Category Archives: Heretical imperative

Space for newness

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Following up on the last post and subsequent comments here and Pete’s post around radicals and conservatives and Kester’s on Newness I wanted to explore some issues around creating a space for newness.
I would be with James that very little new has emerged in the last few years and Petes post seeking definition on the terms highlighted for me that finding newness within our current context was highly problematic, due to the strength of the christian cultural context we find ourselves in. As I commented I am unsure if radical theology can emerge in such a context and as such maybe defining terms such as radical and conservative is a red herring as it reinforces the place of this cultural context, and thus hinders new voices from emerging. How many teenagers or children, people not coming from a faith tradition would want to part of that discussion?
Community organising suggests all action is in the reaction, and I wonder if this one of the things that has shifted. In the early experimental days there was plenty for people to react to, as people in community developed new forms of connection through the Alt worship ect it created an experience that people could react to, discuss and dialogue. As such there was far more equity, and I remember great conversations with children and young people or faith or none that I took to Greenbelt events, and their comments greatly informed my ecclesiology.

(I recognise the irony of continuing to write in the light of what I have said so far but want to pursue another reason about creating space for reason.)

Bourdieu who builds on an earlier ideas of Habitus – cultures way of behaving and norms making society possible, which we are socialised into. Bourdieu suggests that habitus was more than this and that through our participation we contribute to the unfolding “habitus” i.e. it is a two way dialogical or iterative process. Is part of our problem is that as we have moved from experience/activity to dialogue and discussion that not a wide enough people demographic are participating to allow something new to unfold. More than this as I explored in Reconnected that if as Elaine Graham argues “the task of rebuilding Christian theology in a more authentic fashion requires a critique of the points at which tradition has misrepresented the spirit of the gospel; and then a reconstruction of theology according to emancipatory principles”. It can equally be argued that when these emancipatory principles are told, or the tradition critiqued, that it must be accompanied by the liberatory story, and voices of those outside that initially gave rise to the need for change, if it is to have any hope of getting through the layers of misrepresentation that have accumulated over the years.
I think there is model for this- the russian concept of Sobornost, “Spiritual community of many jointly living people” or one that is rooted in practice, action, dialogue and community but that is for another post.

Transitology and emerging theology

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As a practitioner and activist I have been fascinated by the idea of change for a long time, change on so many levels, and in so many ways. How individuals change, how communities change, how culture changes, how education changes, how young people change, how theology changes, how church changes and list goes on and on…..

For some time I have been questioning the depth of change, challenge and if any real transition was happening in emerging church thinking and theology, if we were on a road less traveled and willing to encounter G-d that can only be found in glimpses as we deny the false god we know. Often finding a sense of newness in some of Pete Rollins writing and in agreement with Kester Brewins post that there has been a sense of retreating. However I am unsure if this is conscious or circumstantial as the institutions catch up.

Kesters postthe backlash begins and the comments has prompted me to finally get around to this post.

At a basic level Transitology (derived from political science and initially examining change in latin america) identifies 4 elements to the change process. 1, structural factors are inadequate by themselves need actors to help make change, 2 change happens at times uncertainty, 3 Actors are assumed self interested, 4, Property rights of the wealthy need to be challenged.

I want to borrow from Transitology to say a few things about the change or lack of it, and current processes in the emerging theology debates.
1, The structures (and here I mainly mean the institutions and denominations) recognised the need for change and could not make the shift happen by themselves. They needed and still need actors on the edge of and preferably (in my mind) outside themselves to help make change happen.
2, The uncertainty and backdrop of the cultural shift to post (hyper) modernity is obvious, and the challenges it wrought both in terms of thinking and theological processes and in terms of subscription to institutions, commitment etc provided the climate of uncertainty needed for next shift, or as Phylis Tickle suggests the great emergence.

But it is the next two arenas of Transitology where I think we can draw some hope from and maybe build a bit of a platform to stop the retreat.
3, I think the backlash Kester mentions, comes from, and is coming from, a number of fields. Initial emergence was quite egalitarian, and practice driven by actors, working out what to do on the ground in the shifting context they found themselves. This flew in the face of self interest and created a platform for voices from the margin to be seen and heard. As the movement matured the voices shifted from the group to the individual, (which is needed as Actors play a key role), but in doing so could easily be seen as being less rooted in communities and practice or self interested. This will make it easy for people from outside emerging theology circles that are too lazy to get to know the actors to criticise them as self interested or unaccountable, as at a surface level they see people removed from their communities (or systems) and not practice orientated. I assume (like my own experience on the edge) that Kester with Vaux, and Pete with Ikon forged a depth of relationship created in the years of practice and risky experimentation that still remains. However, it may be helpful (particularly for the likes of me) to be given some pointers on grounding some of the thinking into our practice, and where actors are not involved directly anymore, to be dialoging with practitioners who are seeking to flesh out the christ they are speaking of on the ground, and to make these faltering attempts, and relationships public alongside the theological discourse. One of my greatest fears is that our key actors will be unfairly criticised from within (one field that the backlash may come from), and in doing so the movement will not embody the openess and acceptance, robustness and questioning that much of the emerging church is known for, and is certainly one of the changes worth protecting. This links to my final point, I do think the voices of the wealthy need to be challenged and this is two fold. There needs to be a challenge to the intellectually wealthy to root theological ideas on the ground. Secondly the growth of fresh expressions could be viewed as the wealthy institutions colonialising the grass roots, and in so (hopefully not intentionally) suppressing the voice of the actors and those on the edge who were and still are, key to helping make change happen. This may be the another field where the backlash comes from, but it will be disguised in many colors, as the tentacles of the wealthy and powerful are legion.

Following, seeking, finding

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With so much conversation in the blogland on hell and orthodoxy it has been interesting to watch. I thought Kesters latest post interesting on living in theological fear very interesting and I wonder how much that shapes who gets heard or access to the pulpit.

However my main question was how much of this conversation was rooted in day to day mission and living with people facing the issues on the ground everyday, and how much this sort of praxsis was shaping the conversation rather than as a kind of theological speculation. (see developing doctrine from practice)

For me there is something about how following the missionary God leads us into heresy and to challenge orthodoxy as we encounter, value, learn, and seek G-D on the journey and then we find / rediscover the missionary God in the other we were seeking to follow in the first place. But it is new discovery or facet.

Anyway hat tip to TSK for this quote

“A religion that is not constantly spawning alternatives and heresies has ceased to think and has achieved only the peace of the grave.” Phillip Jenkins Jesus Wars

You say syncretism, I say inculturation or What’s wrong with a bit of syncretism?

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I have been thinking a lot about holding the tension between culture, bible and tradition which has moved into thinking about what it is to be swept up with missio dei, and what this may look like for our structures and approaches/ theology.

I still think and still feel we are a long way off the mark in emerging church circles as we are worried about slipping into syncretism, and the gravitational pull of orthodoxy. Perhaps our orthodoxy is as much a myth as the myth that we can know the unknowable G-d.
I think the separation of sacred and secular is rooted in our need to box God in, to define what is God and what is not.

So there is something buzzing away in the back of head about the need to collapse much of our approach as it feels dualist. We have made great progress in missional thinking and understanding recognizing the missio dei etc – if God is working, sovereign, we ask what is God already doing, so we can get in on this (rather than the older approach which was thinking it is our mission or we are the carriers of God or God is not present/at work) but this question, what is god doing is still rooted in identifying a particular thing God is doing (which in itself supposes there are things that God is not in control of or doing) and thus enables us to focus on this known/discerned aspect of God rather than simply being cast adrift with the missio dei with G-d in G-d’s world.

This raises the question of ‘other’ what is it, does it exist, or is there other but that is a whole other kettle of fish which i cant get my head around.

If syncretism is about the attempt to reconcile contrary beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought wasn’t this what happened with introduction of christ and the emerging christology. So since Christ split the curtain shouldn’t we be a bit more about what Robert Schreiter sees as inculturation “the dynamic relation between the Christian message and culture or cultures; an insertion of the Christian life into a culture; an ongoing process of reciprocal and critical insertion and assimilation between them” which seems to differ little for me from syncretism. Perhaps i am being naive about the semantics.

Imperialistic thinking masquerading as missional engagement

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Pete Ward has an essay here on the nature of celebrity in culture and missiological implications. There are some interesting points raised and I value several of the observations and critic of celebrity as an entity. However when it comes to exploring the missional nature it is again theologically/missionally conservative, and IMHO falls far short of genuine missional application. His section on Beyond Functional Equivalence is well written but is rooted in a quasi imperialistic approach to missional engagement masquerading as a radical movement. Pete suggests we must “take this capital into account” and whilst he recognises the “contested meanings” around celebrity provide a fruitful area for engagement it is very much on re-interpretative terms rather than from any position of powerlessness or that our doctrines could be wrong and need re-interpreting through genuine dialogue with the people shaped by the culture.
I am not arguing all culture is good, but equally neither is all doctrine. I simply want to hold the culture with the reverence it is due and as an equal partner with the bible and tradition in the “contested” space that non imperialistic mission should inhabit.

I hope the book that is due to follow the article will address some of these issues, but I wonder if there is an inherent imperialism or notion that we have our doctrines right, rooted in the theological or publishing culture that would never let a book like this get written. As underlying any text would be the need for an heretical imperative as that is part of what enables real dialogue in the contested space of missional engagement.

Developing missional imagination 1

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So if we have thought about some of the blocks how do we develop the missional imagination. Most people realise the need to do something different as they recognise that what they have been doing doesn’t cut it anymore or their faith is maturing towards or beyond owned faith. Often there is a deconstruction process – where the ambiguity of faith is presented and the gray areas expanded, this then enables us, when we start to deconstruct enables the move from certainty towards mystery. As we recognise and encounter the mystery at the heart of faith we find a freedom to re-imagine our faith, encounter G-D rather than the God we have created in our own image, and this gives us space and inner permission to experiment.

Start the journey:
– Trust your questions
– Leave church as you know it
– Find silence
– Read Scripture from below
– Find fellow travelers
– Reject the God you know as that can’t be G-D
– Be Still but Still moving
– Spend more time at the beach or in woods
– Experiment with your own creativity, eg painting, sculpture

Conservative Greenbelt?

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Back from Greenbelt and as ever there was a great range of music, art and talks. However at the festival and on coming away I couldn’t help feeling it was all rather theologically conservative. After posting this on FB I thought I needed to think out loud a bit more about this to help me understand my feelings, so apologies if this becomes a stream of consciousness rather than a coherent post.

23 years of attending and I am hearing the same (great) speakers that inspired me when I was 17 to give up life plans and change tack. The content remains great, but culture, and I have shifted but not sure the theological content has. This obviously begs the question of should it shift and for many new people coming and hearing this stuff for the first of third time I know John Smith or Dave Andrews thoughts could turn their world upside down towards a kingdom reorientation. So what has changed or needs to be said. The love and acting out of compassion and justice remains, those values are timeless, but in the cultural shifts that have taken place over the past 20 years how do we rethink the missiology that needs to accompany the missio dei in those acts of love and justice, so we can go with God effectively.

The theme of looking sideways raised my expectations about Greenbelt this year, but the sideways looks I heard were safe glances back to tradition (although playing with this) Richard Rohr, glance back mediation (although with hat tip to worship as a whole of life experience) Laurence Freeman. Don’t get me wrong it was all good stuff but it was all stuff that was been part of my missional thinking 15 years ago.

Missionally it felt quite milky, the questions I wanted to ask were, who is genuinely taking a sideways look at the world, how do we do this and here the stories about the missional journey that starts when we do. When I was chatting with Andy Turner about this he was asked who do we need to get and I am afraid I was at a bit of loss. I certainly missed Pete Rollins. The themes that came to mind however different stuff I would like to hear or talk about would be:
Living with the corner stone and the stumbling block, going with Christ beyond the christ we know in mission
The role of Powerlessness in mission and going with G-D in this.
How the when we join up Greenbelt christian thinking and start to try and live it, it takes us beyond, Yet when one section rises in popularity (currently meditation and new monastic forms) due the consumerist culture and deep rooted individualism and selfishness it takes us away from Christ and detracts from the deeper theological work that is needed in our lives and communities.
How do we deny Jesus in order to look sideways and discover G-D in our neighborhood and can we begin that dangerous journey with the tentative courage that comes from a community like Greenbelt behind us?

So was Greenbelt Conservative? – not really because the social gospel shone through the justice and love discussions.
Was greenbelt policitally conservative? – you certainly cant give that label.
Was Greenbelt missionally conservative? – ABSOLUTELY.
Where do we go from here? – Haven’t a clue except we need the artists and activists (theologians who may not have that label but can articulate their thinking) who can genuinely help us take a sideways look at the world and see the Kingdom within!

echos

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I have been reflecting around the issue of Flow and christology recently. Jonny pointed me to this great article “God inside out – towards a mission theology of the Holy Spirit”. It challenges the adage that the father sends the son – the Father and son send the spirit – and the trinity sends the church and unpacks the centrality of the spirit.

The article started me thinking about the Trinity as an echo. For a while now I have had the vague idea of church being an echo of the trinity of coming from God and continuing in the unfolding revelation of God. (if the spirit sends the church what does this say about the divine nature of the church).

The reduction of G-d to the trinity is problematic and avoids the transcendent nature of G-d beyond our understandings (not mention the other characteristics of God within the biblical narrative that do not readily fit the Father Son Spirit image).

G-d echos through the creation, all our images and encounters are echos of G-d that we are swept up with (missio dei) and join the echo of G-d towards the fulfillment of creation. The power of the echo can transcend the blocks of institutions and break beyond the walls of our imaginings, it calls us forward, beyond and out of what we know, to be more and less (at times) of what we are, towards unity as the bride of christ.

An orthodox view

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Years ago when Off the Beaten track was first published I did a training session, and described a street based communion (coke and crisps style) and asked participants – Is this church? Oli was present and has been thinking and working on his eccelesiological position in response to the question. He has published an interesting short read exploring the need for orthodoxy around the issue of eccelesiology and communion that is well worth the read and download. Find it here.

I really like the fence model he proposes and it presents a good challenge, but before I post my responses i would be interested to hear others views.