn House.

The day began with a very brief introduction to the work of the Subject Centre, and then cracked on with the main talks.

Jo Wolff (this photoshoot is a cool thing to include on your uni page) spoke about the shift from the Research Assessment Exercise (here's the RAE2008 webpage, and, as an example, Lancaster University's submissions and results) to the Research Excellence Framework (REF). Mathew Guest spoke about funding opportunities and Joe Cain enthused us with an exercise on networking. As the RAE/REF has remained a mystery to me for a while (staff often presume you know what they are talking about when they use acronyms and Higher Education lingo, and you feel like an idiot for asking) I'll blog mostly about that. But it was great to chat in more detail with Mat. He's lovely. David Mossley was also very informative in his talk about curriculum design, but I think I'll post about that a little later on when I've thought more about it. The career planning session at the end was possibly the weakest, only in that it tended to repeat what we had already covered during the rest of the day. It could have covered a specific aspect of career planning or given us time to actually sit down and, you know, come up with a plan! I think the latter would have been a good idea, particularly as there were people in the room who have already done what we are trying to do and could have given us their perspective on our hopes and dreams from within our own discipline - which hardly ever happens at more general careers events.

In our conference packs we were given some useful resources, including Paul Edwards' "How to Give an Academic Talk: Changing the Culture of Public Speaking in the Humanities" (which you can get online here) Matthew Eddy's "Academic Capital, Postgraduate Research and British Universities: a Bourdieu Inspired Reflection" (online here) and Clare Saunders' "Developing Researchers in th Arts and Humanities: Lessons from a Pilot Programme" (here).

Now, onto the RAE/REF and issues of funding:

There are two sources of funding for research in English HE: the money distributed by Research Councils (like the AHRC and ESRC) and other bodies (where funding is based upon proposals submitted) and that distributed by HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Counil for England) at the time of the RAE. This latter money is therefore backward-looking (i.e. is determined by the quality of previous research) while the former is forward-looking (based on the quality of proposals for future research). The money from HEFCE is therefore (in principle, Jo stressed) for "blue sky" projects, although in practice little is given directly to projects - more often than not going towards the overheads of projects or to fund sabbaticals or library resources.

The instructions for the RAE differ each time it occurs, but this time round (RAE2008) staff had to put forward 4 publications (authored books, edited books, book chapters, journal articles, etc.) which were then assessed and graded from 0 to 5 (click here for an explanation of the ranking system). Jo believes that the REF, although adding various metric indicators to the process and including an assessment of the "social and economic impact" of research, will still boil down to the quality of publications.

It was good to have a bit more clarity on both the nature of the RAE and the proposed form of the REF, as well as to be able to reflect about what this shift might mean for us as nearly submitted doctoral candidates and early career researchers. Jo said that the RAE has introduced a cycle into employment practices, as the more staff that are put into the RAE the more funding the department has a chance of gaining. Before an RAE, therefore, departments high candidates with a good amount of publications in prestigious journals, for example, to boost their chances. This means that, at this point in the cycle, just after an RAE, there are less full time positions on offer and more temporary (unstable) jobs around. However, it's not necessarily all doom and gloom because, as new researchers, we will have fewer publications but those departments who are hiring fulltime members of staff will be less obsessed with hiring someone with an "RAE-compliant" (read chocka of publications) CV. Yay!

Jo's advice, nonetheless, was to try to get at least one article in a really good journal, to increase your employment prospects. Quality is better than quantity.

Research Methods: Religion and the Internet

My workshop, "Studying Religion and the Internet - Challenges and Opportunities: Theoretical, Practical and Ethical," at the HEA Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies' "Exploring New Challenges and Methods in the Study of Religion" day at Birkbeck went okay. I definitely think that my topic could (should?!?) have been given an entire day in itself, which meant that I had a lot to get through in my presentation. They sprung on me that it was going to be recorded, so you should be able to download the mp3 soon... if you particularly want to listen to me nervously speaking! I usually speak using less notes and I think you can tell, as I felt rather beholden to using the phrases I'd written down rather than speaking more off the cuff. Oh well, lesson learnt!

But it was good to meet up with old and new colleagues, and I particularly enjoyed a presentation by Helen Purcell (Open University) on her position as a Pagan academic that also reflected on narrative. Another conference delegate mentioned an academic who decided to write a novel instead of a thesis because that seemed to better reflect the experiences of her participants and her time spent with them. It generated some more thoughts in relation to my own concerns about having to "represent" the "truth" about my participants, whose notions of "truth" are often neither "representational" nor "non-representational," but are of what I'm calling "undecidable representationality." This dilemma leads to interesting questions about the literary dimension of the academic presentation of research "findings." Anyway, enough of that...

It was ashame that I missed fellow Lancaster PhD student Janet Eccles' paper on the "pitfalls and possibilities" of conducting an interview-based study in her local community. But I was good to hear about some of the PhD students just starting out in internet-based studies, like Anna Rose Stewart (University of Sussex). It was also great to catch up with Gordon Lynch, whom I haven't seen in a couple of years. Susannah Rigg (Birkbeck), me and Sim's housemate when she was at Lancaster, was on hand in an organisational role and it was good to chat over coffee.

Anyway, here's the powerpoint presentation from my workshop. There's a very illustrative list of resources at the end of it.

Studying Religion And The Internet

View more OpenOffice presentations from Katharine Moody.

Religion and the Internet workshop

I just finished finalising my "Studying Religion and the Internet" workshop for the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Philosophical Religious Studies' postgraduate study day, Exploring New Challenges and Methods in the Study of Religion at Birkbeck. I'll post more about it, provide a link to the PowerPoint on Slideshare, and reflect on how it went after it, you know, goes (May 16th).

"Making Good" on a Paper Submission

So my abstract for the "Towards a Philosophy of Life" conference at Liverpool in June (conference details here, abstract here) was accepted. My paper will be entitled, "Making Good on the "Good" of Life: Emerging Logics and Poetics of the Kingdom," and is basically the last chapter of my thesis, "Poetics." This chapter demonstrates how the preceding findings regarding the notion of truth in the UK emerging church milieu informs the debate between Radical Orthodoxy (particularly James K.A. Smith's 'postmodern catholicism') and deconstructive theology (especially Jack Caputo's 'weak theology'). So I now have to fit writing this paper into my thesis writing schedule (see here). But it'll be worth it, as both Caputo and John Milbank will be presenting at the conference too, so it'll be a great room of people to present this stuff too. I'll also have a bit of time after the conference for any revisions from the paper to feed into the chapter itself.

Dark Night of the Soul at Lincoln Cathedral

My partner, Sim, is from the beautiful town of Lincoln. His parents still live there and are active in the life of the cathedral. In August, the cathedral is hosting "The Dark Night," an exploration of the mystical theology of St. John of the Cross.

The event will be a whole evening, running from 7pm on Friday August 7th, until 9am the next morning. It will include an introduction to John of the Cross' mystical poem, The Dark Night of the Soul, 'forged', the publicity reads, by his 'own experience of darkness and suffering.' The cathedral will look beautiful lit by candlelight, and there will be the opportunity to explore parts of the building not normally open to the public. Gregorian chant will be used to mark the passing of the hours until the morning. The evening also includes a performance of Bach's Goldberg Variations by Charles Harrison, and a cooked breakfast in the morning!

Tickets (£30) are available from the Cathedral Shop (01522 561544), although there is a limit of 80 participants.

Thesis Structure - April 2009

Another Panel Review document I submitted this year was an annotated plan, presenting the panel with my thesis in detail, from chapters to sections to subsections. I can't very well post all of that here (my annotated plan is 6,200 words) but I thought it could probably edit it down to something more readable. It might also be useful to have a look at the one page summary of my thesis argument thta I also submitted to the panel (here).

Thesis title (at the moment):

Emerging Truth/Justice: Towards a Poetic Understanding of (Christian) Truth.

Introduction

Chapter One, Contexts

• Presents the emerging church as a diverse milieu in which familial resemblances can nevertheless be drawn between those within it, providing the reader with an understanding of the context in which the research questions were asked.
• Places the emerging church milieu in the context of current research within the disciplines of the sociology of religion and continental philosophy of religion, positioning the milieu in the wider religious and spiritual landscape and demonstrating the wider value of the research questions.
• Explains my own position as a researcher in relation to the UK emerging church milieu.

Chapter Two, Methods

• Reviews the research methodologies of currently available studies of the emerging church.
• Gives the rationale behind my multi-methodology and presents these methods of data collection.
• Justifies in particular my use of Internet-mediated research methods.

Interlude, Researching Truth

• Problematizes the preceding chapters through a consideration of this thesis’ interdisciplinary position in relation to the philosophy of social science and continental philosophy’s critiques of representationalism.
• Suggests that John D. Caputo’s distinction between logics and poetics (The Weakness of God) is not only useful for thinking about the nature of this thesis as a piece of writing, but also hints at a distinction between two understandings of truth explored below; namely, truth as representation and correspondence (logics) and truth as transformation (poetics).
• Plays with the word “icon” and concludes that my work exists on the Derridean slash of undecidability in the word “i/con.”

Chapter Three, Truth(s)

• Argues for the aptness of pluralism about truth, supplementing the recent work of Michael P. Lynch (Truth as One and Many) through suggesting that the concept of truth needs to also be explored as it operates in the domain of religion.
• Constructs a set of truisms about religious truth (at least as it is viewed within the UK emerging church milieu) from interviews with participants.
• Uses participant data to suggest the truism that truth in the religious domain is transformational.
• Distinguishes between truth as transformative proposition and truth as transformative event, aided by Michel Henry (I am the Truth) and Jack Caputo (The Weakness of God).

Chapter Four, World

• Argues that, for the first strand, connecting the truism of transformation to propositions results in a realist assumption about truth: ‘truth hinges not on us but on the world’ (Lynch, The Nature of Truth, p.9).
• Shows why this assumption is questioned by the second strand.

Chapter Five, Event

• Argues that, for the second strand, understanding transformative truth as an event of truth itself results in an important relationship between religion and deconstruction.
• Shows why the first strand are wary of deconstruction.

Chapter Six, Justice

• Argues that the property that satisfies the truism of transformation and therefore manifests truth for religious/spiritual propositions is the norm of justice.
• Demonstrates that the event of “truth” itself can also be translated as “justice,” thereby augmenting our folk concept of truth as transformation.

Chapter Seven, Poetics

• Demonstrates that the foregoing exploration of the notion of truth within the UK emerging church milieu enables an assessment of the extent to which two contemporary theologies that have been suggested as apt for the milieu are indeed appropriate.
• Argues that, following some revisions, both Radical Orthodoxy and deconstructive theology are practically viable for the milieu.
• Recalls the distinction between representational logics and transformative poetics to defend Caputo's theological agenda from James K.A. Smith's criticisms ("The Logic of Incarnation")
• Uses Gavin Hyman's The Predicament of Postmodern Theology to argue that the latter option remains, however, preferable in my opinion.

Conclusions

Writing Schedule

The other documents that I submitted for my Panel Review this year (see here for the thesis summary I also handed in) included my annotated thesis plan (a detailed run down of the contents of each chapter, section and subsection of my thesis) and a writing sample, which was just over 12,000 words setting out part of the central thesis of chapters three to six of my thesis. As I can't very well replicate those documents here I thought I would post the gist of my writing schedule for the next few months along with my expected submission date.

I have already written the first final draft of chapter two, "Methods," and completed some sections of my "Introduction" and chapters one, "Contexts," and three, "Truth(s)."

So, from May 4 - 10, 11 - 17, I hope to complete the remaining sections of chapter three so that I've got a first final draft of it. During this time I'm also planning my workshop, "Studying Religion and the Internet," for a postgraduate day at Birkbeck (May 16).

I've got another London workshop (for Aspiring Academics) on the 19th, and my Panel Review on the 20th, so during May 18 - 22 I hope to finish the first draft of the section of chapter six, "Justice," that completes part of the thread of the argument begun in chapter three.

After taking Sim to see Anthony and the Johnsons in Birmingham on May 22, Sim is taking me to Paris for a little break (it's his halfterm holiday) from May 23 - 27, so I won't get that much done from May 23 - 31, although when Sim starts having to prepare lesson plans again after we get back I imagine I'll get something done.

June 1 - 7 I'll try to get a first draft of chapter four, "World," done, and the same for chapter five, "Event," from June 8 -14.

June 15 - 21 I'll finish the remaining sections of chapter six, "Justice."

The "Towards a Philosophy of Life" conference runs from June 26 - 28, so if my submission gets accepted (see here for my abstract) then I'll need to have been working on this before now. However, the argument of the paper slots nicely into chapter seven, "Poetics," so I can be writing this chapter around about the same time, June 22 - 28, with any revisions after the conference, June 29 - July 5.

During the week of June 29 - July 5, I'll also start writing my "Conclusions."

Then, after having completed the remaining sections of my "Introduction" and chapter one, "Contexts," I can edit for about a month (July 6 - 12, 13 - 19, 20 - 26, 27 - August 2) until either submitting before our summer holiday to Andalucia (August 13 - 29) or, after having had a nice break to get away from it all, looking through it once more and submitting at the beginning of September.

Looking at this, it seems like a lot of work to do in not a very long space of time. But maybe writing it here will motivate me to try to stick to this schedule - even if by the time I've submitted my brain has leaked out of my ears.

Thesis Abstract - April 2009

For our annual Panel Reviews (here and here for posts on last year's panel review process and here for this year's comments!) we have to submit a number of documents for the panel to read and evaluate prior to the review itself. One of the things they ask for is a one page summary of your thesis, the title of which is (at the moment) going to be Emerging Truth/Justice: Towards a Poetic Understanding of (Christian) Truth, focusing on central arguments and main findings. I thought I'd post my one page summary here, so you can see what I'm hoping to argue and also compare it to another thesis abstract I wrote only a few months ago (here) to see how it is changing as I continue to write up. So it's a little longer than an abstract would be but it's been really helpful for me to write - I now know that not only do I know what I want to say in my head, I can actually get it out onto a piece of paper for other people to see!!! Along with the central argument, I decided to try to hone my keywords:

This thesis explores how the notion of truth is conceptualized within the UK emerging church milieu, a diverse network of individuals and communities connected by the Internet and often particularly interested in the relationship between Christianity and the postmodern turn. Participants’ post- or late modern context of religious pluralism and individualism has impacted the ways in which the truth claims of the Christian religion are understood. Further, the theological turn of contemporary philosophy has also brought participants in contact with thinkers like Nietzsche, Derrida, Marion, Lévinas and Žižek, whose work in relation to religion raises questions of the nature of truth. This project therefore sought to discover not only what the philosophical, theological and ethical implications of participants’ conceptualizations of truth might be for Christian belief and practice, but what these notions of truth reveal about the viability of academic theologies like Radical Orthodoxy and deconstructive theology for the UK emerging church milieu.

Qualitative data was gathered from emerging church literature, emerging church blogs and interviews with a variety of UK milieu participants. This data displayed a conceptual pluralism about truth: truth is not only a concept that could be manifest differently in particular propositional domains, but is also understood non-propositionally as an event of truth itself. Participants identified both this truth-event and the truth of religious and spiritual propositions with the transformation of subjectivity and behaviour.

The author distinguishes between two strands which arise within the UK emerging church milieu regarding the truism that truth is transformative.

For the first, religious/spiritual propositions are true just when the transformation they evoke conforms to the norm of justice, a norm that itself coheres with a durably coherent framework of moral judgements towards which human beings aim in community and dialogue with each other. This conclusion has implications for collaboration across religious/secular boundaries. Those participants within this strand often, but need not, assume a theologically realist ontology. It is, however, difficult to overcome the objection that transformation here is merely a response to truth and not inherent to the concept itself.

In relation to religious/spiritual propositions, the second detectable strand within the data connects transformative truth not to propositional content but to the way in which propositions are believed. This is a consequence of their emphasis upon transformative truth as the non-propositional event of truth itself. Here, participants endeavour to keep religious/spiritual propositions open to the auto-deconstructive event at the heart of all language. Deconstruction is therefore intrinsic to religious propositions, traditions and institutions, to all the ways in which humanity names the event. For these participants, the language of truth is often supplanted by that of the other words used for the undeconstructible event, including justice and kingdom of God, which are understood as transformational rather than representational notions. Conceiving truth in this way places transformation within the concept itself, rather than as a response distinguishable from the truth that caused it.

These findings regarding truth in the UK emerging church milieu enable the author to assess theologies that have been suggested as apt for the milieu, James K.A. Smith's Radically Orthodox 'postmodern catholicism' and John D. Caputo's deconstructive 'weak theology.' It is argued that Radical Orthodoxy needs to become more generous towards other religions if it is to be welcomed by participants, and that weak theology becomes more practically viable when communities also emphasize how beliefs are held above what beliefs are held. The author assesses Smith’s criticisms of Caputo, arguing that he overlooks the latter’s differentiation between representational logics and transformational poetics. I use this distinction to argue that an interpretation of the kingdom of God as a concept that corresponds to a reality that will either arrive (Smith) or never arrive (Smith’s reading of Caputo) mischaracterizes it as representational rather than transformational.

Key words:

• John D. Caputo,
• Christianity,
• deconstructive theology,
• emerging church,
• justice,
• kingdom of God,
• poetics,
• Radical Orthodoxy,
• realism,
• James K.A. Smith,
• truth,
• transformation.

Truth Conference

I've just come across details of this conference on truth (Truth: Current Debates) being held at the University of Connecticut (where Michael P. Lynch is based) from May 15 - 17 2009. Too late for me to register and get reasonably priced flights. Darn. Anyway, the questions around which the event is organized are very interesting and should make for a fascinating conference (and hopefully follow-up publication!). The conference site reads:

"Some of the most basic questions concerning truth ask for its nature: in what does truth consist? Does it even have a nature? And is that nature one or many?

"The objective of this conference is to foster discussion that will shed new light on the nature of truth. A particular emphasis will be placed on how one might oppose traditional approaches to truth according to which the nature of truth (i) is to be accounted for in terms of a substantive property (such as correspondence or coherence) and (ii) is uniform across all truth-apt domains. Among the issues to be addressed in relation to this question are the following:

• What is the most viable way of rejecting (i), i.e. what is the strongest version of deflationism about truth?
• What is the most viable way of rejecting (ii) i.e. what is the strongest version of pluralism about truth?
• What is the most viable way of combining a rejections of (i) and (ii), i.e. what is the strongest version of deflationary pluralism about truth?
• How does a commitment to deflationism, pluralism or a combination of the two impact our understanding of other philosophically important concepts, such as meaning, content, representation, valid inference, knowledge, and the normativity of truth? Depending on one's commitments, must such accounts be "deflated", "pluralized", or abandoned altogether?
• What, if any, is the relationship between pluralism about truth and pluralism about logic?
• What, if any, is the relationship between pluralism about truth and pluralism about ontology?
• What objections are there to pluralism? To deflationism? To deflationary pluralism?"

The line-up of speakers is particularly impressive and includes JC Beall (Connecticut), Marian David (Notre Dame), Pascal Engel (Geneva), Patrick Greenough (St. Andrews/Arché), Max Kölbel (Birmingham), Michael Lynch (Connecticut), Vann McGee (MIT), Gila Sher (University of California at San Diego) and Crispin Wright (St. Andrews/Arché, NYU).

Pluralism about Truth and Thesis Structure

Michael Lynch’s recently published Truth as One and Many (2009) has helped me crystallize my thoughts on pluralism about truth, and so will be particularly useful in helping me structure my third chapter (“Truth(s)”). As a result, I’ve also reordered my last three chapters (now “Justice,” “Generosity” and “Weakness” – instead of “Generosity,” “Weakness,” and “Justice”), the contents of which I blogged about a bit the other day. In this post, I’ll summarize Lynch’s argument, and then show how it has affected my thesis structure.

Following Lynch (but also some stuff I’ve read by Ralph Walker), I’m going to argue that most theorists of truth are monists about truth; that is, they assume that the notion of truth has one nature that is unchanged when the concept is applied to diverse phenomena, and seek to encapsulate that singular essence in a global theory of truth. However, the scope problem throws up numerous counterexamples across diverse domains of phenomena – the truth of which one theory of truth has difficulty explaining. For example, a correspondence theory of truth cannot account for propositions that are non-representational but are intuitively true (such as, murder is wrong). Hence, the move from global theories of truth (such as correspondence, coherence, or deflationism) towards a pluralism about truth that might include such conventional theories of truth but will apply them locally rather than globally.

Lynch’s thesis begins with what he calls the ‘folk’ concept of truth, which ‘embodies our preconceptions [about truth], the way we tacitly think about it in our ordinary life – even if, normally, we don’t even recognize ourselves as doing so’ (Lynch 2009:7). According to Lynch’s presentation of our folk concept of truth, it includes a number of truisms about truth:

• Truth is objective (the belief "p" is true if, and only if, with respect to the belief that "p", things are as they are believed to be);
• Truth is the norm of belief (it is prima facie correct to believe that "p" if and only if the proposition that "p" is true; or ‘truth is belief’s basic norm of correctness,’ Lynch 2009:11); and
• Truth is the goal of inquiry (true beliefs are a worthy goal of inquiry; truth is pursued indirectly through the direct pursuit of reasons and evidence; the processes of questioning have truth as their aim).
  
  

Lynch maintains that truth itself is a singular concept, identified with these three core truisms (there are other, intimately related concepts that I won’t go into here). A theory of truth is only a theory of truth if it incorporates these core truisms (or else it is changing the subject) and is only a theory of truth if it explains them (or explains away those it does not hold). According to Lynch, the correspondence and coherence theories of truth are only viable under certain additional conditions. Only in a propositional domain in which mental states “respond” to external environments, such that propositions either represent or misrepresent reality, the correspondence theory of truth is viable. Similarly, the coherence theory of truth is only viable in a propositional domain that imposes epistemic constraints on the truths of the domain (it must be in principle possible for someone at some time to have warrant for believing any given proposition), and these propositions must be non-representational in character. This problem of scope leads Lynch to advocate pluralism about truth, according to which neither correspondence nor coherence are global theories of truth but are instead theories of how truth is manifest locally in particular domains.

Truth remains singular, but is manifest pluralistically. Truth is one concept (exhibiting core truisms about truth essentially, or, as Lynch also phrases it, playing the truth-role as such), but truth is multiply realizable (in propositions that have a property accidentally that manifests truth). The concept “truth” remains singular but there are multiple properties of propositions that might manifest that singular concept in different ways. The property that manifests truth or plays the truth-role in a particular domain is dependent on the nature of that particular propositional domain. In other words, Lynch’s thesis is not that “truth” correctly applies to correspondence here or coherence there (suggesting two concepts of truth) but rather that truth is one concept that is manifest in correspondence in one domain and coherence in another.

Lynch applies his theory of truth as one and many to the domain of morality. He holds that ‘a property constructed of our epistemic norms for morality could serve to manifest truth for our moral judgements’ (2009:185). He demonstrates that the epistemological norms for the domain of moral judgements demand that propositions within this domain are non-representational, i.e. do not correspond to externally existing entities (‘It is difficult to know how to “locate” something like moral wrongness amongst the furniture of the physical world,’ Lynch 2009:1). Therefore, he argues, the correspondence theory of truth cannot act as a global theory of the manifestation of truth in this domain. Instead, Lynch supplies a theory of the manifestation of truth for the moral domain based upon coherence and concordance. Our folk concept of truth in the moral domain suggests that ‘we see our moral inquires as aiming at constructing frameworks of concordant judgements. Such systems, were there every to be any, would be durably improving coherent frameworks of judgements, some of which – the non-moral judgements – are true in virtue of corresponding t the facts, but others of which – the moral judgements – are true by supercohering to that very framework, that is, by durably belonging to the framework itself’ (2009:175-176).

What I think it is important to grasp here is Lynch’s methodology: we move from our folk concept of truth for a particular domain towards identifying the property that manifests these truisms for this domain. By the same logic, then, a property constructed out of the UK emerging church milieu’s epistemic norms for religion might serve to manifest truth for religious propositions in the religious or spiritual domain (or, at least, for the UK emerging church milieu's religious/spiritual domain). If truth is manifested by a property of propositions because that property plays the truth-role in that particular domain, then my own work needs to answer the following questions:

• What is the truth-role or truism about truth for the religious/spiritual domain? and
• What property of propositions plays this role (thereby making propositions true, for this particular domain)?

In Chapter Three (“Truth(s)”), then, I’m going to argue that:

• Lynch’s initial discussion of what constitutes our everyday folk concept of truth neglects the spiritual and religious dimensions to everyday life;
• my empirical data from the UK emerging church milieu suggests that the truth-role in the spiritual/religious domain is transformation and call;
• the property of propositions that enables transformation, call and response therefore manifests truth (for this particular domain), true propositions in this domain do not necessarily therefore have to be representational, and the truth of propositions are judged not by their ability to represent, but by their ability to transform; and
• the property of propositions that manifests truth in the religious/spiritual domain is the norm of justice.

My previous thesis structure (see post here for details) had closely followed my research questions:

• How is the notion of truth understood in the UK emerging church milieu? (chapter 3, “Truth(s)”) [Therefore, also, What is the UK emerging church milieu? (chapter 2, “Emergence”)] and
• What are the philosophical (chapters 4, “Inaccessibility” and 5, “Undecidability”), theological (chapters 6, “Generosity” and 7, “Weakness”), and ethical (chapter 8, “Justice”) implications of these notions of truth?
  

Now, however, I have decided to reorder things a little.

Chapter 2 morphed into “Contexts” a while a go, so that it more closely answered the question of not only what the UK emerging church milieu is but also why it is important to study it academically.

Chapters 3, 4 and 5 stay in the order they were but are more clearly focused on 3) arguing why pluralism about truth is a useful notion, suggesting that Lynch’s work needs to be supplemented through a study of the notion of truth as it operates in the domain of religion or spirituality, and arguing that the truism that truth is an event that transforms and calls is key here; and 4) and 5) documenting what the diverse philosophical structures of this domain are in order to demonstrate what property manifests truth in the spiritual/religious domain. This therefore leads on to Chapter 6, which is now “Justice,” having been moved from the end of the thesis. Here, I hope to be able to argue that the property that displays the truism of transformation (and therefore manifests truth) in the spiritual domain is the norm of justice.

This argument then informs the debate between Radically Orthodox ‘Catholic Postmodernism’ (James K.A. Smith, see posts here and here) and ‘religion without Religion’ (Jack Caputo, posts on Weak Theology here, here, here, here and here), thus shifting the “Generosity” and “Weakness” chapters to the end of the thesis. The gist of these last three chapters is contained in the paper I hope to give at the Towards a Philosophy of Life conference in Liverpool in June (see post the other day). I’m trying to write this chapter at the moment (in time for the deadline for Panel Review documents, April 27th) so more on this in the next little while as I bang out my argument in more detail. In the meantime, I hope the post here has given a few ideas of how chapters 3, 4 and 5 might go!

Philosophy of Life Abstract

So I submitted my abstract for the Towards a Philosophy of Life conference today: "Making Good on the "Good" of Life: Emerging Logics and Poetics of the Kingdom." The gist of it is basically the argument of my last three chapters (having now rearranged the order of my chapters - "Justice," "Generosity" and "Weakness" - which I'll blog more about tomorrow). Hopefully it'll get accepted, but even if it doesn't the words will go straight into my thesis so no real harm done... but it would be great to present this stuff to Jack Caputo and John Milbank as it directly relates to the rebate between elements of their work (see particularly my posts on James K.A. Smith's Radically Orthodox 'Postmodern Catholicism' here, here, here and here). Here's the abstract then:

This paper begins by illustrating how the deconstructive theology of John D. Caputo is embodied in the life of the UK emerging church milieu. Caputo’s theological project, articulated more recently as a Weak Theology, proposes both an ‘historical association’ with the determinate religious traditions’ visions of and hopes for life, and a ‘messianic disassociation,’ in order to refuse such traditions’ exclusionary, violent and unjust closure towards the other. Using interview and ethnographic data, I suggest ways in which this difficult tension between particularity and alterity might be lived out. I show why Caputo’s notion of the kingdom of God as a repetition or recreation of God’s generative proclamation that life is “good” is helpful as participants seek to live their lives as a form of “making good” on this original “good.”

In the process of exploring his notions of creation and kingdom, I defend Caputo’s theology against recent criticism by James K.A. Smith. In contrasting his Radically Orthodox ‘Postmodern Catholicism’ with Caputo’s work, Smith distinguishes between his own logic of incarnation and Caputo’s logic of determination. According to Smith, the consequences of the Derridean/Caputian logic include the translation of Derrida’s impossible, undeconstructible, un-present-able justice into an indeterminate, not specifically Christian, kingdom that is similarly structurally always to-come. However, I believe this is to overlook Caputo’s differentiation between representational logics and transformational poetics. I use this distinction to argue that an interpretation of the kingdom of God as a concept that corresponds to a reality that will either arrive (Smith) or never arrive (Smith’s reading of Caputo) mischaracterizes it as representational rather than transformational. These divergent notions of the kingdom are also present within contemporary Christian belief and practice. This paper therefore further unpacks the differences between these two understandings of the kingdom, as I see them emerge both in the work of Smith and Caputo, and in the UK emerging church milieu.

Annual Panel Reviews

So, it's that time of year again.

Philosophy of Life

Conference gallore at the moment. Here's another one. It looks fantastic. Steven Shakespeare is one of the co-organisers (I blogged here about his introduction to Radical Orthodoxy, but he's publishing Derrida and Theology soon - can't wait! - and has cool taste in music). Anyway, this conference (Towards a Philosophy of Life: Reflections on the Concept of Life in Continental Philosophy of Religion) has some great speakers lined up (including

• Dr. Pamela Sue Anderson (The University of Oxford)
• Professor John D. Caputo (Syracuse University)
• Professor Don Cupitt (The University of Cambridge)
• Professor Jean-Yves Lacoste (Institut Catholique, Paris) [couldn't find a uni page!]
• Professor John Milbank (The University of Nottingham)

It's hosted by Liverpool Hope University, runs from Friday 26th - Sunday 28th June 2009, and the conference organisers expect to edit a book of a selection of papers from the proceedings. Here's the blurb and call for submission details:

"The question whether it is still possible to live is the form in which metaphysics impinges on us urgently today," Adorno, Metaphysics: Concepts and Problems, p.112.

"Traditionally, a common conception of philosophy has been as a melete thanatou or 'meditation upon death'. However, in recent years it is the significance of the concept of 'life' which has begun to receive increasing attention in contemporary European philosophy. Indeed, writing in the wake of the brutalization of life in the death camps of Auschwitz, Adorno poses a central question for current philosophical debate on life, namely, 'How might life live?'

"The aim of this conference is to address this question and in doing so assess recent philosophies of life. In particular, the conference seesk to explore metaphysical, phenomenological, ethical and religious underpinnings of philosophies of life, especially in light of the emergence of 'continental philosophy of religion.' By enquiring into conceptions of life in contemporary philosophical and religious thought, this conference also aims to reconsider the key project of ancient philosophy: the teaching of the good life."

The call for abstracts (400 words) suggests a broad range of themes, including

• The concept of life in vitalism and philosophies of immanence (Spinoza, Nietzsche, Bergson, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Henry, Alain Badiou, etc)
• Life, power and politics (esp. Foucault and Giorgio Agamben)
• Alterity, gift and life: deconstruction and phenomenology
• Rethinking life in light of the body, natality and sexual difference: feminist philosophy of religion and feminist theology
• Psychoanalysis (life, death and desire)
• Theologies of life (creation, incarnation, sacrament and grace)

The deadline for submitting abstracts (400 words) is Friday 17 April 2009. To submit abstracts (or for further details) email Dr. Patrice Haynes - haynesp@hope.ac.uk

My thinking on this so far is to try to solidify some of my thoughts regarding Jamie Smith's criqitue of Derridean deconstruction and Caputian deconstructive theology as assuming a logic of determinism (I've blogged about it a few times here and here). Smith characterizes Radical Orthodoxy, or what he is increasingly referring to as a 'catholic postmodernism,' as a logic of incarnation but then doesn't extend the same clear connection to the Christian tradition to deconstructive theolology (by naming it as a logic of determinism). I think I could argue that it can be seen as a logic of creation instead. Yes, deconstruction emphasises finitude, particularity, singularity, determinancy, etc, but it simultaneously emphasises alterity and responsibility. As Caputo has said, we have to "make good" on God's "good" in Genesis. So I think I'm going to write something around these themes, possibly titled something like, "'Making good' on the 'Good' of Life: The Pragmatic Translation of Truth into Justice."

Mark Mason (Chichester University) is one of the guys who has joined the conference group on Facebook. He's written some very interesting things, including a chapter in Evaluating Fresh Expressions. A conference paper he emailed me, entitled "Impossible Ecclesiology? John D. Caputo and the Emerging Church (Movement?)", was great.

Have we ever been 'Post'?

The British Sociological Association's Theory Study Group are holding a conference in collaboration with the University of Warick's Department of Sociology, called "Have we ever been 'Post'? The Critiques of Sociological Knowledge." The call for submissions has closed now, and I felt that to have tried to write something for this would again distract me from the rest of the thesis, but I hope to be able to go. It's in September (17th-18th 2009) and here's some more details about it.

The keynote speakers will be Steven Seidman (State University of New York at Albany) and Liz Stanley (University of Edinburgh). Confirmed speakers include Les Back (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Gurminder Bhambra (University of Warwick), Steve Fuller (University of Warwick), John Holmwood (University of Birmingham), Stevi Jackson (University of York) and Gregor McLennan (University of Bristol).

And some blurb:

"2009 is an important year for sociology and social theory. It is 50 years after the publication of C. Wright Mills’ ‘The Sociological Imagination’ (1959), 40 years since Michel Foucault’s ‘The Archaeology of Knowledge’ (1969), and 30 years since Jean-Francois Lyotard’s ‘The Postmodern Condition’ (1979). Although coming from distinctive positions, and with different aims, these books share the quality of bringing about strong critiques of knowledge production in the social sciences and, fundamentally, challenging major principles of Western social theory and sociology.

"These books came to light in a period of increasing self-doubt concerning the sustainability of the project of Western modernity and capitalism. This was translated into substantive epistemological and conceptual reformulations across the social sciences and humanities, often taking the shape of a crisis and provoking the expectation of the coming of a new age. In this context, the pictures drawn by Mills, Foucault and Lyotard generated as much seduction as resistance, but never indifference, within social thought.

"These critiques of the canonical imagination, knowledge and practice in the social sciences disclosed problems that still occupy us today regarding the ways in which we “understand”, “explain” and “represent” the social world: the validity of the categories of knowledge, claims of universalism, meta-narratives and grand-theory, disciplinary boundaries, the link between theory and practice, the public and critical role of knowledge, power discourses, the production of otherness and difference, and the redefinition of the relationship of social theory with modernity, amongst many others.

"By now much of this debate has been framed under the rubric of a ‘post’ sociological imagination. Nevertheless, the times in which we raise these inquiries have become rapidly distant from the times of Mills, Foucault and Lyotard. Wider developments in society, such as a more radical process of technological and economic globalization, the post-ideological consensus, the war on terror, new geopolitical powers and global warming have left their traces in the academic world. The University has become a place of marketisation and assessment, which has challenged the ways in which sociologists and academics more generally practice their disciplines. The university is no longer simply a place of political discourse and contestation. It rather seems that an atmosphere of “post”-orientation has taken over, making the aim to act as a social scientist and as a person – as Mills phrased it – appear anachronistic.

"Against this background, the coinciding anniversary of Mills’, Foucault’s, and Lyotard’s books provides an opportune moment for revisiting and perhaps updating the legacy of these “critiques of knowledge”. Accordingly, the conference welcomes papers from across disciplines and countries, and from different theoretical and empirical backgrounds addressing some of the following issues:

• The coming of a “post” sociological imagination: When? Where? How? Why?
• Becoming canonical: the place, function and implications of Mills, Foucault and Lyotard in the (re)definition of sociology’s discourse, identity and practice.
• Global north and global south, encounters and varieties of the “post” sociological imagination: the reception, contestation and influence of the critique of sociological knowledge.
• Researching the social world after Mills, Foucault and Lyotard (and others): the challenges and status of the theoretical, empirical and epistemological in social inquiry.
• Making things public: possibilities, forms, times and places of sociological knowledge in the age of post-critique."

I've blogged a bit (here) about why I'm interested in the intersections between sociology and postmodern thought. So, while I hope to be able to make it to the conference in September, I didn't want to revist these things right now - not while I'm trying to make headway in LOADS of other areas of my thesis!

Scepticism Conference

On June 6th 2009, a one-day conference on Scepticism is being hosted by the University of Southampton's Philosophy Department. Their blurb reads: "This includes scepticism as it appears in epistemology, philosophy of mind, ethics, philosophy of language and other areas. Contributions concerning contemporary continental or analytic philosophy are equally welcome, as are those addressing topics from the history of philosophy. Papers are invited from graduate students and we are hoping to attract a wide external audience."

The keynotes will be:
Quassim Cassm (Univeristy of Warwick) "Knowing, Seeing and Stroud's Dilemma"
Duncan Pritchard (University of Edinburgh) "Radical Scepticism, Epistemic Luck and Epistemic Value."

The deadline for submission of papers is Monday 4th May 2009, should be not more than 3,000 words in length (suitable for 20 mins presentation, followed by discussion), and submitted to Dr Denis McManus - D.Mcmanus@soton.ac.uk. The call asks for papers to be accompanied by a covering letter/e-mail, but to not contain any self-identifying references in the text itself. Contact Adam Dunn (agd205@soton.ac.uk) or Dan Clifford (djc302@soton.ac.uk) for other inquires.

Registration for the Scepticism day is free so I'm going to go, but I'm going to try and submit a paper too. I need to launch myself into the relatively unfamiliar world of the study of scepticism, sort through my data in relation to the two philosophical chapters of my thesis, and come up with something - by May 4th. As I'm hoping to get something resembling a nearly finished first draft by the end of May, this isn't out of the realms of possibility, so I'll give it a go. It might have a title something like: "Forms of Scepticism in Contemporary Christianity: Accepting Finitude and Celebrating Undecidability." But I need to know A LOT more about scepticism before I can even begin to position my data in this kind of academic context!!!

"Researching Theo(b)logy" Published

My copy of Exploring Religion and the Sacred in a Media Age came in the post this morning! Look out for Ellen Moore's really interesting chapter on American evangelical churches' responses to The Da Vinci Code. My chapter is called, "Researching Theo(b)logy: A Participatory Research Methodology for the Blogosphere."



I write about the use the emerging church milieu make of two Internet-based technological innovations (blogs and wikis). After documenting the difficulties in using these texts (see my chapter in Reading Spiritualities in relation to the nature of online text) as sources of data, I suggest the benefits for researchers of having a research-specific blog (particularly for researchers looking at the Internet) and reflect on the practical and ethical issues involved in such a participatory methodology.

By chance, there's an interesting article in this quarter's Network (the newsletter of the British Sociological Association) on "Blogology," by Rebecca Leach (Keele University). She writes, 'The blog is hugely underused by sociologists as a means of communication... This is a real shame because blogs can give the public a real flavour of our research and writing much quicker than any other published output... A rich stream of new and interesting thinking can be found in the blogs of the many PhD students who creatively link together their academic ideas with their personal, political and cultural lives' (p.18). Rebecca's article includes links to A (Budding) Sociologist's Commonplace Book, Global Sociologist and a Very Public Sociologist - all with cooler names than my blog. Hey ho.

Maybe Fieldwork in Religion (see post here) would be a good place to further reflect on how my research blog is going? Obviously, the posts here at OpenSourceResearch form a cumulative reflection on this methodology but (as I originally wrote the chapter that appears in Exploring Religion and the Sacred in a Media Age in April 2007 - with some revisions over the year) it is now much more common for academics (particularly PhD students) to have research-related blogs. It would be interesting to explore if and how these blogs have encouraged participation from their research subjects.

Religious Mediation among LGBT Christians

After blogging twice (here, and here) about trying to write up my MA research into an article, and in response to the call for papers from late last year, I've finally submitted my entry to the journal Sexualities' special edition on religion and spirituality. It's entitled "Queerying The Spiritual Revolution: Religious Mediation among LGBT Christians." It has morphed significantly both from my MA dissertation (now also including data from my other MA studies, including a congregational study of the spirituality of an MCC in the North of England, and an exploration of LGB identity as portrayed in the LGCM archives) and from my previous attempts to get the 25,000 words down to under 6,000! It's become much less about LGBT Christians and much more about how sociologists of religion and spirituality approach their phenomena, particularly how the methodological categories used by Heelas and Woodhead in their (2005) The Spiritual Revolution are problematized in my small scale studies. This might mean that it isn't "sexual" enough for Sexualities, but we'll see. If it doesn't get accepted, at least I've (finally) got it to say what I want it to say and to do it in under 6,000 words.

Here's the final version of the abstract:

This article uses small-scale studies among LGBT Christians to “queery” the dualistic framework of Heelas and Woodhead’s The Spiritual Revolution. Theories of mediation are required to explain the practices and beliefs of those negotiating both subjective-life and life-as modes of living. Identity integration strategies among LGBT Christians suggest ways in which individuals and communities might navigate these categories of religious significance and authority. Data confirms that different forms of life-as religions-cum-spiritualities are making the subjective turn; that participants nevertheless alternate between rather than ‘fuse’ internal and (albeit reconstructed) external authorities; and that Heelas’ more recent God without/“god” within distinction is a clearer marker of whether practitioners are already affiliated to either transcendent theism or inner-life spirituality and of when a transition from one to the other has been or is being undertaken.

Key words:

• Christianity;
• Heelas and Woodhead;
• LGBT;
• inner-life spirituality;
• spiritual revolution.