Disorganised Christianity?

Having posted yesterday about Theo Hobson's recent Guardian articles on Pete Rollins and Kester Brewin, and begun an interesting conversation on the question of institutionalism, I found (via Jonny Baker) another in The Spectator which reviews a Grace event from a view months back: "In Search of Disorganised Religion." And here's another one on alternative worship from Ship of Fools,"Anyone for Really Alternative Worship," where Hobson raises the question of radically re-thinking ritual to detach it from institutionalism and explains a personal park ritual that he engages in with his family. At the end of the Ship of Fools feature, he writes:

Some will say that my rejection of institutionalism is naive: if this ritual in the park were to catch on, then surely it too would become a sort of institution, with a tacit orthodoxy.

And this is the danger that Kester has been warning about in his recent posts on retreating into institutionalism. How do we avoid the fetishisation of permanence? But I've also asked Kester what his thoughts are on the intimately connected question of: How do we avoid the fetishisation of the temporary?

Exploring this question might forestall the concerns of many that a valid criticism of the structural violence of institutions is being translated into a critique of the personal choice some have made to become ordained.

Emerging Church Article

My Expository Times article, "'I Hate Your Church; What I Want is My Kingdom': Emerging Spiritualities in the UK Emerging Church Milieu" gets a mention over at The Immanent Frame, a communal interdisciplinary blog that posts about secularism, religion and the public sphere.

Emerging Beyond Institutional Christianity?

Two recent articles have appeared in The Guardian reflecting on the "new recipe/model" for Christianity "frustrated" with institutional and establishment Christianity. Theo Hobson's first piece, "A New Recipe for Christiainty," is on Pete Rollins and his second, "A New Model Christianity," is on Kester Brewin's use of Hakim Bey's notion of "temporary autonomous zones" in his book, Other: Loving Self, God and Neighbour in a World of Fractures.

The mentions in the UK press come at a time when Kester has been debating with others in the emerging church blogosphere the question of the possibilities for relationship between emerging and established forms of church and theology. Here are the posts that I've been reading recently:

• Kester, "Has What Has Emerged Retreated? Returning to the Institutions" (Jun 21 2010)
• Andrew Jones, "Emerging Church Retreat?" (Jun 22 2010)
• Kester, "Has What Has Emerged Retreated? Part 2" (Jun 22 2010)
• Jonny Baker, "Romantic Tosh" (Jun 22 2010)
• Kester, "Has What Has Emerged Retreated? Part 3" (Jun 23 2010)
• Kester, "Has What Has Emerged Retreated? Part 4" (Jun 24 2010)
• Kester, "Movements or Institutions? A New Kind of Christianity" (Jun 28 2010)
• Kester, "Dumping the Ghastly Old Baggage of Bishops and Buildings" - Hobson's words, not Kester's! (Jul 10 2010)
• And Kester's response to Ben Edson's review of Other, "Some Responses to a Review" (July 11 2010)

Having also read Other, I've been slow to write my own response. But I'll post about it as soon as I can.

What these posts and responses also show is how hard it is to articulate a critique of the structural move back into institutional roles without offending the people's life choices.

Anyway, some choice quotations from the posts by Kester:

"I sense that because things have been hard, people have retreated back to the safety and security of the institutions. The leaders that emerged in the previous decade have ‘gone higher’ and tended more towards liturgical forms, and typically found some kind of route into ordination – even if that be some ‘new’ form of ordained leadership." (from here)

"it is the incredible hard work that movements have to do (not being ignored, opposed or co-opted is a big battle against large institutional momentum!) that is the problem. So many movements with so much going for them simply don’t make it. And while it is good that institutions do have some inertia to stop them being swayed by every little current, I do think that the balance is currently wrong – and this is why I would look for the TAZ influence in institutional processes: taking things down every once in a while and rebuilding" (here)

"An alternative reading could be that the institutions have ‘caught up’ and are now offering styles of training and inclusion into formal leadership that were previously unavailable. My concern is that this could be a political move on the part of the powerful: they can’t afford for a generation to up sticks and leave, so they find new ways to hold on to them, offering certain compromises in the knowledge that once they’re ‘in’ they can be ‘in-stitutionalised’ – made part of the firm." (here)

"this is not about the prodigal son going away and coming back to his good home. Here are prodigals with genuine issues about a dysfunctional family life, and what should be done in response to that." (here)

"We are communal people. We like to gather, to have community. And institutions – incorporations of our values and shared goals – are an inevitable part of life. I am not arguing here – contrary to Jonny’s interpretation – for a life beyond institutions, as we both know this is not possible. I am arguing for a new approach to corporate life though, at whatever zoom level you might take: small local groups and beyond." (here)

"In other words, I’m not arguing that relationships should be short-lived, nor that institutions – some formalising of these relationships around a shared goal or project – should not exist. Rather, I sincerely believe that while relationships are maintained in the informal work of eating and sharing lives together, the structures that form around them should be regularly deconstructed, and this will probably require the move away from full-time professionalised clergy." (here)

"TAZ does connect with the permanent [narrative of Christianity], but by emphasising the temporary, it avoids the violence that inevitably comes with attempting to build and defend permanent structures" (here)

Paul and Political Theology

I need to buy this: Paul, Philosophy, and the Theopolitical Vision: Critical Engagements with Agamben, Badiou, Zizek and Others, edited by Dougals Harink (in Wipf and Stock's Theopolitical Visions series).

Here's the back cover blurb:

"The apostle Paul was a man of many journeys. We are usually familiar with the geographical ones he made in his own time. This volume traces others—Paul's journeys in our time, as he is co-opted or invited to travel (sometimes as abused slave, sometimes as trusted guide) with modern and recent Continental philosophers and political theorists. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Benjamin; Taubes, Badiou, Zizek, and Agamben—Paul journeys here among the philosophers. In these essays you are invited to travel with them into the regions of philosophy, hermeneutics, political theory, and theology. You will certainly hear the philosophers speak. But Paul will not remain silent. Above the sounds of the journey his voice comes through, loud and clear."

And here's the contents:

"Introduction: From Apocalypse to Philosophy" - and Back, Douglas Harink

Part One: From Apocalypse to Philosophy

1 "The Gospel invades Philosophy," J. Louis Martyn

Part Two: Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Benjamin

2 "Living 'As If Not:' Messianic Becoming or the Practice of Nihilism?" Travis Kroeker

3 "Heidegger's Paul and Radical Orthodoxy on the Structure of Christian Hope," Justin D. Klassen

4 "The Messiah's Quiet Approach: Walter Benjamin's Messianic Politics," Grant Poettcker

Part Three: Badiou and Zizek

5 "A Very Particular Universalism: Badiou and Paul," Stephen Fowl

6 "Ideological Closure in the Christ-Even: A Marxist Response to Alain Badiou's Paul," Neil Elliott

7 "Subjects between Death and Resurrection: Badiou, Zizek, and St. Paul," Geoffrey Holsclaw

Part Four: Agamben

8 "The Cross as the Fulcrum of Politics: Expropriating Agamben on Paul," Paul J. Griffiths

9 "Messianic or Apocalyptic? Engaging Agamben on Paul and Politics," Ryan L. Hanses

Part Five: Hermeneutics, Ecclesia, Time

10 "Hermeneutics of Unbelief: Philosophical Readings of Paul," Jens Zimmermann

11 "On the Exigency of a Messianic Ecclesia: An Engagement with Philosophical Readers of Paul," Gordon Zerbe

12 "Time and Politics in Four Commentaries on Romans," Douglas Harink

Zizek Interview in The Guardian

Today's Observer online has an interview with Slavoj Zizek, here. It also features a Zizek portion of Astra Taylor's film, Examined Life: Excursion with Contemporary Thinkers.

Christianity and Contemporary Politics

Over at the churchandpomo blog, there is a micro review by James K.A. Smith of Luke Bretherton's Christianity and Contemporary Politics: The Conditions and Possibilities of Faithful Witness.

I'm hoping to take my own research in the direction of political theology, drawing out the socio-political implications of my thesis on "truth" in emerging Christianity and post-secular theologies (Radical Orthodoxy and deconstructive theology). This will, I hope, speak to the debates around "new traditionalist" critiques of liberalism and democracy (Stanley Hauerwas, Alasdair MacIntyre, John Milbank, John Rawls, Jeffrey Stout), so I'll be putting Luke Bretherton's book - which explores the positive contributions of the over-polarised field of political theology; a field that, as Jamie Smith writes in his micro review, is often divided between "Stoutian liberals vs. ecclesiocentric ROers" - on my to do list. In particular, I'm looking forward to the conclusion: "Towards a Politics of Hospitality and a Theology of Politics."

Related is a a King's College Faith and Public Policy Forum seminar on Monday 18th October 2010 that Jason Clark drew my attention to: "Stanley Hauerwas in Conversation with John Milbank and Luke Bretherton," also marking the publication of Hauerwas' Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir. The event will run from 5.30-7.00pm at the Great Hall on Strand Campus.

Thesis to Book

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


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

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

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

and,

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

Postmodernism, Difference and the Logic of Late Capitalism

Today's "what I'm reading" comes from Blake Higgins' blog, "(Ir)religiosity." In a post on the now "classic" critique of postmodernism as the logic of late capitalism (see especially the work of Frederic Jameson and David Harvey), Blake quotes from Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Empire, pp.137-138 and 142-143.



In my doctoral thesis, I explored how emerging church discourse often positions the narratives and liturgies of consumerist capitalism as cultural forces that form subjectivities and socialities that are antithetical to the subjectivities and socialities formed by the narratives and liturgies of the Christian tradition. See, for example, the work of James K.A. Smith in Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview and Cultural Formation, and the doctoral research of Jason Clark, for example this blog on the relationship between dieting and discpleship (desire). While many would argue that Hardt and Negri's critique is narrativally positioned not by the Christian tradition but by the Marxist tradition, this part of emerging church discourse nonetheless has much in common with the post-Marxist critique of postmodern culture.

"We suspect that postmodernist and postcolonialist theories may end up in a dead end because they fail to recognize adequately the contemporary object of critique, that is, they mistake today’s real enemy. What if the modern form of power these critics (and we ourselves) have taken such pains to describe and contest no longer holds sway in our society? What if these theorists are so intent on combating the remnants of a past form of domination that they fail to recognize the new form that is looming over them in the present? [...] In this case, modern forms of sovereignty would no longer be at issue, and the postmodernist and postcolonialist strategies that appear to be liberatory would not challenge but in fact coincide with and even unwittingly reinforce the new strategies of rule! When we begin to consider the ideologies of corporate capital and the world market, it certainly appears that the postmodernist and postcolonialist theorists who advocate a politics of difference, fluidity, and hybridity in order to challenge the binaries and essentialism of modern sovereignty have been outflanked by the strategies of power. Power has evacuated the bastion they are attacking and has circled around to their rear to join them in the assault in the name of difference. These theorists thus find themselves pushing against an open door." (137-38)

"The affirmation of hybridities and the free play of differences across boundaries, however, is liberatory only in a context where power poses hierarchy exclusively though essential identities, binary divisions, and stable oppositions. The structures and logics of power in the contemporary world are entirely immune to the 'liberatory' weapons of the postmodernist politics of difference. In fact, Empire too is bent on doing away with those modern forms of sovereignty and on setting differences to play across boundaries. Despite the best intentions, then, the postmodernist politics of difference not only is ineffective against but can even coincide with and support the functions and practices of imperial rule. The danger is that postmodernist theories focus their attention so resolutely on the old forms of power they are running from, with their heads turned backwards, that they tumble unwittingly into the welcoming arms of the new power. From this perspective the celebratory affirmations of postmodernists can easily appear naive, when not purely mystificatory." (142-43)

John D Caputo official Facebook fan page

I'm going to try administering the Official John D Caputo Facebook page (here) and to try to make it a place where fans (we haven't come up with a good name yet - Caputians? Caputo-ettes?) can discuss his work and swap resources. It'll also be a great opportunity for me to network with a wide variety of people who find Jack's work personally and/or professionally inspiring, as I know that my own research career is going to be marked by it. I'll keep it updated with Jack's speaking engagements and send out announcements of new publications as they come out, etc. It's also useful to remind folks of the lecture downloads that Jack has on his Syracuse website.

In the bar to the left, you can see the "like box" (it's down to the left under the title: John D Caputo Discussion and Resource Page on Facebook).

PCR4 - The Future of Continental Philosophy of Religion

In April next year, Syracuse University will be hosting the fourth Postmodernism, Culture and Religion conference, convened by Jack Caputo. The conference will explore the theme of "The Future of Continental Philosophy of Religion," a topic which I'm sure will, by examining the possibilities of new intellectual directions in continental philosophy of religion, impact both directly and indirectly upon current debates about the social value of philosophy and other humanities disciplines (as well as the social sciences and arts) in the face of growing pressure to demonstrate the immediate economic value of higher education (basically restricted to the sciences and business studies). See in particular the high-profile short-sighted closure of the philosophy department at Middlesex University (including the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy) here, here and (partially saved by Kingston University) here and here.

Anyway, here's some information and blurb from for PCR4, which will run from April 7 - 9 2011.

Plenary speakers will include Jack Caputo, Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Humanities (Syracuse University), Philip Goodchild, Professor of Theology and Religous Studies (University of Nottingham), and Catherine Malabou, Professor of Philosophy (Universite Paris Quest Nanterre La Defense).

The call for papers blurb is as follows:

"Paper submissions are invited on the topic "The Future of Continental Philosophy of Religion," its past and present, its history and its prospects, in the widest possible terms, addressing the whole range of its implications—politics, feminism, constructive theology, philosophy, history, literature, interfaith dialogue, and the hermeneutics of sacred texts.

"In the past, these conferences, which have provided a forum for the most influential philosophers, theologians, and cultural theorists to interact, have consisted solely of several keynote speakers. This conference will be different. It will feature three plenary speakers and offer multiple concurrent sessions devoted to papers submitted on a diversity of issues relating to the primary theme. This call for papers is deliberately open, befitting the conference's animating concern with the future."

The call for papers then lists some very interesting questions which papers could address:

• What now, or what comes next—specifically, after the death, if not of God, at least of the generation consisting of Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, Levinas, etc.? This question concerns not only the future after those significant theorists, but also the future after-life of these eminent minds who have left such a deep impact on continental philosophy of religion.
• What is the future of Kant and German Idealism, of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in continental philosophy of religion?
• What remains for the future of phenomenology?
• Of the "theological turn" in the phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion and others?
• Of Gadamer, Ricoeur and philosophical hermeneutics?
• Of apophatic or mystical theology?
• What is the future of feminism and continental philosophy of religion?
• What are the status and future of the new trinity of Agamben, Badiou and Zizek?
• What relevance do the political interpretations of Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt, and the more recent continental philosophers such as François Laruelle and Catherine Malabou have to philosophy of religion and political theology?
• What about the future of sovereignty, of money and capitalism, as in the work of Philip Goodchild?
• What is the future of the movements of Radical Orthodoxy and of radical death of God theology, whether in their original or contemporary manifestations?
• What about the new sciences of information and complexity in thinkers like Mark C. Taylor and Michel Serres?
• What about Continental philosophy of religion and our “companion species” in Donna Haraway?
• What about “Post-Humanism”?
• What is the future of continental Philosophy of religion and Judaism?
• And Islam?
• Or world religions generally?
• What is the relationship between postmodernism, religion and postcolonialism?
• What role can continental philosophy play in the future of religion?
• In the professional study of religion?
• How does continental philosophical theology relate to the ethnological and empirical-scientific study of religion?
• How does continental philosophy of religion differ from traditional philosophy of religion?
• Or from analytic philosophy of religion?
• What is continental philosophy of religion anyway?
  

Hmmm.... cogs turning... ideas developing...

...wonder if I'll have a job by April 2011 in order to afford to go???

The call for papers asks for electronic copies of completed papers (previously unpublished and up to 3,000 words) to be subject to a double blind review by a selection committee, so include your name, paper title and contact information on a separate page. and put the paper title (but not name) on header or footer of each numbered page of the paper itself. These submissions are due by December 15, 2010 and should be sent to pcrconf@syr.edu. Acceptances will be made by February 15, 2011.

This information is also available on a (very hard on the eyes) website here.

What I'm Reading

One of the key figures in my doctoral thesis is James K.A. Smith, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. As well as blog Fors Clavigera (see here for an explanation of its title), he writes a What I'm Reading blog, which is actually the older of the two. Jamie describes What I'm Reading as "something between an annotated bibliography and a collection of book reviews." This is something that I'm going to try out with this blog.

Having completed my PhD, I now spend my days hunting for academic jobs, writing conference papers, and turning my thesis into a book and a couple of articles, and I'll still post about these things. However, I'm also still reading new things. So I thought I might try out posting snippits of what I'm reading which will give insight into where I am hoping to go next with my work.

Since my postdoctoral aspirations converge on exploring the possibility of Derridean radical sociality, I thought starting with this from Slavoj Zizek's The Puppet and The Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity, pp.43-44 -

"When today's Left bombards the capitalist system with demands that it obviously cannot fulfill (Full employment! Retain the welfare state! Full rights for immigrants!), it is basically playing a game of hysterical provocation, of addressing the Master with a demand that will be impossible for him to meet, and will thus expose his impotence.

"The problem with this strategy, however, is not only that the system cannot meet these demands, but that those who voice them do not really want them to be satisfied.

"When, for example, 'radical' academics demand full rights for immigrants and the opening of borders to them, are they aware that the direct implementation of this demand would, for obvious reasons, inundate the developed Western countries with millions of newcomers, thus provoking a violent racist working-class backlash that would then endanger the privileged position of these very academics?

"Of course they are, but they count on the fact that their demand will not be met - in this way, they can hypocritically retain their clear radical conscience while continuing to enjoy their privileged position."

Attending to the Other bursary

I just heard from the International Society for Religion, Literature and Culture that they are going to give me a bursary to help towards the cost (£385) of going to their "Attending to the Other: Critical Theory and Spiritual Practice" conference at St Catherine's College, Oxford, in September. All I can say is, "thank you" and "phew!"

"I Hate Your Church..." Published

My Expository Times article on the emerging church ("'I Hate Your Church; What I Want is My Kingdom': Emerging Spiritualities in the UK Emerging Church Milieu") is now available online. You can access the abstract for free here, but you'll have to subscribe to The Expository Times, purchase short-term access, or log-in using an Athens account or university homepage.

I'm not allowed to distribute the article either.


The article briefly assesses current ways of defining "the emerging church" and suggests the value of the notion of a "milieu." Borrowing from Gordon Lynch's work on progressive spirituality, the concept of a global "emerging church milieu" (with regional milieus within it, e.g. "US emerging church milieu" or "UK emerging church milieu" etc) allows the emerging church to be portrayed as a coherent religious phenomenon without ignoring local differences and divergences.


I then enumerate what I see as the six commitments of emerging church discourse. These are commitments to:

1. "glocal" contextualisation,
2. "ancient-future" traditions,
3. organisational experimentation,
4. exploring postmodern thought,
5. (re)thinking theology, and
6. socially, politically and environmentally just living.

Not having much space in which to present these commitments in this article, I go into much more detail in my doctoral thesis, but these commitments (which obviously overlap with other Christian and non-Christian milieus beyond the emerging church milieu) are variously understood and put into practice multifariously.


Then I identify two spiritualities which emerge from this milieu: Deep Church spirituality and A/Theistic spirituality. These two spiritualities were primarily presented as hermeneutics in my thesis, but they can also be thought of as spiritualities. In my postdoctoral research, I hope to explore them as social imaginaries. Again, I didn't have the room to go into much detail in this article, but I hope to publish a few academic journal articles and a monograph that will bring my library basement destined thesis to the masses!

My Expository Times article then concludes by reflecting upon the missional orientation of these two emerging church spiritualities. Following a question that John Hull asked of fresh expressions of church in Mission-Shaped Church and Mission-Shaped Questions, I wonder whether Deep Church and A/Theistic spiritualities are kingdom-shaped or church-shaped in their missiologies.

Attending to the Other - conference programme

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

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

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

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

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

An "Emerging Church" Book Review

After completing my article for The Expository Times, "'I Hate Your Church; What I Want is My Kingdom': Emerging Spiritualities in the UK Emerging Church Milieu," I was asked to write a book review of Bruce Sanguin's (2008) The Emerging Church: A Model for Change and a Map for Renewal. My review, entitled "Making an Emergent Future Present," will appear in about six months.

This is not really a book written about or for what I consider to be the "emerging church" - and the reviews from within what I call the "emerging church milieu" agree (here's one by Jonathon Brink on Emergent Village). This is about progressive Christianity (see Gordon Lynch's great overview and analysis of the broader "progressive milieu"), or, as Sanguin's website describes it, "evolutionary Christian spirituality." It is a book about progressive Christianity and modern science, rather than about emerging Christianity and postmodern thought or theology. The science he appropriates in this book (spiral dynamics) will be deeply troubling to many within the emerging church milieu. However, his work is nonetheless theologically and politically interesting.

Abstract accepted for Attending to the Other

My abstract for the International Society for Religion, Literature and Culture's "Attending to the Other: Critical Theory and Spiritual Practice" was accepted by the theology panel. The paper is called "How to Eat Well in Church: Saying 'Yes' to the Other and Becoming Nothing in Derrida, Paul, and Emerging Christian Discourse," and will detail the ways in which emerging church literature advocates "attending to the other" and mirrors approaches to "the other" in Paul (particularly in Romans) and in Derrida.

A timely publication from within the UK emerging church milieu which I can't wait to get my hands on is Kester Brewin's Other: Loving Self, God and Neighbour in a World of Fractures.

Another book of interest, which comes out too late for me to include it in my September paper, is Graham Adam's Christ and the Other: In Dialogue with Hick and Newbigin. Here's the blurb: "How should we relate to "others" - those within a particular tradition, those of different traditions, and those who are oppressed? In the light of these anxieties, this book offers a vision of Christ as "the Shaken One," rooted in commuinty with others and building upon the work of Andrew Shanks. Shaped through dialogue with the theologies of John Hick and Lesslie Newbigin, Adams urges Christian communities to attend more deeply to the demands of ecumenical, dialogical and political theologies, to build an ever greater "solidarity of others" - a quality of community better demonstrating Christlike "other-regard."

How to Eat Well in Church

As I begin to emerge from a just-passed-my-viva-(phew!) lull (I always tend to get a bit depressed after the excitement of finishing a piece of work, presenting a piece of work, or handing something in), I am doing my corrections (done!), writing my paper for the Edinburgh BSA SocRel conference on the Changing Face of Christianity (not done yet!), and submitting abstracts for a couple of conferences later in the year - 500 words for the International Society for Religion, Literature and Culture's "Attending to the Other" (done!) and 200 words for the "Re-Writing the Bible: Devotion, Diatribe and Dialogue" symposium, held by the University of Glasgow's Centre for the Study of Literature, Theology and the Arts (not yet done!).

My submission for the Attending to the Other conference is called, "How to Eat Well in Church: Saying 'Yes' to the Other and Becoming Nothing in Derrida, Paul and Emerging Christian Discourse." Hopefully it'll get accepted by either the Continental Philosophy of Religion or the Theology panels, but I'm also keen to work this paper into a journal article so it won't be too bad if it doesn't get accepted. Here's the abstract:

‘Let us say yes to who or what turns up, before any determination... before any identification’ (Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality, 77).

‘Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you’ (St Paul, Romans 15:7).

‘...we can freely enter into a theatrical space in which we act as though there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female... Here we do not lay down our identity only to pick up our new identity in Christ. Rather it is in laying down all our identities that we directly identify with Christ’ (Peter Rollins, The Fidelity of Betrayal, 178-179 and peterrollins.net/blog/?p=889)

‘If a community is too welcoming, it loses its identity; if it keeps its identity, it becomes unwelcoming’ (John D. Caputo, Deconstruction in a Nutshell, 113)

For Derrida, hospitality, friendship and love are responsibilities that are excessive to the complacent fulfilment of duty. While hospitality by rights and justice under the law protect the self-same, unconditional hospitality is to attend to (to pay attention to and to serve) alterity. Similarly, for (Badiou’s) Paul, the Christian community is to welcome the other, without quarrelling about or arguing over determinations of truth. Co-implicated in this is that, in order to welcome those with different truths, that which makes the host distinctive is to be sacrificed or performatively suspended, which is why there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female (Gal. 3:28). Paul’s injunction to hospitality is occasioned by questions regarding whether or not to eat meat and what Paul calls for is the creation of communities that attend not to the question of what to eat but to the question of how to eat, which is a ‘learning-to-give-the-other-to-eat’ (Derrida, “Eating Well,” 282). The event of Jesus’ excess in relation to all law is to be translated into hospitable ecclesial spaces that attempt to let the other be other, to privilege hospitality over the temptation to conversion or consensus, to refuse to subsume the other to the self-same, and to create a space that places unconditional welcome above conditions of entrance.

The “emerging church conversation” is one contemporary discourse about Christianity that is attempting to imagine and enact such spaces. This paper introduces the discursive motifs in which this Derridean-Pauline desire to attend to the other is expressed and through which it is being performed liturgically, particularly in the work of Peter Rollins and the Belfast-based ‘transformance art’ collective, ikon. I examine the ways in which alterity is welcomed, by which a place for the other is prepared, and through which Christian community negotiates unity and difference. I raise questions of openness and the possibility of radical sociality, of kenosis and the problems of self-identity, and of how deconstructive theologies (such as John D. Caputo’s weak theology) might be ecclesiologically, ethically and politically viable for concrete collectives.

If deconstructive theology interprets the church and the world, how might deconstructive religious collectives be changing them?

Viva Results

On Monday, I had my viva voce (oral defense of my thesis). Because I felt that I was most likely to get either a pass with minor corrections (usually typos), for which they give you 3 months or a pass with more major amendments (6-12 months), I went in having written sections on the things that I thought they might ask me to add (a list of typos, some more contextual information for my participants - which I had to cut to get to under my word limit of 100,000 words - and a section for my conclusion that widened things back out to the future of Christianity in the UK). This meant that they gave me a pass with 3 months to correct typos, and add in those things I'd already written, so I'm hoping to be able to get back up to Lancaster at the end of the Edinburgh conference to hand in my final thesis.

While I was nervous about the viva, I also drank lots of rescue remedy and felt much more confident about what I had produced than I did when I handed it in and was suffering from exhaustion! I was able to get a bit more perspective on the thing and just think, "I'm not facing a firing squad; the worst that can happen is that they have some concerns, that I'm then allowed to address and resubmit. What's the big deal?" So I think I had quite a good frame of mind to go in - even when there were hiccups like when I forgot to put a parking ticket in my car, or when my supervisor forgot to tell my independent chair that the time of the viva had changed (we found a tape recorder instead)!

Anyway, it went down like this...

My examiners (external, Gerard Loughlin, and internal, Chris Partridge) have a little bit of time together to tell each other what they think of it and to work out who is going to ask what and in what order, etc. Then they send for me. In our department, it's optional whether or not to have your supervisor present but I thought she might be able to make notes better than I would and I thought it would be useful to have a rundown of what happened - in case I wasn't able to remember anything when I came out!

Chris started off by saying that they liked and enjoyed reading my thesis, which put me at ease somewhat - although they aren't allowed to tell the candidate what their initial recommendations are (since the viva voce can be the point at which they change their minds about whether or not the candidate demonstrates the requisite skills to be awarded a PhD degree). Chris asked me warm up questions about how I came to be involved in researching the emerging church and then Gerard asked me about whether I needed the emerging church voices (my participants) alongside the established academic voices and whether my argument would work without them. This is what my supervisor Deborah F. Sawyer and I had been calling the Gavin Hyman question (since he wrote The Predicament of Postmodern Theology as an analysis of Radical Orthodoxy and textual nihilism without recourse to empirical data), and I answered it by demonstrating how a combination of theory and data could allow me to speak to both: to Radical Orthodoxy and deconstructive theology, and to the emerging church milieu.

Gerard also asked whether the work of Jack Caputo is more nihilist than I was portraying it, which I answered by explaining that, while Caputo does use nihilistic language such as the void and the abyss to describe the flux or play of differance, it is only possible to portray Caputo as a nihilist by ignoring the more affirmative strands within both Derrida's work and Caputo's own deconstructive theology, particularly the messianic "to-come."

Then Chris and Gerard asked me some more questions about the emerging church milieu to contextualise their discourse and activities within Christianity in the UK (and the US) more generally, which was just a nice chat about broader issues in philosophy, theology and ecclesiology. They agreed that I should include a little more on this, and on who my participants were - which I'd already written in anticipation of these comments.

Deborah and I then waited outside for about four minutes and were then asked back in, which was when they said that they were going to recommend the award of PhD subject to minor corrections and additions and Chris said that they thought I'd should publish it.

Although they've given me 3 months to do this work (standard practice), Chris said it was only a few days work. However, as I have to go back up to Lancaster to get it bound and to hand it in, I'll have to wait until we drive past on our way back from the BSA SocRel conference on "The Changing Face of Christianity in the 21st Century." Deborah gave me a bottle of champagne and that was that! So the final thesis will be submitted in a few weeks and then I'll graduate in December and be Dr. Moody (which sounds a little too like an evil genius, but I'm happy with it for now!)

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.