From the Introduction (download PDF for free here) to Political Theology’s special issue (13/2) on speculative philosophies and religious practices, which contains my article, “Retrospective Speculative Philosophy: Looking for Traces of Zizek’s Communist Collective in Emerging Christian Praxis”:

Katharine Moody… [studies] the work of Zizek and his atheistic speculative philosophy as it might relate to emerging religious practice as represented in the practice of Peter Rollins in particular. Zizek talks about a “God who dies” and the surviving Christian community of believers driven by the Holy Spirit as what remains following Christ’s death. He does, however, tend to suggest that it is only outside the boundaries of institutional religion and churches that this residual revolutionary praxis is to be encountered.

Moody questions this and suggests that Rollins’s emerging transformative and creative movements, as found in Ikon (an emerging church project in Belfast, Northern Ireland), offer an example of an heretical and apocalyptic practice which exists, albeit uncomfortably, both within and beyond institutional boundaries. This is a religious collective, but one that exhibits a “faith beyond religion” and is close to Caputo’s deconstructive theology. Perhaps the crucial characteristic of this movement is that beliefs are held lightly, whilst it is the embodied practices of emerging and often doubt-driven collective worship and activity that are the central aspects of what is now developing.

Whether or not this bears much resemblance to Zizek’s new communist collective is a question that Moody suggests requires further research.

If someone would just give me some MONEY!!!

A round-up of posts on church resources for a “Forsaken by God” Good Friday or Holy Saturday service to mark the end of Atheism for Lent. I’d love to hear about any other ideas for resources (readings, prayers, music, liturgy, rituals, etc.):

Atheism for Lent: Forsaken by God (Resources 1)

Atheism for Lent: Forsaken by God (Resources 2)

Atheism for Lent: Forsaken by God (Resources 3)

Interrupting God: Take Jesus Down from the Cross

Atheism for Lent: Forsaken by God (Resources 4)

Ed Harcourt’s “Church of No Religion”

Atheism for Lent: Forsaken by God (Resources 5)

Depeche Mode’s “Blasphemous Rumours”

Kester Brewin’s “God is Dead. Good.”

Sydney Carter’s “Friday Morning”

Ann Kim’s “Eloi eloi lama sabachthani”

Pádraig ô Tuama’s “Maranatha”

REM’s Losing my Religion (in a major rather than minor key)

Here’s the link to all Atheism for Lent related posts:

katharinesarahmoody.tumblr.com/tagged/atheism-for-lent 

And no Forsaken by God service would be complete without Maranatha by Pádraig ô Tuama:

You are my strength, but I am weak. Maranatha.

I’ve given up some times when I’ve been tired. Does it move you?

I’ve fucked it up so many times. Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

I’ve found my home in Babylon. Here in Exile.

In our Forsaken by God service at Journey last year, we ended the gathering by blowing out candles whilst listening to this song.

I said, 

During our closing song, we invite you to blow out a candle to symbolise your doubt, disbelief and atheism, and to recollect that we all find our home in Bablyon, in exile, forsaken by God, without God and yet with God still.

Leaving the room in the dark, we re-lit the candles during our Easter Sunday service.

Eloi, Eloi, Lama sabachthani by Ann Kim (South Korea) is a good visual to use for a Forsaken by God service on Good Friday.

This Sydney Carter song, “Friday Morning”, is clearly suited to a Good Friday “Forsaken by God” service to mark the end of an Atheism for Lent Course. When we held such a service at Journey last year, one of our very talented musicians, David Waring, stood up and sang this a cappella, with the rest of us joining in for the choruses:

It was on a Friday morning that they took me from the cell, and I saw they had a carpenter to crucify as well. You can blame it on to Pilate, you can blame it on the Jews, you can blame it on the Devil, but it’s God I accuse.

Chorus: “It’s God they ought to crucify, instead of you and me,” I said to the carpenter a-hanging on the tree.

You can blame it on to Adam, you can blame it on to Eve, you can blame it on the apple, but that I can’t believe. It was God that made the Devil, the woman and the man, and there wouldn’t be an apple, if it wasn’t in the plan.

Now Barabbas was a killer, and they let Barabbas go. But you are being crucified for nothing here below. But God is up in heaven, and he doesn’t do a thing, with a million angels watching, and they never move a wing.

“To hell with Jehovah,” to the carpenter I said. “I wish that a carpenter had made this world instead. Goodbye and good luck to you. Our way will soon divide. Remember me in heaven, the man you hung beside.”

This poem, “God is Dead. Good,” from Kester Brewin makes a great reading for a Good Friday service to mark the end of an Atheism for Lent Course:

Today, there is no hope.

There is no resurrection,

no looking forward to a Sunday

which does not yet exist in even

the wildest imaginations.

There is no prayer

no solace

no point.

God has died.

It’s over.

Finished.

Give up.

Go home.

Return to work.

The best you can do

is carry on the memory;

the only remainder of belief,

now all has been strung up

and screwed up,

is to consider that may be

his life was well lived,

and that helping the poor

and standing up for the oppressed

was worth living

and dying for.

God has died.

We live still

this Friday

to do Good.

This parable, “Finding Faith,” from Peter Rollins’ The Orthodox Heretic would also make a good reading for a Forsaken by God service on either Good Friday or Holy Saturday.

There was once a preacher who possessed an unusual but powerful gift. Far from encouraging people’s religious beliefs, he found that from an early age, when he prayed for people, they would lose their religious beliefs, beliefs about the prophets, about the sacred Scriptures, even about God. Now he rarely prayed for others, instead limiting himself to sermons.

One day, however, whilst travelling across the country, he found himself in conversation with a businessman who happened to be going in the same direction. This businessman was very wealthy, having made his money in the world of international banking. The conversation had begun because the businessman possessed a deep faith and had noticed the preacher reading from the Bible. He introduced himself and they began to talk. As they chatted together, the rich man told the preacher all about his faith in God and his love of Christ. It turned out that although he worked hard in his work he was not really interested in worldly goods.

“The world of business is a cold one,” he confided to the preacher, “and in my line of work there are situations in which I find myself that challenge my Christian convictions. I try to remain true to my faith. Indeed, it is my faith that stops me from getting too caught up in that heartless world of work, reminding me that I am really a man of God.”

The preacher thought for a moment and then asked, “Can I pray for you?”

Ed Harcourt’s ‘Church of No Religion’ would be a fantastic song to include in liturgy for a Good Friday or Holy Saturday “Forsaken by God” service to mark the end of Atheism for Lent:

Now it’s time to readdress what is sacred, are you sacred? Are you cursed or are you blessed? Were you created from all this hatred? And I don’t need a devil to change my mind. And I don’t need an angel to keep me in line. I’ve got my head screwed on like a nail in a cross. And I’ll make my own decisions.

And so the cup, it overfloweth into the Read Sea, into the Dead Sea, above the mountain or deep below it. It flows freely as you believe me. And I don’t need a devil to change my mind. And I don’t need an angel to keep me in line. I’ve got my head screwed on like a nail in a cross in the church of no religion.

You would think all of your cardinal sins will stay underground. You have ruined almost everything so step down, down, down, down, down. All your money and all your faith, all your miracles and holy visions, won’t make the world a better place, so take a pew and stop to listen: if World War III comes soon you’ll find me singin’ in a church, singin’ in a church, singin’ in a church of no religion.

Get the scissors, cut the strings. It’s time to move on, it’s time to move on. The puppeteer is out of time. We’ve waited so long, we’ve waited so long. And I don’t need a devil to change my mind. And I don’t need an angel to keep me in line. I’ve got my head screwed on like a nail in a cross. And I’ll make my own decisions.

You will think that all your cardinal sins will stay underground. You’ve ruined almost everything so step down, down, down, down, down. All your money and all your faith, all your miracles and holy visions, won’t make the world a better place, so take a pew and stop to listen: I’m tellin’ you the truth, if World War III comes soon, you’ll find me singin’ in a church, singin’ in a church, singin’ in a church of no religion.

Singing in a church, singing in a church, singing in a church of no religion. Singin’ in a church, singin’ in a church, preachin’ in a church of no religion. Singin’ in a church, livin’ in a church, prayin’ in a church of no religion. Singin’ in a church, singin’ in a church, singin’ in a church of no religion.

Xochitl Alvizo has written a great post, “The Hunger Games, Holy Week, and Re-Imagining Ritual,” which takes its cue from Danielle Tumminio’s CNN article, ”Hunger Games asks us not to watch.”

Tumminio writes,

What would Good Friday be like if once, just once, Christians stopped their church services in protest or stopped a re-enactment of Jesus’ death and took him down from the cross just in time?

From Ikon, “The God Delusion,” Greenbelt Arts Festival, Aug 26 2007:

My first encounter with this secret occurred a number of years ago while I was walking home, late one evening. As I weaved my way through the half-dead trees that inhabited a piece of wasteland connecting my origin to my destination, I heard an inner voice calling my name. I stood still and listened intently to what I took to be nothing less than the solemn, silent voice of God. As I stood there, rooted to the ground, God spoke to me, repeating four simple words, “I do not exist.”

“I do not exist”? What could this possibly mean?

Continuing with resources for a Good Friday or Holy Saturday “Forsaken by God” service to mark the end of Atheism for Lent, here’s a parable from Peter Rollins, The Orthodox Heretic, pp.104-106:

There was once a world-renowned philosopher who, from an early age, set himself the task of proving once and for all the nonexistence of God. Of course, such a task was immense, for the various arguments for and against the existence of God had done battle over the ages without either being able to claim victory.

He was, however, a genius without equal, and he possessed a singular vision that drove him to work each day and long into every night in order to understand the intricacies of every debate, every discussion, and every significant work on the subject.

An Atheism for Lent Course is designed to be used in a group, with the group undertaking daily or weekly readings and gathering together regularly to discuss them. Peter Rollins suggests (here) that participants in an Atheism for Lent Course might wish to finish each gathering with a ritual, such as blowing out a candle or closing an open Bible. 

To mark the end of the entire Course, however, you might also want to create a worship service for Good Friday or Holy Saturday to reflect on the content of the Course and to share it liturgically with others who weren’t part of the Course group. When I ran this course last year with Journey, Birmingham, for example, we created a Good Friday service called, “Forsaken by God.”

Here’s some of the blurb we used to produce and then advertise this service:

Remembering Jesus’ words on the Cross and God’s own atheism, this service will also help us to feel something of what God felt at the Crucifixion when God experienced the absence of God.

In this last Atheism for Lent blog post on Freud, I raise several questions to aid self-reflection in relation to his psychoanalytic critique of religion. You might like to spend some time this weekend thinking about these things, before we move on to Marx’s critique of religion as ideology on Monday.

Yesterday, I detailed Freud’s work on neurotic and religious ceremonials. He further highlights the connection between neurotic and religious practices in his study of the totemic cultures of tribal societies, Totem and Taboo.

He suggests that cultural taboos against touching or harming the totem (the tribe’s sacred animal) are so strong since they correspond to a repressed desire to do precisely what is prohibited.

This ambiguity results because, for Freud, the totem represents the father:

On the one hand, the totemic taboos against killing the totem and having sexual relations with women of the same totem (tribe) are designed to defend against the Oedipal guilt of wanting to kill the father and sleep with the mother.

On the other hand, however,

[t]otemic religion not only comprised expressions of remorse and attempts at atonement [in the form of ethical obedience], it also served as a remembrance of the triumph over the father. Satisfaction over that triumph led to the institution of the memorial festival of the totem meal, in which the restrictions of deferred obedience no longer held. Thus it became a duty to repeat the crime of parricide again and again in the sacrifice of the totem animal.

Freud, The Complete Psychological Works, vol.13, p.145.

Together, these religious ceremonials (the taboo against killing the totem and the festival at which the totem is killed and eaten) form the symbolic renunciation and symbolic re-enactment of aggression, hostility and rebellion directed towards powerful figures, such as parents – and ‘at bottom God is nothing other than an exalted father’ (vol.13, pp.147-148).

For Freud, religious beliefs are ‘illusions’, a technical term which has a specific meaning for him: ‘we call a belief an illusion when a wish-fulfilment is a prominent factor in its motivation, and in doing so we disregard its relations to reality’ (Freud, The Complete Psychological Works, vol.21, p.31).

This is the second post on Freud’s critique of religion in this Atheism for Lent series. Remembering the distinction drawn yesterday between scepticism and suspicion, the ‘psychological nature’ of religious beliefs as illustory (vol 21, p.33) does not involve ‘the truth of the foundation of religious ideas but their function in balancing the renunciations and satisafactions through which man tries to make his life tolerable’ (Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, pp.234-5). In other words, Freud’s sceptical atheism is of less interest here than his suspicion.

Merold Westphal explains that religious beliefs function as illusions when

[w]e represent God to ourselves, not in accordance with the evidence available to us but in accordance with our wishes; in other words, we create God in our image, or at least in the image of our desires. Now we have three things to be ashamed of: (1) the desires that govern this operation, (2) our willingness to subordinate truth to happiness, and (3) our [hubris] in making ourselves the creator and God the creature. If we are not utterly shameless, we will do our best to distract attention, especially our own, from what is going on.

Suspicion and Faith, p.62