Existential Punk

The Simultaneity Of Deconstruction & Re/Construction

Wikipedia has the following to say about deconstruction:

'...an approach (whether in philosophy, literary analysis, or in other fields) which rigorously pursues the meaning of a text to the point of undoing the oppositions on which it is apparently founded, and to the point of showing that those foundations are irreducibly complex, unstable or impossible.

Deconstruction generally operates by conducting close textual readings with a view to demonstrating that the text is not a discrete whole but that it instead contains several irreconcilable, contradictory meanings. This process shows that any text has more than one interpretation; that the text itself links these interpretations inextricably; that the incompatibility of these interpretations is irreducible; and thus that interpretative reading cannot go beyond a certain point...'

Many Christians, in my opinion, even within emerging church circles, misunderstand what deconstructing our faith really entails. Often they say it is time to stop deconstructing and that it's time to move on to reconstruct and rebuild what has been deconstructed. Then there are those Christians who believe deconstructing and reconstructing becomes an exercise in relativism and creating the scriptures and G-D in our own image. i do not claim to fully understand deconstruction in the Deriddean philosophical vein, but Pete Rollins crystallizes deconstruction so clearly in the emerging church construct for me (HT: Jonathan Brink):

'A lot of people talk about deconstruction like this.They say, “Well we’ve got to deconstruct and then once we’ve deconstructed, we can rebuild.”

And I want to stop at that point and say, “No.  We never cease to deconstruct.  Deconstruction is not like knocking down a building so we can clear a space to build something new.  Deconstruction is like the heat that keeps our ideas fluid and molten and moving and dynamic.” '

For me, deconstruction and re/construction are a simultaneous process that need each other. We must constantly question, rethink, seek, search, doubt, dig, knock, push, tear, rupture, deconstruct, reconstruct. We must also allow the Divine to invade, rupture, embrace, invade, transform, deconstruct, reconstruct us in ways we might expect but also in unexpected ways that are beyond our human imaginings. We are imperfect humans who can never claim to fully comprehend and understand the Divine. We, as people of faith, MUST and NEED to make room for the Divine to invade us without our preconceived notions. There can never be any human being who can claim absolute knowledge of everything about this life and the Divine. i don't care how knowledgeable, studied, gifted, et al any of us are, we are still fallible, imperfect humans who always screw up and get it wrong. No amount of knowledge, theology, Biblical literacy, intuition, etc. can outdo what G-D designs to accomplish. G-D is a relational Divinity that is not stagnant and stuck in a certain epoch.

i am mesmerized and humbled when Rollins boldly says that, 'I do not believe Christians are called to believe in the resurrection of Christ.  I believe we are called to be the resurrection of Christ.  To be the site where resurrection takes place.' That statement is amazing and has such deep implications for our faith. Take time to mull on those 33 words and allow them to really sink down into your being, your soul! This is deep stuff people.

We get so wrapped up in what we believe and don't believe so much that we are failing to really listen to the indwelling of the Divine and the radical transformation that the Divine desires to bring forth and rupture in our souls. We get in this us vs. them mentalities, argue over who has the right/correct beliefs, who is in and who is out. So often we are all so very ungenerous, whether conservative, liberal or in the middle. i know i am very guilty of this and for that i am truly sorry. My pride and hurt feelings get the best of me more often than not. i truly want to be a site where Christ's resurrection takes place. i am human and will fail often. At least i acknowledge my weaknesses and human frailties although it is very difficult and humbling. Sometimes i don't care that i fuck up and treat people ungenerously. That is one of the many dark parts of my soul where i need the Divine to rupture and transform me. Even in my unwillingness i need G-D to embrace me, transform me, deconstruct and reconstruct me.

These are merely my musings, thoughts, rants. Maybe i am wrong or just maybe i am on to something. Either way, i hope i challenge you, dear readers, to chew and ponder. i am not attempting to sway you to my way of thinking, lead you astray, or change your minds. This is simply my space to throw out what is ruminating in my soul and my being. i am just trying to make some sense of my feelings, thoughts and meanderings inside my little ol' mind! If you are here reading this and find yourself vehemently disagreeing with me, i am ok with that. Even if i am way off track, i trust the Divine G-D of the universe will gently nudge me back on track. That is how i have always lived and walked with G-D, and so far G-D has been the faithful one!

What do you think?

Queermergent

 

i just created a new blog called Queermergent. It's a play on the words Queer and Emergent. Here's the very first post:

i have been a part of the Emergent conversation both in the UK and the USA for the past 6 years. After years of white-knuckling and repressing my sexuality through a Religious Right conservatism, charismatic, fundamentalist Christianity that lived by literal interpretations of the Bible in dogmatic ways, Reparative Therapy and ex-gay ministries, where the mantra became, “Pray Away the Gay”, and years of depression and suicidal tendencies, i FINALLY came to terms with my sexuality and G-D. Through a very long journey with many peaks and valleys, i decided, through much counsel and prayer that reconciling my same-sex attractions and my Christian faith was a reality where i could exist.

Here is a brief summary of my journey:

Twenty years ago this month I had a ‘born-again’ experience at a charismatic church where an American missionary to S. Africa was speaking. Hell was one of the topics being preached, so at the end of the evening I went forward for the altar call to ‘receive’ Jesus into my heart. I did this because I was afraid of going to hell. Thus, I was purchasing my ‘fire insurance’. I attended Pat Robertson’s graduate school in Virginia Beach, Regent University, to obtain an M.Div so I could be a youth pastor. I began to seriously look at my life-long struggle of same-sex attractions. The school and my therapist along with my charismatic church back home always communicated that being gay was a sin, a choice, and those who actively pursue it will go to hell. I was shell-shocked and confused. I attempted suicide and spent a month at two different times in a psychiatric hospital. I even did reparative therapy and attended ex-gay ministries to pray away the gay, which never worked. In 1997 I moved to Los Angeles and began living a double life as a Christian and as a gay woman. I began to read Brian McLaren and found him writing things I had felt inside but was very afraid to express outwardly to anyone. In 2002 I went to Northern Ireland to do a DTS with YWAM. I met the great Peter Rollins and we developed a great friendship. His teachings and writings on postmodernism and Christianity radically shaped how I viewed my faith. I could no longer hang onto certainty with regards to interpreting scripture. There were more important things in kingdom living than where we go after we pass from this world to the next, like poverty, AIDS, the environment, etc. About 2.5 years ago I FINALLY came to terms with my sexuality. I found peace with myself and with God. Coming out was fairly painless with the exception of a few people who still think I am in sin and going to hell. I no longer hold this view and I am ok if people think that about me. I hate labels as they are so limiting, but are sometimes a necessary evil. After being a right wing Republican most of my voting life, I now consider myself an independent that leans more liberal than moderate.

Queermergent was created today in order to create a safe space for those Christ-followers who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, and Queer to partake in mature discussions regarding the LGBTQ community of faith within a 21st Century, postmodern, emergent/emerging church context. Queermergent is also a space for those that are not from the LGBTQ community but desire to understand us more, ask questions, and contribute to the queer conversation in a life-affirming way. As we journey along together we will hopefully be changed for the better. Thanks be to G-D!

Pete Rollins' Take On Moving Beyond The Colour Of Each Other's Eyes

Here's a fresh post from Pete Rollins, that is quite interesting, entitled "Beyond the colour of each other's eyes", where he talks about having "just completed two draft chapters for a forthcoming book featuring Jason Clark, Kevin Corcoran, Jamie Smith and Kurt and Lori Wilson. These chapters will be presented at a Calvin College conference taking place at the end of January. The chapters have been provisionally entitled, ‘Beyond the Colour of Each Other’s Eyes: The Worldly Theology of Emerging Collectives’ and ‘Transformance Art: Reconfiguring the Social Self’."

". . . indeed, in the spirit of the text, what if we could offer an interpretive translation  of Paul’s words that would read,

You are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither high church nor low church, Fox nor CNN, citizen not alien, capitalist nor communist, gay nor straight, beautiful nor ugly, East nor West, theist nor atheist, Israel nor Palestine, hawk nor dove, American nor Iraqi, married nor divorced, uptown nor downtown, terrorist nor freedom fighter, paedophile nor loving parent, priest nor prophet, fame nor obscurity, Christian nor non-Christian, for all are made one in Christ Jesus

…One of the fundamental gifts that the nascent movement called emergent has to offer the wider church is a way of locating the power of that eschatological vision of Paul within the here and now. While we cannot step out of historical time and enter the eschaton, while we cannot enact this radical negation today (for we cannot really forget our gender, our job, our sexual preferences, our political opinions, our nationality etc), some emerging collectives have developed a space in which we are able to symbolically enact this step. A place where we engage in a theatrical performance of Paul’s vision. It is the creation of what we may call ‘suspended space’."

Read the entire piece here.

What are your thoughts?

'Emergent & Beyond'

i was over at Emerging Women reading this post and i had to comment. Here is what i said:

Emergent is nothing but a white, middle class, male dominated club. There are some really great men pulling for us women and say they are supportive. But, the proof is in the pudding and i have yet to see many more women added to the conversation. We get accused of being too strong if we push our way in but then we sit and are STILL waiting for the invitations. Nothing has changed since 2005 when i was in Nashville for the emergent conference. There is very little diversity in that i see very little minorities such as Latinos, African Americans, LGBTQ, and women. i am so over trying to reach out and have pulled back a lot from emergent. i refuse to put the 'Friend of Emergent' badge on my blog.

It appears to me that emergent is a boys club that enjoys intellectual masturbation with one another. If a woman pops in now and again to join the conversation they are ok with that, but anymore than i think they feel threatened, unless you are a big wig like the lovely and enjoyable Phyllis Tickle. i do not know the way forward but am tired of trying to figure it all out.

Ok, i've ranted enough.

Happy New Year!

Warm Regards,

Existential Punk

So, today i received an email from the always delightful Becky Garrison, who sent me a link to this article at Publisher's Weekly about the term emergent and emerging church in publishing and the change within the future of publishing.

"Few publishing categories are as confusing to bookseller and customer alike as what has come to be known as the emerging church; the category has become so unwieldy that even publishers and authors have trouble grappling with it. And the problem stems almost entirely from confusing the emerging church with other nontraditional forms of Christianity.

“The term 'emerging church' is so loose that one moment you can apply it to a specific book, and the next moment, you can just as easily decide it isn't emergent at all,” says Dudley Delffs, Zondervan's v-p and publisher of trade books.

One author who has separated the emergent from the nonemergent is Tom Sine, whose InterVarsity book, The New Conspirators, released earlier this year. In it he makes a clear distinction among four streams of alternative Christianity: emerging church (emphasizing the gospel as story, community, experiential worship, the arts, and much more); missional (an outward focus on mission); mosaic (intentionally multicultural); and monastic (a radical communal lifestyle, often lived out among the poor).

What Is—and Isn't—Emergent

Many in the emerging church “conversation,” the preferred self-descriptor, distinguish among three terms: emerging church, an umbrella term for the category; emergent, referring to an unorthodox interpretation of scripture; and Emergent, shorthand for Emergent Village (EV), a largely online community. Most of the publishers PW spoke with used the terms interchangeably, as does the Christian community at large.

Other forms of alternative Christianity are often mistaken for emerging/emergent, but are not. One cause for confusion, says Al Hsu, associate editor at InterVarsity Press, is that many books that are not theologically emergent still resonate with emergent readers, such as IVP's The Circle of Seasons (Nov.), a title about the liturgical year from Presbyterian writer Kimberlee Conway Ireton.

And then there's the mistaken assumption that to be young and edgy is to be emergent. “A traditionalist in a younger body is not emergent,” Hsu says, pointing to Shane Claiborne as an author who is frequently referred to as emergent but is not. Claiborne, who with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove coauthored Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers (IVP, Oct.), lives in an intentional community in inner-city Philadelphia.

Other well-known CBA authors often miscategorized as emergent are Zondervan's Rob Bell (Jesus Wants to Save Christians, Oct.), who eschews labels altogether; and Thomas Nelson's Erwin McManus (Wide Awake, July), pastor of a community called Mosaic, and Donald Miller, whose Blue Like Jazz became a national bestseller.

So who actually is emergent? Without question, Doug Pagitt (A Christianity Worth Believing, Jossey-Bass, June), Tony Jones (The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier, Jossey-Bass, Mar.), who founded EV, and increasingly less so, Brian McLaren (Finding Our Way Again, Thomas Nelson, May), who serves on EV's board but has moved beyond emergent.

Matt Baugher, v-p and publisher of spiritual growth and Christian thought at Thomas Nelson, avoids using the emergent label. “Anyone who has come out of this postmodern decade is now being thrown into that category,” he says. Zondervan does not use the term internally, while Baker Books acquisitions editor Chad Allen also resists using the label—ironic, since Baker and EV partner in publishing books under the Emersion imprint.

Delffs, who calls the term “almost meaningless,” says manuscripts for supposedly emergent books fall into two categories: those that try to proudly exist in the spotlight of emergent, and those that are “fresh, innovative, culturally engaging and not self-congratulatory. Those are more appropriate, more of what we want.”

NavPress senior editor Caleb J. Seeling also sees manuscripts from authors who are self-consciously emergent. “Usually they're just entering the conversation, struggling and trying to find freedom from the traditional church. They're just catching up,” he says. . ."

Becky is quoted in the article and i so resonated with what she said:

"Becky Garrison: Women have told me they were involved with the emerging church years ago, but left when it became clear there was no room for them at the table. Emergent Village's insistence that this is a conversation while only a few of them get to do the talking has alienated many who were initially drawn to the dialogue. There are those who feel that in order to participate, one needs to have the four “Ps”: pastor, published, Ph.D.—and don't make me explain the last 'p.' As an Episcopalian, I've been accustomed to seeing women in the pulpit since 1979—so discussions about the role of women bores me to tears. (Garrison is the author of Rising from the Ashes: Rethinking Church [Seabury, 2007], the first U.S. book about the emerging church written solely by a woman.)"

Here was my email response to Becky:

Becky,

THANKS so much for sending this to me. i have struggled for years with EV and finally just got frustrated after feeling only so welcome as a woman!

i was really frustrated at EMERGENT Nashville that the women had their own meeting, which is good, but except for Phyllis Tickle, were not very welcome into the rest of the conference as speakers/workshop leaders. Where was the integration i wondered to myself. i am tired of the men saying we are welcome and that they support us but the lack of much action pisses me off.

ALL THE BEST!

Adele aka Existential Punk

So, ANY OTHER Emerging/Emergent Church Women out there that have anything to weigh in on this debate?

Pete Rollins & Far Side

My good friend, Pete Rollins, finally explains the relationship between ikon and his two books, "How (Not) To Speak of God" and "Fidelity Of Betrayal: Towards A Church Beyond Belief". He even has a fixed Gary Larson cartoon that i am unable to post here because something is wrong with Typepad and my blog at the moment. So, to see the cartoon, click here. He says the following:

"A question I sometimes get asked concerns the relationship between ikon (the transformance art collective I am part of), and my writings. This is a question that is asked both by those outside ikon and within it.

The short answer is that my work is enriched by, tested within, developed from and a sustained reflection upon, the concrete lifeworld that is ikon. My work both speaks out of a direct involvement with this collective and also speaks into it. For while I am the founding member of ikon much of my time is spent outside that context, networking with other groups and attempting to develop robust theoretical resources that will both enrich it and groups like it.

If I speak only from within ikon then I will be limited to social commentary. But if I only speak to ikon I will end up imposing an external, alien system upon it. This of course creates a tension, however one that I believe to be both productive and generative.

Directly related to this is the tension that exists between my desire to work within a particular context while also formulating a set of theoretical tools that will help to usher in what Phyllis Tickle terms “The Great Emergence”.

This tension reflects the fact that any attempt to speak in a universal manner  must arise from a specific location. Ikon is my privileged location for a variety of reasons that I will not go into here, it is the location that allows me to speak beyond its borders.

So, while my work is deeply nourished by my involvement with ikon, ikon is but one concrete manifestation of how my work can be applied. When explored within different contexts this theory will be able to give birth to or revitalise groups that only bear a vague family resemblance to ikon.

Yet it is not simply my writings that attempt to traverse the tension between local and global, ikon itself exists in this tension, being a local expression of life that is increasingly gaining global recognition.

BTW the above cartoon is a shameful adaptation of a Gary Larson cartoon"

Sank*tuary

One of my online friends who lives in England, Mark Berry, who blogs at Way Out West, talks about an idea that emerged while sitting around with a group of friends talking and dreaming This is an incredible story. It certainly shows me to dream big! UPDATE: sank*tuary's site is up and running.

"A while back the safespace crew sat around our table chatting as usual... as we talked an idea emerged... the idea was for a chill-out/safe haven for night clubbers - nothing that new but there is nothing like this in Telford/Wellington.  Wellington Methodist Church has an excellent building right in the heart of the Clubbing area of Wellington so we approached the minister Peter Clarke.  His response was fantastic, "I've wanted to do something like that for 2 years" he said "but never really had the people."  So we began to talk and dream... the project we came up with is to be called Sank·tuary, it will run from around 12.30 to 3 am on Fridays and offer a chilled place, real coffee, fresh smoothies, Brownies and bakes etc. and people willing to listen..."

Read the rest of this amazing story here.

"The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales"

My good friend from Belfast, Northern Ireland, Pete Rollins, has his third book releasing April 2009! i have read many of the parables he told me were going to be in this collection, but i will be glad to have them all in one place! i absolutely LOVE his parables. They are deep and thought-provoking, often pushing me to think outside my comfortable boxes that are safe. CONGRATS, Pete!

You can pre-order at Amazon or Paraclete Press.

“This book should be banned! It’s DANGEROUS!” *

 So might any Christian say for whom faith functions like a comfortable chair and a lot of good will. If you are comfy and satisfied, then what you have might not be faith after all, explains Peter Rollins.

Christian faith only has meaning if it affects the ways that people live their lives. For many who are not Christians, critiquing Christianity from the outside, this sort of “faith” appears all-too common and is an easy target. Perhaps Christians are simply those possessed of an ideology that keeps them passive, childlike, and ineffectual, they seem to think.

Rollins has crafted a series of parables that shatter these realities and popular perceptions. Parables that demonstrate how genuine faith is radical—and has never been concerned with escaping the world we inhabit, but rather, with engaging in it more fully. That genuine Christian faith has never capitulated to injustice but rather fought against it at every turn. In opposition to those who would claim that Christian faith embraces God at the expense of the suffering world, Peter shows how the true believer embraces God only inasmuch as he fully embraces a needy world.

“I remember driving around Belfast with Pete, sitting in the front seat listening to him tell these parables that he'd written—thinking, ‘Everybody needs to hear these.’ And now you can.”

—Rob Bell, author of

Jesus Wants to Save Christians

 

Amahoro Africa Gathering

Look to the Margins:  Hope for Leadership amid Liminality!

by Claude Nikondeha

According to Alan Roxburgh, the North American church in late modernity is firmly in liminal space; meaning that there is little that is firm or solid as we transition into a post-modern or post-colonial era. In truth, the North American church has been on the margins for some time now, but it has been a comfortable arrangement. In recent years, the church become aware that it is on the margins; the cultural quake got the attention of many church leaders at long last. Many pastors, denominational leaders and faithful disciples are trying to gain their footing in this new decentered reality. They are surveying the aftermath of modernity and see that they are on the margins, and they are not alone. And the question of how to reimagine, retool and rebuild the church overwhelms the most thoughtful among them.

These North American church leaders have lost their point of reference. Like the tsunami that wiped away entire villages leaving nothing standing in its wake, many of the monuments of modernity have been taken out to sea. What is left is a territory with no recognizable landmarks. No wonder so many of us feel disoriented and at a loss. There are no longer any street signs to follow; we need a compass, a remnant of a map or, truth be told, the leading of the Spirit. Alert and thoughtful leaders are trying to chart a new course; but with a very vague map and an atrophied sense of direction. How can we find our way in liminal space? Who knows the terrain of the margins?

There is a hint of direction in Roxburgh’s text; look to the margins! He suggests that resources for navigating liminal space for the North American church will include reengaging Scripture and, to the current point, ‘... listening to the voices of those Christian groups that have long lived outside the center of culture.” He believes that the future direction of the church will be discovered as we engage with ‘dissenting churches’ and ‘ethnic groups.’ “They understand the position of the underling and the outsider. Liminality requires us to listen attentively to their ecclesiologies.” This is one of the most valuable insights gleaned from a reading of Roxburgh’s treatment of liminality — there are leaders who are capable of leading us and who know the terrain; because they have been operating on the margins for years.
   

Around the world, many denominations are struggling to survive. As regular church attendance wanes, leaders are looking for strategies to bring people back into the fold. Roxburgh would say that many of these renewal strategies and church growth seminars are attempts to return to the hay-day of modernity/colonialism which is not going to happen.

We often wonder if there is anyone out there who has managed this situation before, anyone who can offer insight born from seasoned experience. There are those who can articulate the quandary with great poignancy, but can anyone say that they have some ideas about what to try next? We don’t need a new coach to help us to start new programs (the preferred modern methodology), but we need a conversation, suggestions, personal antidotes from churches around the world, partnerships between churches/leaders to walk together through this disorienting time. Friendships among missional churches/leaders could be the greatest gift for this season, if we can take the time to be together and listen.

In May 7 – 11th of 2007, many African, and some non-African, Christian missional leaders will gather to address these questions at the Amahoro African Gathering. These leaders will meet together in Kampala, Uganda for several days of constructive dialogue, planting seeds of thought and preparing the soil for new partnerships. These hopeful and dedicated leaders will seek to define and embody what it means to “be the church” in the emerging post-colonial/post modern world. Through their conversations and experiences, these African and non-African followers of Jesus will seek His Kingdom together, allowing their conversation to become the framework of long-term partnerships to enrich the work of the emerging church worldwide. The Amahoro African Gathering is the beginning of the conversation and we would like to invite you to consider traveling to Uganda to be at this historic Gathering not as missionaries, but as those seeking to learn together with brothers and sisters in Christ who have been living on the margins from the beginning.

For registration information: Please e-mail Luke Miller at luke@amahoro-africa.com; for more information; visit www.amahoro-africa.com or call Claude Nikondeha at 623 217 3361. To support Amahoro Gathering in Uganda: Click here

Church and Postmodern Culture

Church and Postmodern Culture  has invited me to be part of a four week series of engagements with Pete Rollins' new book, "How (Not) To Speak Of God" beginning this Monday, October 9, 2006. My engagement will be first followed by:

Christopher Rousei (aka impleri): Oct 16th.
Geoff Holsclaw (aka for the time being): Oct. 23rd.
Will Samson (aka willzhead): Oct. 30th.

It should make for very interesting conversations, so stop by, check it out, and join in on the conversation!

The site's purpose is:

"...contemporary philosophy...for the church...in the vernacular"

Good Faith vs. Bad Faith

"We do not in some deep way know who we are or what the world is. That is not nihilism but a quasi-religious confession, the beginning of wisdom, the onset of faith and compassion. Derrida exposes the doubt that does not merely insinuate itself into faith but that in fact constitutes faith, for faith is precisely in the face of doubt and uncertainty, the passion of non-knowing. Violence on the other hand arises from having a low tolerance for uncertainty so that Derrida shows us why religious violence is bad faith. . ." - John D. Caputo

I see fundamentalism of any kind, but especially in Christianity, falling into a "low tolerance for uncertainty" that is violently held onto with white knuckles. As followers of Christ, we must remember to hold onto doctrine, beliefs, practices, etc. loosely as we are finite beings incapable of nailing everything down in this life we live on earth. With faith comes the freedom to believe, yet still question, doubt, and be ok with not having all of the answers. Faith is a mystery and is an avenue to "allow" us to "be" and continually 'become" a follower of Christ.

God, help us to revel in your mystery, hold lightly our human constructs of you, and be at peace not knowing everything. Thank you! Amen.