Marika Rose’s guest post over at Homebrewed Christianity on privilege.

Seeing yourself through the eyes of others can be transformative, but only if you let their critiques lead you to serious self-reflection rather than dismissal or denial.

A few days ago, Christena Cleveland - the Center for Diversity and Reconciliation keynote speaker at the recent Subverting the Norm II conference - wrote a post in her blog series “Diversity Repellent” (a series about “the subtle but powerful things that we do and say that make diverse people think twice about building community with us”), which reflected on part of what Tony Jones said at that conference.

Under the 5th (“Be loyal to this tribe”) of his 13 points, Tony said, “We have a better version of the gospel than the regnant view of the gospel in the West today”.

Just as Christena did, I took Tony’s “we” to indicate those gathered at this conference - academics and practitioners interested in the relationship between postmodern or radical theology and church practice. But, this form of theology is located within a specific trajectory in western thought. And this heritage means that neither it (postmodern or radical theology) nor we (those gathered at the conference) are particularly diverse (see also this post here where I reflected on the question of diversity after the STN2 conference).

In her post, Christena asks,

How can a gospel that is mostly (if not entirely) interpreted and articulated by a homogenous group of people (in this case, white, well-educated males) be the “better version”? But in a more subtle way, his statement sent a clear and powerful message to all of the diverse people in the room (e.g., women, people of color, people without advanced degrees, etc.). No need to join our movement; we don’t need diverse voices. We’ve already got the best version of the Gospel and we only needed white, well-educated men to figure it out. Diverse people need not apply.

She concludes that,

people of all cultures run the risk of alienating diverse people if they mistakenly believe that their homogenous group has basically figured out how to think, worship and live.

We might say we want diverse people to participate in our group but we are often too enamored with our own culture (e.g., our version of the Gospel) to invite diverse people to influence it. Rather, than actively seeking input from diverse people, we require them to assimilate to and bow down to the dominant culture. This approach might work to attract people who look diverse (in terms of race/ethnicity, etc.) but it will repel people who offer culturally-diverse perspectives.

Responding more to Christena’s choice of visual illustration than perhaps to the substance of her critique, Tony then said, ‘I’m Tired of Being Called a Racist”. He wrote, “Are her words, combined with that image, meant to imply that I am a racist? The answer can only be yes.”

I’ve been posting reflections (here, here, and here) on STN2, held at Drury University in Springfield, Missouri at the beginning of the month (Apr 5-6 2013). This has also provided an opportunity to reflect on the development of Subverting the Norm as a conference series as a whole, to look ahead to STN3, and to look back to compare STN2 with STN1. So in this post I want to talk a bit about Subverting the Norm and the emerging church.

At STN1, the theme was ‘The Emerging Church, Postmodernism and the Future of Christianity’ (Oct 15-16 2010), reflecting conference organiser Phil Snider’s interests in the relationships between emerging Christianity and mainline, progressive and liberal churches and traditions. (I typed up the conference programme here).

But I remember being disappointed by Gary Black’s ‘Emerging Church 101’ presentation, which just felt cribbed from Scot McKnight’s introduction to the emerging church as ‘postmodern’, ‘praxis-orientated’, ‘post-evangelical’ and ‘political’ (see this 2006 talk at Westminster Theological College and then this 2007 Christianity Today article where he adds ‘prophetic’).

To be fair, Gary had to introduce the emerging church to an audience of church practitioners unfamiliar with it, as well as to professional theologians and philosophers who were also largely unfamiliar with it.

But I’d been doing empirical research on what I call ‘the emerging church milieu’ since 2006, and it was disappointing (four years on) to still be hearing the same definitions from the same people being quoted uncritically. And disheartening that research being done by the increasing number of scholars interested in a variety of manifestations of ‘emerging Christianity’ wasn’t being referenced either.

In my notes from STN1, I found the following message I’d written to Matt Gallion, who was also doing research on the emerging church: ‘We need Emerging Church 201!’ 

But comparing this ‘Emerging Church 101’ presentation at STN1 and the ‘Emerging Christianity’ panel at STN2 demonstrates the increase in attention being given to this ‘new religious movement’ by researchers of religion.

In 2010, Drury University (Springfield, Missouri) hosted what many of its participants imagined to be the first conference bringing together theologians, philosophers and church practitioners (themselves problematic categories, I know) to explore the relationships between postmodern philosophy, radical theology, and church practice. Many ‘emerging’ and ‘progressive’ Christian events often try to engage with contemporary academic theory but often fail to do so in a sustained or rigorous manner and philosophers of religion, in particular, have been accused of disregarding lived religion in favour of abstract thought (hence my work with this new research network, Philosophy and Religious Practices).

‘Subverting the Norm: The Emerging Church, Postmodernism and the Future of Christianity’ (Oct 15-16 2010) tried to provide space for a genuine dialogue between scholars and church practitioners. Many participants, myself included, felt that this was such an important endeavour that we asked its principal organiser, Phil Snider, to turn this one-off event into a conference series.

Beginning with Twitter conversations in February 2012, Subverting the Norm II (STN2) took shape over the summer, when we identified that an event on the relationship between ‘radical theology’ (or what Jack Caputo calls ‘unabridged postmodernism’) and ‘actually existing churches’ might be the most helpful theme for both practitioners and academics. Over the winter, after a suggestion from Matt Gallion, Phil and I drafted a call for presentations to send out through various academic and church networks, inviting conference contributions (open format) around a set of questions that all asked, in a nutshell, ‘Can Postmodern Theology Live in the Churches?’

In this first post reflecting on STN2 (Apr 5-6 2013) and looking ahead to STN3 (watch this space!!!), I wanted to think about the conference format in relation to our intended aim of bringing philosophers, theologians and church practitioners together.

In other posts, I’ll look at two other questions: diversity and politics (and in further posts I’ll also address other STN2-related things that interest me, like the emerging church). 

(Links to other STN2 reflections are being collected by Matt Willis-Goode here).

I’ve been reflecting on Tony Jones’ “non-response” to Jack Caputo at last night’s Subverting the Norm keynote. Tony was invited to respond to Jack’s talk, ‘Can Postmodern Theology Live in the Churches? Perhaps’. And many of us were left feeling disappointed that Tony didn’t appear to spend any of the time he had actually responding to Jack’s talk on whether and how postmodern theology might live in the churches as a spook, a spectre. But then I wondered about some parallels with another “non-response” - this time between Jacques Derrida and Hans Georg-Gadamer - and it left me thinking that maybe Tony’s “non-response” to Jack could be a Derridean illustration of “the good will to understand”. First, a little background…

In my 2010 PhD thesis on “emerging Christianity” and the notion of truth, I wrote a little section about how many of the “emerging Christians” that I interviewed evinced a Gadamerian dialogical hermeneutic in which intra- and inter-religious or cross-narratival conversation functions to facilitate mutual learning and transformation in a fusion of horizons (Horizontverschmelzung). Dialogue is undertaken with other communities and individuals about their interpretations of truth, enabling both parties to “progress” in understanding of and relationship with God.

Acknowledging their positioning ‘this side of the dark glass’, these participants may agree with Merold Westphal when he writes, concerning the plurality recognised by a phenomenological hermeneutics of finitude, that ‘Truth may be one in itself, but the mirror in which we see it dimly is also a prism that renders our grasp of it irreducibly manifold’ (Westphal, ‘Phenomenologies and Religious Truth’).

There are clear affinities between such thinking of truth and the frameworks for thinking about the epistemic problems of religious pluralism offered by pluralist theologians of religion, primarily John Hick.

And Hick’s model of dialogue is Gadamerian in its ‘good will to try to understand’, to reach the fusion of horizons in which a momentary consensus is struck between the parties. Intra- and inter-religious, or cross-hermeneutical, conversation partners are ‘all ears’ (Gadamer, ‘Text and Interpretation’), seeking ‘as far as possible to strengthen the other’s viewpoint so that what the other person has to say becomes illuminating’ (Gadamer, ‘Reply to Jacques Derrida’). Intra- and inter-religious, or cross-hermeneutical, conversation partners are ‘all ears’ (Gadamer, ‘Text and Interpretation’), seeking ‘as far as possible to strengthen the other’s viewpoint so that what the other person has to say becomes illuminating’ (Gadamer, ‘Reply to Jacques Derrida’).

In this, however, Derrida spies a ‘good will to power’ (Simon ‘Good Will to Understand and The Will to Power’). As Herman Rapaport suggests, Gadamer’s good will to understanding rests on the assumption that ‘we can all hear with the same ears,’ while, importantly, Derrida, like Nietzsche, ‘listens with ears that are attuned to bad will’ (Rapaport, ‘All Ears: Derrida’s Response to Gadamer’). Where Gadamer exhibits a fundamental trust, Derrida is suspicious (Caputo ‘Gadamer’s Closet Essentialism: A Derridean Critique’), for the good will to understand seeks not to encounter the other in their alterity, but to appropriate what the other says in such a way as to make it illuminating or transformative for the self.

In his 1981 encounter with Gadamer, Derrida refuses the dialogical model with which Gadamer presents him. As later commentators have asked, how can the success of this dialogue be judged, especially if the criteria for judging it as a dialogue are precisely what is being contested in the rather ‘non-dialogical’ (Dallmayr, ‘Hermeneutics and Deconstruction’) exchange?

In such as case, as Robert Bernasconi suggests, Gadamer’s assumption regarding the nature of conversation would force Derrida into a strategy of frustration (Bernasconi, ‘Seeing Double: Destruktion and Deconstruction’), a strategy with which he is, nonetheless, both familiar and most comfortable.

The Gadamer-Derrida encounter witnesses a Derrida who is not against dialogue per se, but who engages in what might be called, following Derrida’s logic of the sans, of the X without X, a dialogue without dialogue, dialogue sans a certain Gadamerian model of dialogue as, even only momentary, consensus (Gadamer ‘Hermeneutics and Logocentricism’).

Just as many of the conference delegates at that Derrida-Gadamer encounter, last night we wanted Tony Jones to listen to Jack Caputo and enter into a dialogue about postmodern theology and the actually existing churches. That didn’t happen. But perhaps Tony was actually performing one of the most Derridean moves, illustrating the impossibility of this model of dialogue? Did Tony Jones do a most Derridean, postmodern, radical, thing last night? Did he illustrate a “bad will to dialogue” in order to expose the impossibility of a “good will to dialogue”? Perhaps.

Just a thought as I sit here in bed at 6am, jet lagged.

I’m in the middle of completing a funding application for an Irish Research Council (IRC) post-doctoral research fellowship (2 years), based at the Belfast campus of Trinity College Dublin’s Irish School of Ecumemics. The project brings back together a more philosophical study of the suspension and potentiality of being of my research interests (which I focused on here for this - unsuccessful - PhD in Philosophy application) with the empirical study of the emerging church practice of identity suspension in ‘suspended space’ to examine their potential to affect socio-political transformation.

If successful in my application, the project would be mentored by Gladys Ganiel, Assistant Professor in Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation, and Ireland’s foremost expert on the emerging church.

The project is entitled, ‘Saint Paul, the Emerging Church, and the Politics of Identity Suspension: Exploring New Religious Approaches to Socio-Political Transformation’, and here’s some of the proposal I’ve been putting together:

Abstract

Contemporary philosophical interpretations of Saint Paul argue against identity politics and standpoint epistemologies in favour of a generic humanity or universal humanism. For philosophers such as Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek, identity politics fragments humanity into special interest groups competing for recognition within the existing social system, thereby weakening possibilities for political resistance and collective action. Elements of the ‘emerging church’ – a diverse, transnational milieu exploring Christian belief, faith and life in conversation with both inherited traditions and contemporary cultures – seek to embody insights from philosophers like Badiou and Žižek in their lived, everyday practices.

This is the first project to ask how elements within a small but burgeoning religious movement are gathering around the religious turn in radical political thought and what its implications might be for the relationship between religion, identity, and socio-political transformation.

Bringing recent scholarship on Paul together with a focused, ethnographic study of Ikon, Belfast, and Ikon, New York City (NYC), this approach is in contrast to much of the current literature on emerging Christianity, which portrays it as the contextualisation of church structures and mission forms, thereby domesticating the radicality of the emerging theologies and practices that are the focus of my research. Instead, I argue that radical collectives within this milieu should be more properly understood as forming part of a wider political movement.

I’ve just finalised my presentation title and abstract for the upcoming Subverting the Norm II conference, “Can Postmodern Theology Live in the Churches?” (Apr 5-6 2013, Drury University, Springfield, Missouri).

I’ll be presenting along with Tad DeLay on the topic of psychoanalysis and the church. 

My paper is entitled, “A New Kind of Christian is A New Kind of Atheist: Psychoanalysis, A/Theism and the Philosophy and Politics of Identity Suspension”, and here’s the abstract:

Emerging Christianity has recently been described as a resource for the construction of cultural identity. However, I argue that radical elements within this milieu should be more properly understood as forming part of a wider political rather than social movement, concerned with the suspension of identity rather than with its formation. I introduce the work of Lacanian philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek, in order to detail the psychoanalytic philosophy of identity suspension that underpins what Pete Rollins calls the emerging church practice of ‘suspended space’. Žižek’s philosophy charges this practice with political potential grounded in a universal humanism rather than in particular communitarian identities, including religious identities. This means that the new kinds of Christians that are emerging ought also to be new kinds of atheists – ‘a/theists’. 

After being propositioned by Pete yesterday, I’ve agreed to speak at the upcoming Idolatry of God retreat that he’s curating in Belfast later in the Spring (I blogged about this event yesterday). Here’s the lovely introduction he wrote for me:

As we continue to work on The Idolatry of God Retreat we realized that we needed someone who could address the wider cultural, political and religious significance of Pyrotheology. Whoever we invited would not only require an expert knowledge of the radical movement in general, but also an in-depth understanding of my own project and the new collectives that it calls for.

As the curator of the event I knew immediately that we needed Katharine Moody. A few emails later and I’m pleased to say that she said “yes.”

Actually, I said “oui, oui”.

With two books set for immanent release (Post-Secular Theology and the Church: A New Kind of Christian is A New Kind of Atheist andRadical Theology and Emerging Christianity: Deconstruction, Materialism and Religious Practice) Katharine is a writer, speaker and academic who is making a name for herself as one of the new generation of critical religious thinkers. Working at the intersection of philosophy, theology and religious studies, as well as possessing a deep understanding of lived religion, she is a leading interpreter of my theological project (along with that of John Caputo and Slavoj Žižek) and is thus perfectly placed to bring an added depth and direction to the retreat.

I was really thrilled to be invited and am very much looking forward to it. Go to the Idolatry of God EventBrite page to buy tickets.

I’ve been trying to get a post-doc project funded for a while now - on identity politics, secular philosophical interpretations of Saint Paul and emerging Christianity (see, for example, this post about it, here). Over the last month, I’ve been mulling over a way of combining this previous idea with more of a focus in the feminist philosophy of religion. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

Research Title

Ir/Religion and Society: Saint Paul and the Philosophy of Identity Suspension

Introduction

This project examines the relationship between contemporary philosophical interpretations of Paul’s Letters (Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Slavoj Žižek, etc), which argue against identity politics and standpoint epistemologies in favour of a generic humanity or universal humanism, and feminist philosophy of religion and approaches to the study of Saint Paul. It contributes in particular to knowledge of the relationship between philosophy of religion and lived or material religious practices, as well as to debates about political subjectivity and collective political action.

I’ve been ill for a week, which was frustrating, but I’m starting to resurface now. It’s the new year, and I’ve got some new titles.

I emailed my editor at Ashgate to give her a new subtitle to go with the new title of my first monograph, Radical Theology and Emerging Christianity: Deconstruction, Materialism and Religious Practice. I think it signals the different philosophical traditions that I’m focusing on deconstruction and materialism) and that I’m holding philosophy of religion with the study of lived religion. I could’ve gone with Radical Theology and Emerging Christianity: John D. Caputo, Slavoj Zizek and Religious Practice, but I wanted to indicate a broader focus than that, especially since I also include some work on Alain Badiou in this book.

Also, from Jan 1st, I’ve been able to introduce myself as Katharine Sarah Moody, University of Liverpool, because of my work on our AHRC-funded Philosophy and Religious Practices network. Even though I’m only working for the university four hours a week, it will hopefully help first impressions, when I apply for full-times, to give my current title as Research Associate, Department of Philosophy, University of Liverpool.

I had a meeting today with Carolyn Muessig from Bristol’s Department of Theology and Religion, where I recently failed to get a job as lecturer in philosophy of religion. This was the first permanent full-time lectureship that I’ve been shortlisted for so I’ve got a lot of positive things to take away from this experience, even if I’m still devastated that I didn’t get it. 

Carolyn was really great to talk to. She said that they had all been really impressed with my CV and especially with my work in both philosophy of religion and religious studies and in relation to the impact of philosophy on religious practices. She liked that I had made sure I was really knowledgeable about the department, familiar with the staff’s areas of expertise and with their taught programmes, and clear about where I had shared research interests and where I could collaborate.

She thought that I should stress my expertise and experience in the study of emerging Christianity, which would be something that might make me attractive to theological colleges as well as universities. I usually include a taught undergraduate unit on the emerging church in my job applications, but I hadn’t on this occasion because I thought the department would be more interested in my work in philosophy of religion. But Carolyn said to make sure I stress both aspects of my work equally, since that’s what makes me unique.

I really enjoyed my interview day at Bristol today.

Yesterday I felt really sick and nervous because I really want this job opportunity to work out. I’d love to be based near my immediate family and many of my school friends, but the more I researched the department itself the more connections I found between the expertise and interests of the staff members and my own aspirations for both teaching and research. In particular, the Department has strengths in philosophical and theological reflection on religious concepts as well as in textual studies, which connects with my work on the notions of truth and subjectivity and my focus on Paul’s letters. They also have the Centre for Christianity and Culture, where my work on emerging Christianity would neatly fit. Also, Bristol has two university-wide research themes that my future research on the reception of Paul’s letters amongst contemporary continental philosophers and on implications for identity politics would contribute towards (Identities and Reception). My work with the “Philosophy and Religious Practice” Impact Network would also contribute to reception studies, since our impact events will explore theories for understanding and methods for measuring the reception of philosophical texts within faith communities.

But the day went great. I felt relaxed and confident, able to articulate myself properly and to show my sense of humour. During my presentation (on “Zizek and Actually Existing Christianity”), the staff and students were really receptive to my research and really interested that I’m holding philosophy of religion together with religious studies. Rita Langer was especially passionate about trying to get undergraduate students to connect the study of texts with the study of how faith communities use texts and about encouraging them to undertake fieldwork. I also really liked chatting with Carolyn Muessig about her research on medieval female mystics and stigmata, since I did work during my Masters degree on a mystic called Benedetta Carlini (she was the topic of my very first conference paper!). And I thought Rupert Gethin’s work on Buddhism, the philosophy of the mind, and mental health would make him a great speaker for our forthcoming “Philosophy and Religious Practices” Network event on “Buddhism and Human Flourishing”. I also really enjoyed talking with a number of other staff, including George Ferzoco, Jonathan Campell and Jon Balserak, as well as some of the department’s current and recent research students.

I usually dread the “interview by lunch” portion of the day, but the staff all seemed really friendly and warm. So now I’m feeling even more nervous, because I really want to work with all these lovely people! 

I just submitted my 10,000 word writing sample ahead of my interview for a lectureship in philosophy of religion at the University of Bristol. It’s basically an overview of the argument of my forthcoming book with Ashgate on Radical Theology and Emerging Christianity, to illustrate how I’m working at the intersection of continental philosophy of religion and religious studies.

My book takes the concepts of truth and the event as an exemplary site for the exploration of Caputo’s deconstructive theology and Žižek’s materialist theology and of the relationship between these two radical theologies and lived religion. Part One, “An Emerging A/Theistic Imaginary”, engages in a close reading of Žižek’s materialist theology and Caputo’s deconstructive theology in order to argue the following point: a Caputian a/theism is the proper framework for a Žižekian fighting collective. This central claim means both that Žižek’s political community of believers is properly a/theistic, ir/religious or faith/less, and that Caputo’s philosophical a/theology is also a cultural imaginary and socio-political practice. Part Two, “An Emerging Ir/Religious Politics”, illustrates how a Caputian-Žižekian cultural imaginary is already impacting the concrete practices of radical elements within what I call emerging Christianity, which I depict using the concept of an emerging church milieu. 

Peter Rollins is the primary catalyst for this emerging Caputian-Žižekian imaginary. By focusing on Rollins, I’m therefore examining the generative relationship between two radical theologies (theory, on the one hand), and emerging Christian discourse (practice, on the other), as well as the discursive processes and social and material mechanisms through which contemporary theological and philosophical thought is being embodied and enacted in a specific imaginary (praxis).

Hopefully I’ve been short-listed for interview because Bristol are interested in someone working across both philosophy of religion and religious studies. Fingers crossed for this one.

At the suggestion of my editor at Ashgate, I’ve changed the title of my first monograph from Truth as Event: Radical Theology and Emerging Christianity to Radical Theology and Emerging Christianity. I’m going to have a think about a new subtitle.

In  her previous book, The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why (Baker Books, 2008), Phyllis Tickle was among the first to argue that what has been variously called the emerging church, the emergent church, fresh expressions, emergence Christianity, the church: emerging, and the missional church, among other monikers – could prove to be the most significant development within Christianity for the next 500 years.

Given the often relatively small size and embattled nature of many of these “emerging” communities, this claim could seem fantastical. But in her latest book Tickle is back to make that same argument, this time marshalling greater evidence and adding commentary on some of the most significant developments within the movement since 2008.