PhD Submitted!

I submitted my thesis yesterday. That fact is still sinking in. It feels like something that happened to me, rather than something I did. So after I've had a bit of time to reflect, I'll post more about it. My viva is already "arranged" (we're waiting for the paperwork to catch up with what we've sorted out) for March 22nd and my examiners will be Gerard Loughlin and Chris Partridge. I'm sure I'll have lots of posts between now and then second-guessing myself, so I'll be able to post more about the content of my thesis in a self-reflexive/self-critical way!

Expository Times article on the Emerging Church

Way back during the last few months of 2009, I was asked to write a piece for The Expository Times on religion and the Internet for a volume they are producing on the future of Christianity. I was pleased about being asked but felt a little bit that it would be revisiting tangential interests rather than moving me forward, so when the person they had lined up to write a piece on the emerging church was unable to, I was really pleased to write that instead! It will feature in vol.121, no.10 (July) and is entitled, " 'I Hate Your Church, What I Want is My Kingdom': Emerging Spiritualities in the UK Emerging Church Milieu." It's basically an overview of what I describe as the emerging church "milieu" and the two spiritualities (they are characterised as two hermeneutics in my thesis) that I see arising from such a milieu. The basic argument of the piece (relating to where the missional focus of the emerging church should be located - church or kingdom) should, however, ignite a few sparks.

Re-Writing the Bible Symposium

On June 14-15th 2010, the University of Glasgow's Centre for the Study of Literature, Theology and the Arts will be hosting a symposium on "Re-Writing the Bible: Devotion, Diatribe and Dialogue." Keynote panellists include Michael Schmidt, Michael Symmons-Roberts, Kei Miller, Sara Maitland and Michele Wandor. Here's some blurb:


“…there is no reading of a work which is not also a ‘re-writing’.”- Terry Eagleton

A recent exhibition at the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art consisted of a bible, laid open alongside a supply of pens, with the invitation, “If you feel you’ve been excluded from the Bible, please feel free to find a way to write yourself back in.” The comments scribbled in the margins—and the very notion of ‘writing in the Bible’—became the subject of a widespread controversy, resulting in the gallery’s decision to place this bible inside a perspex cube, effectively sealing it off and protecting it from what might be deemed ‘undesirable’ commentary. Visitors were still invited to write comments, but now they were written on sheets of paper that were then selected by gallery staff and inserted between the bible’s pages.

In light of this very present debate, Re-Writing the Bible: Devotion, Diatribe and Dialogue invites poets, writers, and scholars to engage with interdisciplinary questions surrounding the phenomena of retellings or revisions of Bible in creative writing. These retellings have a heritage that, arguably, starts within the books of the Bible itself and stretches across many literatures and traditions; poets and writers in every age filter biblical themes and images through thefocus of their own period and practice. Dante, Milton, Bunyan, Blake, Yeats, Owen, H.D, Plath, Kinsella, Hill; the list is long, diverse, and continues to grow.

This symposium asks why contemporary writers have chosen to rework this particular source text, and what stances they have taken towards it: faithful, using creative writing as a means of prayerful reflection or theological exegesis? Or furious, a railing against the Bible’s injustices and absences? Or a mixture of both, a sometimes difficult, sometimes delightful kind of dialogue? If every reading is also a re-writing, then it follows that every re-writing is also a reading, and for this reason many biblical scholars are fascinated by the literary ‘afterlives’ of the scriptures, the ways in which the Bible is sustained by creative imaginations in cultural settings and times very distant from its own writing and compilation.

We are seeking 20-minute papers from a variety of disciplines and perspectives, including but not limited to: literature, theology, biblical studies, critical and cultural theory, history, politics, and so on. We will consider papers on all forms of ‘creative writing’: poetry, novel, short story, sermon, liturgy, prayers, songs, political writing, theatre, and so on. Our emphasis is on twentieth and twenty-first century works, but we will also consider abstracts on rewritings from other periods. We would be particularly interested in papers looking at spaces that often go unexplored by research in retelling and revisioning, such as biblical romance novels, evangelical speculative fiction, biblical archetypes in autobiography, contemporary liturgy, or popular music. There is the possibility that proceedings will be published.

Please send abstracts (approx. 200 words) to rewritingbible2010@gmail.com, by no later than 19th April 2010.

My fellow doctoral candidate at Lancaster, Dawn Llewellyn, whose thesis explores women's (religious) uses of (religious) text, and I have been searching for a while for a topic of possible collaboration and this could be it! I'm very keen to write something on the ways in which creative writing (particularly the [re-]writing of biblical parables) functions within the emerging church milieu. So I'll have the data and Dawn'll have the theory and we shall make a lovely baby together!!! Although, I haven't actually run any of this by her yet!

Theology and the Arts Conference

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

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

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

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

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

Young Theologians publication

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

Departmental Merger

As with most things in most places of work, we had rather a lot more rumours than hard facts about the departmental merger being "suggested" by university management. I find Lancaster to be a very interdisciplinary university anyway, but I think there was a little friction that this merger wasn't allowed to evolve organically but was a rather top-down affair. Some people see this as a good move, others are pissed off. Hopefully, a really good "super department" will come out of all of this. So, the first Religious Studies department (as opposed to Theology departments which focused on the Christian tradition) in the UK, founded by Ninian Smart, pioneer of the discipline since the 1960s, is merging with the departments of Philosophy, and Politics and International Relations to form the Department of Philosophy, Politics and Religion or PPR.

Following a meeting with the students on Jan 14 (which I couldn't get to), a recent email states that this merger is the most viable way to:

• "maintain the best student experience";
• protect the existing disciplines of philosophy, politics and international relations, and religious studies;
• take advantage of interdisciplinary crossovers and opportunities both for new courses and for research staff; and
• create a department that "can prosper in the coming period of UK-wide financial constraints."

The email tells us that the staff who will fulfil the main departmental roles are as follows:

• Head of Department: Robert Geyer (P&IR)
• Research Director and Deputy Head: Chris Partridge (RS)
• Undergraduate Director: Graham Smith (P&IR)
• Postgraduate Director: Andrew Dawson (RS)
• Human Resources Director: Mairi Levitt (Phil)
• External Relations Director: Neil Manson (Phil)

Support staff haven't yet been finalised, and I'm concerned for both our departmental support staff (Wendy Francis, Departmental Officer, who has been with the department since 1983!, and Gillian Taylor, Departmental Assistant, who has been there for nearly 12 years now). I've no idea what is going to happen concerning all three departments' support staff and I'm too scared of asking either Wendy or Gillian in case it upsets them. It must be so hard at the moment. Decisions about support staff are going to be sorted out in February.

In relation to the identities of the existing departments, the email states that "Although the former departments will be housed in one over-arching unit, the identities of the disciplines will be maintained. All three departments have clear strengths and the merger is a move to reinforce and preserve these. These approaches and traditions will be further strengthened by the prestige that a larger unit can bring. In addition, research councils are increasingly looking for proposals which cross disciplines; and employers are increasingly looking for employees who have a broader and more comprehensive grasp on the world around us. All departments evolve over time - and this can be viewed as a part of the evolution of the three departments in response to the new challenges of the 21st century."

This means in practice that single discipline degrees will be maintained (the RS and Phil departments already recently introduced a cross-discipline degree, "Ethics, Philosophy and Religion," but I know that the balance of responsibility for that programme was an issue). Also, all three departments are moving (by the end of 2010, if not before) to a common location. As RS only moved relatively recently, I imagine another move will cause some (minor?) annoyances.

But, hopefully, there will be more advantages than disadvantages. There are a number of possible new crossover modules or degree programmes that would benefit new students, both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels (e.g. Religion and Conflict MA). I'm sure this will also increase the vibrancy of the research community as well, for both staff and PhD students. It is the kind of department that would be really great for my postdoc ideas (I'm currently looking at Manchester's Centre for Religion and Political Culture). So, all in all, I think this is good. But I'm worried about Wendy and Gillian.

Research Methods Residential

In September, the Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society at Birkbeck College (where I did a workshop on studying religion and the internet last year, see here and here), and the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society programme (where I failed to get a job, see here) are running a residential training event for UK PhD students involved in the empirical study of contemporary religion. The residential will run from 6-10 September at St. Catherine's College, Oxford, and students who are accepted onto it will have their residential and travel costs paid (nice!). Places are strictly limited and application forms can be downloaded from here and must be received before Feb 19.

Sessions will include:

• theorising religion and the role of the researcher of religion
• choosing/combining research methods
• the research agenda for religion and contemporary society
• sampling
• using quantitative data-sets
• rigour and validity
• ethical and political contexts of researching religion
• ethnography
• visual methods
• researching religion and media, and
• studying spaces and objects

Confirmed speakers include:

• Linda Woodhead,
• Kim Knott,
• David Voas,
• Sophie Gilliat-Ray, and
• Peter Collins (I think this is him, unless he's an expert in gambling or neuroscience!)

Here's some blurb: "Funded by the AHRC’s Collaborative Research Training scheme, the aim of this event is to provide PhD students in this field with advanced methods training in the study of religion not normally available at any single university and represents a major investment in training a significant cohort of PhD students currently working in this field. The event is open to students working across a wide range of disciplines including theology and religious studies, sociology, anthropology, C20th religious history, social policy and geography."

I'm not sure whether I'll be allowed to go on this, as I will have already submitted by thesis, but I'm going to check with Gordon Lynch.

The Thesis in Parables

I'm toying with the idea of including an explicit supplement in my thesis which would be a sort of other to the thesis. For Derrida, argumentation always involves implicit supplementation: in order to argue X, that which is other-than-X is required in an 'infinite chain' that is yet concealed in order to give the 'mirage' that the argument is self-sufficient (OG 157). The supplement both adds to and substitutes the argument: it 'adds only to replace' (OG 145). It is both essential and threatening. Threatening since it reveals that, without it, the argument cannot appear self-sufficient, cannot appear as "a work itself;" without the supplement, there is no "itself" of the work. Therefore essential since the "work itself" is less than whole, less than pure, lacking in and of itself, and in need of supplementation.

This is why I've been thinking about the possibility of including a (there is an infinite chain of supplements such that there is never just one supplement, never just the supplement) supplement that might work as an other of the thesis. While there will be implicit supplements in my thesis (some I may be aware of, others I definitely won't be), I've been thinking/worrying/obsessing about the nature of the doctoral thesis in general, about writing and representation in general before (see here, for example, where I was thinking about alternative presentations, like the work of a number of poststructuralist thinkers, including Derrida's Glas and Circumfession) and think that a supplement that augments the philosophical, theological, ethical and ecclesiological argumentation with literature might be an apt way to explore how argumentation can also be replaced by the supplement.

So I'm thinking about a supplement of creative writing, in which I attempt to write the thesis as parables, "the thesis in parables," one for each chapter, positioned after the thesis, as a supplement. These pieces of writing might say in poetic form what the logic of the argument is trying to say. The parables can (will?) say more than the argument will (can?) and can (will?) replace the argument.

I'm going to post a few of them to the Facebook discussion board of the Association for Continental Philosophy of Religion at the beginning of March, along with a brief introduction to the background to their creation. I'll also post them in a "thesis in parables" series here at some point.

Re-emergence conference

From March 16-18 2010, the Irish School of Ecumenics, Belfast, will host "Re-emergence: Christianity and the Event of God." This is something that Pete Rollins has been involved in organising and will (very sadly) be the only UK date for his Insurrection tour.

The keynotes include Phyllis Tickle (The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why), which I blogged about here, and Dave Tomlinson (The Post-Evangelical, Re-enchanting Christianity), vicar at my partner's Sim's brother's church, St. Luke's. Those involved in the Insurrection tour with Pete are Padraig O Tauma (Hymns to Swear By, not yet released, but also on Dubh) and Jonny McEwen (Fractured, broken, and Beautiful). Other participants includ Beki Bateson (executive director of London International Festival of Theatre, chair of Amos Trust, and co-founder of Vaux), Ian Mitchell, Kerry Anthony (Depaul Ireland), Kester Brewin (Vaux, Apple, The Complex Christ, Other: Loving Self, God and Neighbour in a World of Fractures), and Alistair Duncan (the garden, the Whitehawk Inn). There'll also be music from a "mystery musician, who we have to keep under wraps for now." Duke Special or Bono?!?

Here's some more info:

"Each new epoch in the life of the Church is born from the white-hot fires of a fundamental question, a question with the power to scorch the very ground that has previously sustained us.

"When they arise, these fundamental questions invite us to rethink what it means to be part of the body of Christ. They have nothing to do with the myriad of disagreements that exist within the shared theological horizon, but rather challenge the very horizon itself. They do not revolve around differences within and between established Christian groups but rather place into question what these groups all take for granted. They cut across what is assumed, short-circuit what is hallowed and, in doing so, appear to threaten the very essence of Christianity itself.

"Is it possible that we stand once more at the threshold of such a question; a question that holds the power to spark a rupturing and re-imagining of the present configuration of Christianity? Are there signs that some of the assumptions we have taken for granted concerning faith need to be interrogated once again?

"We hope that you can join us as we wrestle with these difficult ideas together."

Sadly, the timing of this event isn't great for me. I'm hoping to submit my thesis before the end of February and I need to have my viva before April 1 for some other reasons, so right about mid March I think I'll be biting my nails. I also can't justify the expense of getting over there what with the two of us living on my partner's teaching salary. Ho hum. I'll have to wait for an industrious American to make a dvd of the Insurrection tour... please?!?!?

Attending to the Other

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

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

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

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

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

Proposals on any relevant topic are welcomed."

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

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

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

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

New Year Write-up Round Up

So as you can probably tell from the paucity of blog posts in December, I spent the month trying to get as much as possible of my thesis written before the Christmas holidays. During that time, I managed to make a significant dent in chapters four (3 out of 4 sections completed), six (2 out of 4) and seven (2 out of 3). Chapters one and two are in a similar sort of state (half to three-quarters done), and three is mostly done but in a bit of a state structurally, but I've yet to even start writing up my notes into something remotely resembling a chapter five.

Therefore my newest timetable for completion is:

• Chapters One, Two, Three, Four, Six and Seven completed by the end of January
• Go see my Mum for my birthday at the beginning of Feb and spend a week printing and editing
• Chapter Five completed by mid-Feb
• Edit draft and submit the latter half of February.

Doable? We'll see.

Cross and Khora

Jack Caputo gave me a heads up about an edited collection about his work, Cross and Khora: Deconstruction and Christianity in the Work of John D. Caputo. It's out in January 2010, edited by Marko Zlomislic and Neal DeRoo (Neal edited a collection on phenomenology and eschatology, of which I've read a few chapters but haven't yet had time to fully review, as well as one on James K.A. Smith, which I looked at a bit here, here and here). I'm hoping Jack'll be able to get me a copy to review here and use in my thesis.

Here's a list of other books about Caputo's work:

• Roy Martinez, ed. 1997. The Very Idea of Radical Hermeneutics.
• James Olthuis, ed. 2002. Religion with/out Religion: The Prayers and Tears of John D. Caputo.
• Mark Dooley, ed. 2003. A Passion for the Impossible: John D. Caputo in Focus.
• Christopher Simpson. 2009. Religion, Metaphysics and the Postmodern: William Desmond and John D. Caputo.

Truth Matters Conference

This summer, the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto, is hosting a conference entitled "Truth Matters." The conference, which is co-sponsored by Calvin College (Grand Rapids, Michigan), Drodt College (Sioux Center, Iowa), and Vrije Universiteit (Amsterdam), will run from August 18-20 2010. It appears as though it will act as a platform for the discussion of a new interdisciplinary philosphical model of truth proposed by the organisers.

Here's some more details and the call for papers:

"We live in an age of skepticism about the idea of truth. Contemporary skeptics question the nature and value of truth and the concomitant virtue of truthfulness. Skepticism about truth is not restricted to popular culture. It occurs within the academic world, where deflationists have argued that the idea of truth is not a substantive notion and some poststructuralists have portrayed it as primarily the scene of struggles for power.

"Such skepticism is surprising, for truth and truthfulness have been central to Western civilization and the academic enterprise. Historically, the idea of truth has helped organize Western intellectual culture since ancient times. It is a central theme in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the three monotheistic religions that have shaped Western society. Conceptually, the idea of truth sets a stage for fundamental debates about the point and worth of academic work: debates between realists and anti-realists in philosophy, theology, and the natural sciences, for example, or between relativists and anti-relativists in the humanities and social sciences. Societally, the idea of truth provides a normative background for ethics, law, and public discourse: we expect friends and colleagues to be truthful; we ask witnesses in courts of law to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth"; and we get upset when journalists deliberately fabricate their reports.

"Given both contemporary skepticism and the centrality of truth, we believe it is time to reconceptualize truth and to reclaim truthfulness for the academic enterprise. The conference organizers have undertaken an interdisciplinary philosophical effort to develop a new model of truth. Now we wish to expand the scope of our work by engaging with discussion partners from other schools and from across the disciplines. The Truth Matters conference will be an occasion for international dialogue and debate."

The call for papers suggests these relevant topics for proposals:

• artistic and narrative truth
• power, truth, and ideology
• realism, anti-realism, and truth
• relativism, anti-relativism, and truth
• religious truth
• teaching and learning for truth
• truth in ethics
• truthfulness in public life

The call for papers invites submissions in English of 700-word proposals or papers not exceeding 3,500 words, but submissions must be formatted for blind review (separate sheet of paper for name, contact details and 2-4 key words).

The conference organisers welcome interdisciplinary approaches, and papers from graduate students. There are going to be one or two "merit-based graduate essay awards" of $250 Canadian., so don't forget to identify yourself as a student to be considered for the money!

Submission deadline: March 1, 2010.
Submission via email to: truthmatters@icscanada.edu

Here's a video interview with Lambert Zuidervaart about the conference:

Photographic Evidence of my "Being" a Theologian!

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

Conference covered by Catholic Media

Who heard of getting international public press for presenting a paper at a theology conference?

Above: The Catholic Newspaper The Universe's coverage of Maynooth's Young Theologians conference.

I'm the one in the middle. With me are Oliver Crisp and Kevin Hargaden.

Marcus Borg

The Progressive Christianity Network (Britain) are hosting a weekend conference next September (Friday 10 - Sunday 12 Sept 2010) in Edinburgh with Marcus Borg. Registration isn't open until December 1, but I imagine it'll sell out pretty quickly. Would be interesting.

Here are links to some of his books: The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (with John Dominic Crossan); Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary; The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic Contemporary Faith; Conflict, Holiness and Politics in the Teachings of Jesus; The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith; The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach Us About Jesus' Birth; and The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus's Final Days.

More on Ecumenism next year

As well as the Irish School of Ecumenics' "From World Mission to Interreligious Witness: Visioning Ecumenics in the 21st Century" conference, next year (the centenary of the 1910 World Mission conference in Edinburgh - click here for a firsthand account) also prompts Free to Believe's "Interfaith - The New Ecumenism?" conference, which I saw advertised here by the Progressive Christianity Network (Britain)'s . It will run from Thurs 27 - Sat 29 May 2010 at The Hayes, Swanwick, Derbyshire. It costs £140 including ensuite accommodation and meals, and the keynotes include

• Raficq Abdulla,
• Tony Bayfield (Reform Judaism),
• David Cornick (Churches Together in England),
• Alan Race (Interreligious Insight), and
• Ian Bradley (St. Andrews).

Here's some more blurb. I'm a bit reticent of the language of this blurb, particularly where it implies that members of other religions somehow need to learn to live with and love each other even more than Christians. But, here it is all the same:

"The aim of this conference, organised by Free to Believe, is to explore the possibility that interfaith is the new ecumenism. We will hear from Christians who are committed to this possibility, from Jewish and Islamic speakers about the possibilities they see for it, and from the General Secretary of Churches Together in England, David Cornick, to give him a chance to please for the continued relevance of the work for Christian unity. Where is the cutting edge of unity now?

"In the wise words of the French Roman Catholic Cardinal Mercier: 'In order to unite with one another, we must love one another; in order to love one another, we must know one another; in order to konw one another, we must go and meet one another.' Today, while those words still apply among Christians, do they not apply with even greater force to those of other great world religions like Muslim, Jew, Hindu or Sikh? Can we live together? Can we learn to love each other?"

But, anyway, the reason I've posted a few conferences on ecumenism is that I'm thinking through what I want to do next in my academic career (forgetting for now that I haven't yet finished my thesis!) and the question, "where is the cutting edge of unity now?" is particularly interesting to me. I'm hoping to build on my thesis' identification of an "a/theistic cultural imaginary" to ask how this social imaginary imagines and performs "society" and "sociality." My thesis focuses on emerging church discourse (interview data, published literature, online media, participant observation) so I hope to look next at how what is spoken about actually gets done in practice. It's relatively easy to see how individuals might adopt a deconstructive theology as a worldview, but how might a collective "do" deconstructive theology? How might a collective "be" deconstructive? Particularly given Derrida's concerns about "community"? Anyway, I'll post a bit more about how I see this research developing later, as I'm in the middle of trying to put something more concrete together.

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.