Researching Religion in the Long Run

Further to yesterday's post on the Innovative Methods in the Study of Religion Conference, Abby Day is calling for paper proposals for a panel she is putting together on "Conducting Qualitative Longitudinal Research in the Study of Religion." Abstracts (200 words) should be sent to her at a.day@sussex.ac.uk by December 7 2009. Here's her blurb:

"How and why do religious beliefs, behaviours and belongings change over time? That question animates public debate and underpins many related research questions in the academic study of religion, and yet there is scant rich, informative, qualitative, longitudinal evidence to illuminate the issue.

"Papers should focus on the methodological challenges and opportunities involved in doing qualitative longitudinal research on religion, at any stage and in any discipline. Projects may range from single-researcher, ethnographic 'return to the field' studies to large-scale, long-term, follow-up projects. We particularly welcome papers that would benefit postgraduates or other early career researchers who may be considering such work."

Also further to yesterday's post, the conference fee is £40 (£20 postgrad). Overnight accommodation is available (£140 B&B) and the cost of the conference dinner is £25.

Ecumenics (a 100 years on) Conference

Next year, the Irish School of Ecumenics at Trinity College Dublin is hosting a conference in June called "From World Mission to Interreligious Witness: Visioning Ecumenics in the 21st Century." It is being co-organised by the theological journal Concilium and will run from June 16-18 2010. The blurb goes like this:

"The centenary of the ecumenical 1910 World Mission Conference in Edinburgh is an opportunity to engage, critically, with the achievements and failures of Ecumenics as that can be interpreted through the changes of vision and action manifest in the ecumenical movement. From the vantage point of the new century, one of the most important elements of revisioning relates to the character and concept of ecumenical Christian witness across cultures and faiths. The diversity of cultures and faiths was, of course, already evident in 1910 and provided the context in which "world mission" was envisage. However, political, philosophical and theological developments of the 20th century have recalibrated the significance of that diversity and have raised radical new questions for Christianity in its many manifestations:

• "What is the significance of the way in which Christianity has moved from World Mission to World Christianity?
• "How can Christian mission and witness be theorized and embodied in the 21st century?
• "What does Christian witness entail in the public squares of the world, which represent not only multiplicity as spatial and historic entities, but also plurality within?
• "How can religious actors best acknowledge the fact that the public square should not simply be regarded as the "other" of some imagined religious sphere?
• "How can Christianity re-imagine and re-position itself in light of the contested and often contradictory trajectories of secularisation and religiosty?
• "Will the 21st century confirm a transition from Christian witness to interreligious witness?
• "How will Christian theological reflection develop alongside altered expressions of ecclesiality?

"...the conference not only seeks to re-appropriate the understanding of ecumenical Christian witness for our times but also to set out a vision for Ecumenics in the 21st century as intercultural theology, ecumenical public theology, and interreligious theology."

Although there is only one slot for parallel sessions (Thurs June 17 4.30-6pm), there is a call for papers. Abstracts (200-300 words) should address the following themes:

• interreligious witness and religious pluralism;
• ecumenical witness in the 21st century;
• the hopes and limits of public theology;
• theological dissent, freedom and creativity;
• mission and the "other";
• intercultural theology and religious identity(ies);
• "mission" in a secular context;
• local and global contexts of World Christianity and other faiths; and
• the next 100 years of ecumenism.

These themes all sound very interesting but it is disappointing that there is only one parallel paper session. It means that there is going to be a lot going on at the same time and that the conference delegates will miss most of these papers because of such a weird - and surely unnecessary? - scheduling decision. I've never seen this format before.

Anyway, the other conference sessions include:

• "From World Mission to World Christianity: Revisiting Christian Witness from the Global South" (Felix Wilfred, Madras);
• "Christian Witness in 'New Modernity:' Trajectories in Intercultural Theology" (Robert J. Schreiter, Chicago);
• "Religion and Theology in Public Life" (Will Storrar, Princeton);
• "Eastern Orthodox Christianity in a Pluralistic World" (Ina Merdjanova, Sofia);
• "Islam and Public Witness: Issues in Dawah and Religious Pluralism" (Ataullah Siddiqui, Leicester);
• "The Role of Witness in Interreligious Dialogue" (Catherine Cornille, Boston);
• "Interreligious and Witness: Examining the Terms from Hindu Perspectives" (Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Lancaster);
• "Visioning Ecumenics as Interreligious Theology" (John D'Arcy May, Dublin); and
• "Visioning Ecumenics in the 21st Century" (Linda Hogan, Dublin).

The conference fee is 100 Euros before April 1 2010/120 after April 1 2010 for waged and 50/60 for unwaged. It runs from 10am June 16 to 1pm June 18, with a reception and dinner on Monday night. It isn't clear whether other meals and accommodation is included in the conference fee, but you can direct enquiries to Dr. Admirand.

Innovative Methods Conference

As part of the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Programme's public events, it, with Norface's Re-emergence of Religion as a Social Force in Europe Programme, is hosting a conference on Innovative Methods in the Study of Religion in March next year. Running over March 29/30 2010, the conference will be at London's Dexter House Conference Centre (The Royal Mint, Tower Hill). Here's the call for papers:



"The study of religion lends itself to methodological innovation for a number of reasons. Religion is a complex phenomenon with various social locations and faces. Its forms are constantly changing, as has become very evident in recent decades. Growing interest in religion and a growing appreciation of its many dimensions - including the material and spatial, emotional and bodily, mediated and virtual, transnational and political - call for fresh reflection on methods. This conference offers a unique opportunity for such relfection and change, and an edited volume will result from it.



"Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Visual and patial methods,
• Participatory / action research,
• Combining methods: mixes and rationales,
• Research with new media,
• Sensitie research
• Innovation in survey design, and use of survey data on religion,
• New approaches to quantitative analysis - regression analysis and beyond,
• Comparative case studies,
• Integrating historical research.

"Individual paper proposals (max. 200 words) or proposals for panels of three or four related papers (max. 300 words) should be submitted to: Peta Ainsworth: p.ainsworth@lancaster.ac.uk by December 15 2009.

The deadline for registration is Friday January 15 2010, and you can download the registration form here.

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.

Sociology of Religion Christianity Conference

I heard back today that my abstract for the British Sociological Association's Sociology of Religion Study Group's "Changing Face of Christianity in the 21st Century" conference got accepted.

My paper will basically attempt to summarise the conclusions from my PhD thesis and is entitled, "Emerging Cultural Imaginaries and Radical Sociality: Narrating Difference and Per(ver)forming Christian Community." Here's the abstract:

‘There is then a twofold work for those projects involved in developing transformative practices of hope: the work of generating new imaginary significations and the work of forming institutions that mark such significations’ (Graham Ward, Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice, p.146)

The emerging church is a diverse milieu of individuals and communities connected by social networking technologies. Strong affinities can be detected between its visions for Christianity in the 21st century and Radical Orthodoxy and deconstructive theology. Milieu participants construct two “imaginary significations” or “cultural imaginaries” that place these theologies into narratives that both make religious sense to the emerging church and make sense of emerging church religiosity. These imaginaries are performed through expressive actions that function as the means of the formation and transformation of individuals and collectives.

This paper identifies two cultural imaginaries from fieldwork with the emerging church and presents the ways in which difference and community are narrated and performed by milieu participants. It argues, however, that an “a/theistic cultural imaginary” is most able to furnish the emerging church milieu with the narratival and performative means of affirming and enacting a radical theological sociality of difference without division within the post-secular pluralism of the United Kingdom.

The conference is being hosted by the University of Edinburgh and runs from April 6-8 2010. You can download the registration form here, or book and pay online here.

Just Say "No:" to Drugs and/or Academic Advice

Under the Research Excellence Framework, "significant additional recognition will be given where researchers build on excellent research to deliver demonstrable benefits to the economy, society, public policy, culture and quality of life."

So, the government demands that we demonstrate the economic and social impact of our research before we can get money, and then policy makers don't act on or even appear to respect our advice?!?

Re: Professor David Nutt.

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!]

Life and Love

My partner Sim and I got engaged this weekend! It was our 4th anniversay and Sim took me away for a night in the Peak District, to a place called Alstonefield, a short walk from Milldale at the north of Dovedale that his parents like a lot. We went for a lovely walk in the hilltops and down to the rocky ravine and the river. We walked in bracing lustery gales, with brilliant blue skies and rainbows, with tiny rain clouds chasing across the sky. The hilltop fields were lush and green with bright white limestone drystone walls, and the beautiful autumnal colours (Sim's favourite time of the year) were everywhere, with yellow, orange and brown leaves and red berries. We sat together under a chestnut tree in a churchyard and drank champagne while the sun set. Then we went to the pub.

As I knew we were going to get engaged - we chose our engagement ring six weeks ago - I had time to write Sim a poem. It was inspired by this clip of Derrida from "Derrida: the movie," talking about the question of "love." Annoyingly, embedding is disabled, so you'll have to follow this link to it on Youtube.

"Is 'love' the love of someone or the love of some thing?"

Is "love" the love of someone or the love of some thing? Does one love someone, or does one love something about someone?

Supposing I loved someone... Do I love someone for the absolute singularity of who they are? Do I love you because you are you? Or do I love your qualities? Do I love your beauty? Do I love your intelligence?

It is often said that love is the movement of the heart. Does my heart move because I love someone who is an absolute singularity, or because I love the way that someone is?

The difference, between the who and the what at the heart of "love," separates the heart, separates the heart of the lover.

Often, love starts with some type of seduction. One is attracted because the other is like this or like that. And love is disappointed and dies when one comes to realize the other person isn't like this or that. So at the birth of love and at the death of love, it appears that one loves another not because of who they are, their singularity, but because they are or are not this or that.

The heart of love separates the heart of the lover. That is to say, the history of love, the heart of love, is divided between the who and the what. Whoever starts to love, is in love, or stops loving, is caught between this division of the who and the what.

So I - I who am in love, I who am caught by the heart, caught at the heart of love, I whose heart is caught by love - am caught at the heart of the question of love... of
whether "love" is the love of someone or the love of some thing.

The heart of love separates the heart of the lover.

I who am in love am broken hearted.

One wants to be true - to be true absolutely, utterly, unreservedly, unconditionally. And one wants to be true to someone - to someone in their singularity, in their uniqueness, their individuality, their irreplaceability. One wants to be true to someone. But is "love" the love of someone or the love of some thing?

This is a question for me. It is my question, the question by which I and my love are put into question. I have an empty head about love itself, about love in general, about the philosophy of love. I have no answer to those questions.

But my answer to the question of my love - my answer about my love and my answer to my love - must be given every day. Today, every day, for all my days, will I love some thing about someone? Or will I love someone? This someone. As he is. For who he is.

Yes, yes.

Writers' Rooms

So I've been writing. I'm working on a chapter which explores how the notion of "truth" is connected to the notion of "justice," and, seeing as how that means I've not been blogging much (or doing, really, anything apart from writing - my partner Sim is being absolutely fantastic about doing cooking and washing up), I thought I'd blog about where I do my writing.

Well, since I haven't really got that much interesting to say on the subject (my study is in a small upstairs extension at the back of our house, with skylights [that leak] and a window with a tree outside it, is full of books, folders and [for the moment unused] musical instruments... oh and I haven't cleaned it once since we moved in over a year ago), I thought I'd post some photos instead, a la The Guardian's excellent (and obviously much more interesting than mine) "Writers' Rooms." So, here we go on a tour of my study...

On the door is this picture. It is generally "where I'm at."

Then there are lots of book shelves without many books on them. Like this:

They're a bit empty because most of the books are all piled up around my desk so I can grab them quickly. Like this:

But there are some books that do make it back onto the shelves after I've used them. Like these:

And here's my window with the tree where the long-tailed tits make me happy when it's not going so well!

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.

Greenbelt 2010

Further to Friday's post, according to Christian Aid, Greenbelt 2010 will be from Friday 27th August until Monday 30 August. Although I can't find any details on the Greenbelt website, Wikipedia is listing next year's theme as "The Art of Looking Sideways."

Greenbelt 09 Talks

Unable to get to Greenbelt this year (theme: Standing in the Long Now), I've been eagerly scanning the talks available on CD or MP3 download from the website. I'm looking forward to hearing Kester Brewin's talks in advance of his next book (hopefully available next year some time), as well as Mark Vernon (my partner Sim happened across his book, After Atheism, yesterday). And, as ever, Pete Rollins' contributions. In particular, I'm going to fork out for:

• Church Without Borders, Dave Tomlinson


• How to be a Religious Agnostic, Mark Vernon


• We Are Strange; God is Stranger, Kester Brewin


• The Birth of Christianity and the Death of Meaning, Pete Rollins


• A Plea for Christian Piracy, Kester Brewin


• Justice is Not Christian, Nigel Varndell


• How Not to Believe, Maggi Dawn, Pete Rollins, Roman Krznaric, and Mark Vernon.

Lots of academics also give talks at Greenbelt - this year included Ursula King (Bristol, and SOAS) who I met when I organised an international conference on Gender and Spiritual Praxis in Asian Contexts at Lancaster in 2006, and Andrew Tate (Lancaster). Other academics that I know and whose work I use or have used that have also spoken at Greenbelt include Kristin Aune (Derby), Grace Davie (Exeter), Tina Beattie (Roehampton) and Jolyon Mitchell (Edinburgh). Greenbelt is a fantastic place for disseminating research and I hope to be able to do something next year... if my proposal(s) get accepted.

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.]

Review of Reading Spiritualities

The current issue (vol.23,no.3,Sept09) of Literature & Theology includes a review of the collection of papers edited by my supervisor, Deborah Sawyer, and fellow PhD candidate, Dawn Llewellyn, Reading Spiritualities: Constructing and Representing the Sacred.

Anna Fisk (University of Glasgow) writes that the editors' introduction is 'an excellent stand-alone map of where postmodern theological interpretation is situated today' (p.368).

She ends by commenting that,

'In her introduction to Is There a Future for Feminist Theology? Deborah Sawyer identifies feminist theology's tendency to work in a ghetto, separate from secular feminism and other branches of theology. Reading Spiritualities is a valuable example of resistance to that trend, asserting the continued relevance of doing theology with a political edge, yet without staying boxed in a room of one's own' (p.370).

But, more importantly, here's the bit about me:

'Katharine Sarah Moody examines the blogs of the 'emerging church' movement as an example of the wish to move from being 'passive consumers' to 'active creators' amongst Christians influenced by postmodernity. One major insight of Moody's study is that the censorship of readers' comments, and the hierarchy of credibility that exists amongst blogs and bloggers, may herald the return of textual 'authority over' in a new guise' (p.369).

Joking aside, Dawn did an especially great job not only being the primary organiser of the international conference from which these papers stemmed, but also putting together the collection and doing such a stirling editing job! Yay for Dawn!!!

Queerying Sociology of Religion Article

Further to the saga of publishing my "Queerying The Spiritual Revolution: Religious Mediation Among LGBT Christians" (see here, here, here and here), I've finally decided to go for it and submit it (once I've played around with the house publishing style) to the Journal of Contemporary Religion. Paul Heelas was very generous, as usual, in his advice and has given me the confidence to give it a go! So, watch this space...

External Examiner News

Also whilst we were away in Andalucia, I got the news from my supervisor, Deborah Sawyer, that Gerard Loughlin has provisionally agreed to be the external examiner for my viva, barring natural disasters and the like. Gerard is a Professor in the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University. He likes telling stories and sex. Okay, so, slightly overfamiliar way of putting that... but you followed those links, didn't you?!? He's co-editor (with Elizabeth Stuart) of Theology & Sexuality. His doctoral research was on the philosophy and theology of John Hick (who features briefly, one might say fragmentally, in my thesis). He's a fan of interdisciplinarity, or "cross-dressing," as he puts it, so my positioning within philosophy, theology and religious studies (particularly the sociology of religion) is a location with which he is familiar. His research interests (Christianity, gender, sexuality, popular culture) clearly overlap with my own (both displayed in my thesis and in my MA studies on LGBT religiosity), but its his emphasis on narrative theology that is a particular reason he will be a really interesting dialogue partner (if that is what the viva experience actually is, rather than what it is just sold to us as!!!). My Chaper Six, "Truth, Theology and Fictionality" will hopefully be something he can sink his teeth into - but not too hard, I hope! He'll be a fantastic guy to (hopefully) get a reference from, particularly if I get to apply for research funding at Manchester with Graham Ward. Finally, Deborah says he's a really nice guy... Always, always, always a bonus.

Updates After Andalucia

So I didn't get all my holiday reading done. Mainly because it's quite hard to read when its 40 degrees. I did get through Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter and Reading Derrida / Thinking Paul: On Justice, though. So I've got a few more texts to go (especially Realist Christian Theology in a Postmodern Age, which I got half way through about two years ago) before I feel more comfortable in moving ahead with my remaining chapters (mainly Chapters Four, Five and Seven).

While we were away, I did some good thinking on how I'm going to characterise the relationship between my different sources of empirical and theoretical data. I have both empirical texts (interview transcripts, e-questionnaires, and a variety of emerging church media) and theoretical texts (mainly by Jack Caputo and Jamie Smith, but including secondary literature by people like Gavin Hyman, Theodore Jennings, Bruce Ellis Benson, Richard Kearney, Robyn Horner, Merold Westphal, Kevin Hart, and Mark C Taylor).

My starting point is, of course, my empirical data. But because of the very nature of this starting point, my own reading of theology and philosophy has to follow the trajectories of my participants. Therefore, the theoretical texts augment the empirical ones, making in particular two strands clearer within the data. In the process, then, there is a massive amount of literature that I've only been able to dip into, including work by St. Augustine, Alain Badiou, Jacques Derrida, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Martin Heidegger, John Hick, Gerard Loughlin, Immanuel Kant, Soren Kierkegaard, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion, John Milbank, Friedrich Nietzsche, St. Paul, and Graham Ward, etc.

My thesis is not "on" the work of any of these people. To an extent, it could be said to be "on" deconstructive theology, or Radical Orthodoxy, or, of course, the emerging church milieu. It might even be said to be "on" Jack Caputo and/or Jamie Smith. But I have to be clear that mine is not, for example, a thesis "on Derrida." Instead, I've been thinking about using the word "fragments" to refer to the other reading practices that I have had to engage in. This form of reading does not, for example, "do justice" to "Derrida." On the contrary, it probably does a lot of violence. This is similar to the way that Jennings frames his use of both Derrida and Paul in his Reading Derrida / Thinking Paul: On Justice. He writes,

"the procedure here adopted entails a certain violence to the texts both of Derrida and of Paul, for it requires extracting bits and pieces of their respective arguments in order to show points of convergence and illumination... I hope, however, that the violence of this reading is to a certain degree mitigated by its attempt to undo the greater violence that has come from the supposition that neither author is really concerned with the question of justice" (p.xii)

In the hope of "doing justice" to my empirical texts, I have done violence to the theoretical texts of several philosophers and theologians. As (a "fragment" of!!!) "Derrida" says, "in order to be just, I am unjust and I betray... it is unjust to be just. I always betray someone to be just; I always betray one for the other" ("To Forgive" in Questioning God, p.49).

Also whilst we were away, I also realised that a guiding structural question of my thesis is "how do non-propositional understandings of truth affect participants' relationships to religious propositions?" I had already worked out that Chapter Three, "Thinking Truth(s) Otherwise," moves from participants' considerations of religious propositions to ask whether this is even where religious truth is located and, further, to explore whether religious truth is (also) non-propositional. I had even created a three-fold structure for the closing section ("Non-Propositional Religious Truth"): Truth is God, Truth-Event, and Living in Truth. But, on a train (dictating to Sim, as I don't travel very well), I worked out that part of what my thesis is actually asking is how participants relate non-propositional understandings of religious truth to religious propositions.

In turn, this means that I've been able to much better articulate (should that be, "articulate much better"?!?!?) what I'm up to in some of my thesis chapters. So, the "Interlude" makes clear that a structuring question is, "what does non-propositional religious truth mean for religious propositions?" Then, chapters four, five and seven detail the implications of the non-propositional understandings of truth I enumerated in Chapter Three (Truth is God, Truth-Event, and Living in Truth) for religious propositions. So, Chapter Four presents the implications of "Truth is God" for religious propositions, Chapter Five details what "Truth-Event" means for religious propositions, and (part of) Chapter Seven demonstrates how "Living in Truth" relates to religious propositions. That means that I can clarify that, for the two strands in my data, "dialogue" and "deconstruction" become the respective guiding principles for non-propositional notions of truth to religious propositions. Well, I think that's clearer, at least!

The Ethics of Participant Confidentiality

Cory Labanow's (2009) Evangelicalism and the Emerging Church (see here for my overview and review) raises again the interesting issue of participant confidentiality and anonymity in empirical research. The covering letters for Labanow's demographic survey and interviews contained a promise that anonymity would be preserved (pp.129,131) and he details the initial conversation in which the congregation's pastor asked that congregants be 'unrecognizable' in the research findings (p.41). Labanow is therefore careful to avoid 'any detailed description of specific church members which could lead to their identification' (p.41). However, the community itself (Jacobsfield Vineyard, JV) and its pastor (Mark Lawton) are likewise pseudonymous.

But JV and its pastor are easily identifiable by those familiar with what I call in my study the emerging church milieu. Such recognition stems not only from the community's classification as a UK Vineyard church involved in the emerging church conversation, but also from the narrative of Mark Lawton's personal religious journey and role in relation to a named emerging church organisation readily available through the Internet. These incredibly important situational factors relating to JV could and should not be completely masked (by, for example, excluding all historical or contextual data about the community and its pastor) in the name of protecting either the congregation's collective identity or the pastor's individual particulars, as it would considerably neuter congregational analysis. The necessary inclusion of these factors, however, thereby renders Labanow's attempts to provide anonymity redundant. Further, as an attempt at providing anonymity it is utterly unsuccessful.

It is unclear, therefore, why Labanow bothers. Why not just name this community and its pastor, whilst continuing to provide pseudonyms for the other members of the congregation that he surveys and interviews in order to successfully protect their confidentiality and anonymity?

Such an approach is taken by other researhers in their congregational studies, for example Mathew Guest's (2007) Evangelical Identity and Contemporary Culture: A Congregational Study in Innovation. In his study of St. Michael-le-Belfrey and Visions, York, Guest names the church and therefore its incumbents covering the last forty years, because the history and context of St. Michael-le-Belfrey (a church well-known as a 'vanguard of charismatic evangelicalism since the 1960s,' p.54) are 'illuminating factors' central to the sociological and theological study of its congregation (p.239). Nevertheless, beyond the four most recent vicars, individual congregation members are given pseudonyms to protect their identities.

Guest's method for dealing with the ethics of participant confidentiality is sensible, considering the likelihood of both "insiders" and academics being able to identify St. Michael-le-Belfrey even if anonymised and of significant factors being masked or lost through such a process of anonymisation. This seems to me to be a better way to protect the anonymity of the majority of participants whilst preserving important factors concerning the congregation in general and past and present incumbants that are readily available to the public.

While a congregational study can proceed using pseudonyms for, and a minimum of contextual data about the lives of, individual participants, my own interview-based study requires a different approach. As my participants are from a diverse range of religious communities and backgrounds, I cannot contextualise interview data through recourse to a shared narrative of collective context and history (given not only the diversity of participants' communities but also the diversity of the emerging church milieu itself). My readers can only make sense of the discourses and practices related to me in the interviews through a presentation of aspects of their life-stories. However, the provision of pseudonyms for those participants wishing to remain anonymous must be accompanied, therefore, by a narration of their lives constructed in collaboration with them so as not to reveal what they might regard as identifying factors.

This approach appears adequate for those participants for whom there are no other publically available sources of personal information which might threaten their anonymity. However, I interviewed several participants who have published print media, most notably emerging church, fresh expression, or alternative worship books, and/or write blogs. Whilst only one of these participants requested anonymity (I'll comment on this in a moment), I have for the following reason decided to reject the practice of anonymising all of my participants. I might quote from my interview with, for example, Pete (ikon, Belfast) and then quote a passage from one of his books (the same goes for Kester, Vaux, London; Paul, Foundation, Bristol; Sue, Visions, York; and a number of others). The problem goes like this.

• I use a pseudonym for quotations from interview and e-questionnaire data (for example, my interview with Interview-Pete; Kester jokingly suggested Elvis for his own pseudonym before opting out of being anonymised, so we'll borrow that for now!).
• I retain, however, the participants' given name for quotations from his published works (this is Published-Pete, i.e. I reference him as Rollins and then the date of publication, e.g. 2006).
• The reader is thereby left with the mistaken impression that the view espoused by Elvis and Rollins 2006 is more prevalent than it actually is - as, in reality, they are the views of only one person, Pete Rollins.

I have rejected, therefore, the option of giving all of my participants pseudonyms. I am left then with the task of writing introductory narratives to those participants who wish to retain their anonymity that do not inadvertently reveal their identities. But I am also left with the dilemma of how to respect one participants' wish to be known by a pseudonym, whilst at the same time not giving readers the impression that the views he reveals both in my data and in his print and online publications are more prevalent within the UK emerging church milieu than they are. What to do?

Overview and Review of Evangelicalism and the Emerging Church

As the first academic study of a UK Vineyard congregation, Cory Labanow's Evangelicalism and the Emerging Church focuses on the very interesting case of a Vineyard church with a historical connection to and continuing relationship with the emerging church conversation. In order to be what the author calls 'sociologically rigorous' whilst retaining a 'decisively theological orientation,' an ethnographic methodology is combined with a practical theology to construct a description and interpretation of the congregational situation of this church community. Labanow therefore provides in Chapter 1 useful accounts of the developments of practical theology and congregational studies, and the relationship between theology and the social sciences that should be of interest to anyone exploring lived religiosity, whatever particular community is being explored. His work also closes with some recommendations for such an approach to the study of contemporary religious communities.

The thick description of this Vineyard congregation (Jacobsfield Vineyard, or JV, a pseudonym) is given in Chapter 2, through a narrative of its recent history before Labaow's arrival, his initial entry into the community and the participant-observations through which he familiarised himself with the church (followed later by thematic analysis of interview data). Of central importance to this narrative is the religious journey of JV's pastor, Mark Lawton (also a pseudonym). Labanow provides illustrations of the Sunday service, as well as the church's home groups and local community projects. As a study of an ostensibly evangelical church's relationship with both the evangelical tradition and the emerging church conversation, Labanow employs Alan Jamieson's (2002) A Churchless Faith and Robert Webber's (2002) The Younger Evangelicals as what he calls 'analytical aids' (along with Lawton's own claims regarding community identity, pp.60-65) to map the dual aspect of this congregation's situational landscape.

The changes arising from the deeper engagement of an evangelical congregation with the emerging church observed by Labanow include JV's reading and theological discussion groups, Lawton's teaching techniques, and the increased attention given to practices from historical Christian traditions. A quotation from a JV leader in September 2003 expresses the nature of these changes:

'This is now a key moment in [JV] history because what is happening... is that we are transitioning from just talking about the emergent theological conversation to actually embodying the emergent theological conversation in our everyday faith and life and the forms of our church. And you're going to see a transitioning of forms, an evolving and a deepening' (p.49)

However, Labanow makes interesting observations regarding the maintenance of experimental religious identities. Towards the end of his fieldwork, although an emphasis on an ancient-future orientation (see Webber's Ancient-Future series of titles) was sustained, its value was not made explicit through explanation of the reasons for such an approach to worship. Without a regular promotion of alternative communal identity (as a "church for people who wouldn't normally go to church"), Labanow believes a reversion back to the evangelical forms and styles of worship most familiar to the congregation occurred. This period provides the lesson that 'without a continual emphasis on cultivating a new identity, people will tend to retreat into that pattern of being which they know best, and in a church of people reared in evangelical churches, that will likely be in the direction of an evangelical brand of faith' (p.52).

This example hints at Labanow's observation that congregational attitudes were often dissimilar from Lawton's claims regarding community identity, especially in relation to their relationship with the emerging church conversation - a difference that Labanow explains with recourse to Lawton's privileged access to formal training both within the church structures and within academic institutions (p.73). In this respect, therefore, no clear congregational consensus arose regarding JV's relationship to the emerging church. Labanow's data does suggest, however, that an understanding of JV's relationship to the evangelical tradition is more commonly held. He identifies it as one of 'unease,' and characterises it as a process of sifting and discerning (not only with regards evangelicalism but also secular popular culture). As a result, JV can be neither wholly identified with nor wholly differentiated from evangelical/pentecostal/charismatic, or EPC, churches.

Particularly interesting , and worth mentioning in brief, are the questions raised about Lawton's leadership role, the structures of authority in place at JV, and the particular events or crises in the history of these organisational patterns. On this theme, Labanow's research suggests that:

1. 'Lawton uses power more responsibly than many other leaders whom the interviewees' (sic) encounter in other circles'
2. 'JVers are not very democratic due to the large amout of power Lawton holds' and
3. 'JVers are relieved that the elders and trustees are in place to (theoretically) balance his power if he tried to use it improperly' (p.80)

In order to make sense of the themes arising from his fieldwork, Labanow's approach to the exploration of this congregation also involved the identification of what he calls its 'central theological question.' Throughout the period of investigation, the theme of relevance was particularly observable. The central issue, for Labanow (though obviously in conversation with his data and the issues identified by participants as central), was the 'dual emergence' of this congregation, dissatisfied with elements of both evangelical Christianity and post-Christian culture and hopeful of the discovery of new ways of being and doing church.

However, an especially interesting but odd disparity is noted between this desire (expressed in interviews and by Lawton's claims regarding congregational identity) to address both of these sources of discontent and the congregational practices recorded by Labanow in his participant-observations. A disjunct between discourse and practice was noted:

'Though much of JV's teaching was spawned from, or at least evolving into, an "emerging church" school of thought (if such a thing can be said to exist), their practice of worship was still thoroughly Vineyard; while experimentation with different sounds and interludes of Scripture readings and/or prayers may have been occurring on an occasional basis, even that genre of experimentation itself is very characteristic of the Vineyard movement and EPC churches in general' (p.97)

From this observation, Labanow suggests that

'until JV generate an ethic by which to reconstruct their worship on a basis of renewed identity (pertaining to who they are and what worship is) instead of changing aesthetics, their transition may be incomplete and counterproductive' (p.98)

This broader central question of the relevance of both discourse and practice to a religious context of dual emergence raises wider questions that Labanow's final chapter enumerates as questions of religious parentage, the creation of safe space, resources for Christian growth and maturity, strategies for communicating with conteporary culture, and the reconstruction and future shape of Christianity.

Labanow's Evangelicalism and the Emerging Church is therefore an intriguing study of a UK congregation exploring its self-identity in relation to the evangelical tradition and elements of the emerging church conversation (despite incongruences between the more explicitly emergent discourse of Lawton and the emergent themes only implicit in interview data). It is one of only a few academic explorations of congregations connected to the emerging church, but its ethnographic approach to data collection is a very welcome departure from an over-reliance on either published emerging church literature or interviews with ec authors/leaders/bloggers. It refreshingly engages the voices and activities of "ordinary" people. The disparities between Lawton's views and the perspectives of members of the congregation highlight the problems inherent in other studies; namely, the methodological reductionism that assumes the views of emerging church authors/leaders/bloggers are held in an unmodified form by other participants. Labanow's approach means he does not fall into this trap. Consequently, this book holds value not only in its presentation and thematic analysis of a particular evangelical/emerging congregation but in its highly advantageous methodology for the study of such religiosity in general.

Evangelicalism and the Emerging Church is published in Ashgate's Explorations in Practical, Pastoral and Empirical Theology series at the end of this month (August 28 2009). The hardback copy is expensive (£50 rrp) so awaiting the paperback edition (as I have with other texts in this useful series) might be more manageable. But it is well worth the price for anyone interested in contemporary Christianity. Buy it here at amazon.co.uk or here from Ashgate.

Holiday Reading

So I've been madly trying to get as much writing done as possible before our holiday to Andalucia in a few days. I've made a few leaps of progress, as well as making some detours and a few deadends.

I've written the first "final" draft of my Introduction, and finished most of the sections of the first "final" drafts of chapters one, two and three ("Emergence" - what is the emerging church? why study truth in the emerging chruch? - "Ordinary Philosophy" - how did I study truth in the emerging church? - and "Thinking Truth(s) Otherwise" - how is truth conceptualised in the emerging church?). I've also made headway with chapter six ("Truth, Theology, and Fictionality" - is Radical Orthodoxy or deconstructive theology more appropriate for the emerging church, given participants' conceptions of truth?).

That leaves me with a vague idea of what I want to achieve with my interlude ("Determining Truth") and chapters four, five, and seven ("Dialogue and Determinate Truth" and "Deconstruction and Determinate Truth" - what are the philosophical and theological implications of such conceptions of truth? - and "Truth/Justice and Kingdom Poetics" - what are the ethical and political implications of such conceptions of truth?). I've still got a bit of reading to do for these chapters, particularly now that I know what I want them to do, so I've chosen a few key texts to get to grips with on holiday. These are works that will help in particular with my distinction between two strands in my data (chapters four and five) and the practical translation of truth into justice (chapter seven). They include:

• Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter, edited by Michelfelder & Palmer;
• Realist Christian Theology in a Postmodern Age, by Sue Patterson;
• Liturgy of the Neighbor: Emmanuel Levinas and the Reigion of Responsibility, by Jeffrey Bloechl; and
• Reading Derrida/Thinking Paul: On Justice, by Theodore W. Jennings, Jr.