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.

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.

Even though I still haven’t submitted the manuscript for my book with Ashgate and I was supposed to be taking a break from job applications in order to concentrate on writing, I’ve just applied for a lectureship in philosophy of religion at the University of Bristol.  I’m not expecting to get an interview but, even though I told myself I’d only go for things that I’m certain I’d get short-listed for, I had to go for this because Bristol is my home city and I would so love to be near my Mum, sister and school friends.

After my summer of job disappointment (see here and here), I’ve decided to take a bit of a break from applying for jobs. It’s unlikely that any will come up now for this academic year, anyway, and I really need to be focusing on writing. Applying for jobs has really distracted me from writing my books, which is, after all, what will ultimately help me get a job, so it’s been a rather counterproductive few months, I think. I’ve applied for 28 teaching and 23 research positions since submitting my PhD in 2010, which is an average of 1 every fortnight and each application takes at least 2 days to prepare, since I thoroughly research the university, matching myself to the job and person specification, and thinking hard about how I could contribute to existing teaching provision and departmental research clusters. Over the past 6 weeks, I’ve spent 3 weeks preparing solidly for the Nijmegen job and another week preparing for the Liverpool Hope one. I feel utterly exhausted by my job search and distracted from my writing projects. So I think a break from applying for jobs will help me both to recoup emotionally and to concentrate on these manuscripts. 

I’m on a working holiday in Liverpool, being a conference monkey for my friends Steve Shakespeare and Patrice Haynes, who are organising the 2012 Association for Continental Philosophy of Religion conference, “Thinking the Absolute: Speculation, Philosophy and the End of Religion”, which starts tomorrow. On Saturday night we’ll be launching Steve and Patrice’s Ashgate book series, “Intensities: Contemporary Continental Philosophy of Religion”.

Here’s some blurb from the flyers we’re handing out in the conference tote bags I packed today:

This series sits at the forefront of contemporary developments in continental philosophy of religion. It engages especially with radical reinterpretations and applications of the continental ‘canon’ from Kant to Derrida and beyond, but also with significant departures from that tradition. A key area of focus is the emergence of new ‘realist’ and materialist schools of thought (associated with speculative realism, object-oriented ontology, Zizek, Meillassoux and Badiou), whose potential contribution to philosophy of religion is at an early stage. The series is therefore rooted in a vibrant tradition of thinking about religion, whilst positioning itself at the cutting edge of emerging agendas. This series has a clear focus on continental and post-continental philosophy of religion and complements Ashgate’s British Society for Philosophy of Religion series with its more analytic approach.

Series Editors Patrice Haynes and Steven Shakespeare

Sponsored by The Association for Continental Philosophy of Religion

Steve and I co-edited the first book in the series, Intensities: Philosophy, Religion and the Affirmation of Life (Nov 2012), based on papers from ACPR’s inaugural conference in 2009. Here’s blurb for our volume:

This book breaks new ground in religious and philosophical thinking on the concept of life. It captures a moment in which such thinking is regaining its force and attraction for scholars, and the relevance of thought to social, cultural, political and religious dilemmas about how and why to live.

Paperback ISBN 978-1-4094-4329-2 £18.99

Hardback ISBN 978-1-4094-4328-5 £50.00

Other volumes in the series will be Pamela Sue Anderson’s Revisioning Gender in Philosophy of Religion: The Ethics and Epistemology of Belief (Nov 2012), and my own Truth as Event: Radical Theology and Emerging Christianity (Spring 2013).

I got an email last night from US publishers Wipf and Stock to say that they’ve accepted my book for publication under their imprint Cascade. It means that I’ll have two monographs stemming from my doctoral research on how the notion of truth is conceptualized in emerging Christian discourse.

The first book, Truth as Event: Radical Theology and Emerging Christianity (forthcoming in Spring 2013 with Ashgate), focuses on truth as an event, tracing this notion as it emerges in the work of Jacques Derrida, John D. Caputo, Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek, and exploring how these ‘thinkers of the event’ impact contemporary religious practice within the emerging church milieu.

The second book, currently entitled Post-Secular Theology and the Church: A New Kind of Christian is A New Kind of Atheist (although I keep changing my mind on the main title), focuses on the relationship between Radical Orthodoxy, deconstruction, and emerging Christianity. Here’s some blurb:

Both Radical Orthodoxy and deconstruction have been suggested as theologically apt for emerging Christianity. This book provides an accessible introduction to these ‘post-secular’ theologies, demonstrating how emerging church discourse positions them into narratives to make sense of two divergent forms of emergent religiosity: Deep Church and A/Theism.

Focusing in particular on James K.A. Smith’s ‘Reformed’ Radical Orthodoxy and Deep Church, on the one hand, and John D. Caputo’s deconstructive ‘weak theology’ and A/Theism, on the other, Post-Secular Theology and the Church is about the relationship between institutional religion and the ‘postmodern turn’.

While Smith has distinguished between his own ‘two cheers approach’ to postmodernism and others’ three cheers, Caputo has recently argued against the tendency to settle for ‘an abridged postmodernism’. This book uses emerging church participants’ own words, stories and practices, gathered through interviews, observations, literature and media, to chart some of the ways in which these differing postmodern theologies are impacting lived religion. It details how contemporary Christianity has responded to the postmodern turn to create what Brian McLaren calls ‘a new kind of Christian’ and suggests that such a new kind of Christian is also a new kind of atheist – the ‘a/theist’. 

I’m hoping that it will come out some time in 2013.

Having spent yesterday writing my Expression of Interest for the University of Nottingham’s Advance Research Fellowship Scheme, I’m abandoning this funding bid after advice from the department I had hoped would support my application. I was told that the key criteria they are looking for are:

• a steller track record at the world’s top universities;
• a considerable list of significant publications, including at least a contract for a major book based on a PhD dissertation; and
• prior experience of a post-doctoral fellowship.

They then said that only after these criteria are met do they consider the intrinsic significance of the research project.

The Dean of Faculty has specified that a published book should be the minimum for a successful candidate, so I’m wasting my time applying. “It is probably not worth re-working the EOI [Expression of Interest] at this stage.”

Well, at least they were honest about my chances and didn’t string me along giving me false hope!

I’m coming to the conclusion that I need to stop applying for jobs, since it has been distracting me from writing my book which, in turn, stops me from getting appointed when I do get shortlisted for interview.

So I’m going to spend the next few months on my various writing projects and hope that enough things are published by the 31 Dec 2013 REF publication submission deadline to make me irresistible to employers.

I have to remind myself to stop getting distracted by applying for jobs.

Pete Rollins has responded to my reflections on his book Insurrection in a piece for Church and Pomo entitled ”I Don’t Need to Doubt, Peter Does That For Me.”

In “Becoming Church Mice: From Refusing to Lead to Refusing to be Led,” I emphasised Pete’s use of a Kierkegaardian distinction between the Poet and the Critic:

What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music… And the critics come forward and say, “That’s the way, that’s how the rules of aesthetics say it should be done.” Of course a critic resembles a poet to a hair, except he has no anguish in his heart, no music on his lips. (Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1992, 43; cited in Insurrection, 2011, 73).

I argued that Pete seeks to refuse leadership (pushing us, like the Poet, back into our own participation in the fullness of life, in joy and suffering, in doubt, disbelief and a/theism).

But my concern was with the ways in which Pete’s audience (his “fans”) might flock around him like the Critics who assent cognitively to what he is doing, to the importance of doubt and disbelief, but refuse to participate fully in life, to honestly face up to, work through, and celebrate their own experiences of real life.

Due to the late withdrawal of a contributor, Steve and I are looking for an additional essay for our edited collection, Intensities: Philosophy, Religion and the Affirmation of Life (forthcoming with Ashgate).

We’re looking for a piece that will fit into either a section on “Life, Death, and Natality,” which examines the potential of philosophical tropes of birth and death to impel the thinker into a more fruitful engagement with life, or a section on “The Politics of Life,” which takes up the way in which the definition and deployment of the category of life plays a key role on questions of political power.

Other contributors include Pamela Sue Anderson, Philip Goodchild, Nina Power, Don Cupitt and Jack Caputo.

We’ve just moved to Earlson in Coventry so that my husband can start his PhD on young people’s atheisms in the Institute of Education at Warwick University. Here’s his profile page at the Doctoral Training Centre (the typos aren’t his!).

I’m going to be using the time to work on several writing projects, including:

• Intensities: Philosophy, Religion and the Affirmation of Life, an edited collection (with Steven Shakespeare) stemming from the inaugural conference of The Association for Continental Philosophy of Religion, “Towards a Philosophy of Life: Reflecting on the Concept of Life in Continental Philosophy of Religion.”

• An academic monograph stemming from my doctoral research.

• An article on Radical Orthodoxy and “Deep Church.”

• And an edited collection (with B. Keith Putt) on the impact of John D. Caputo’s radical hermeneutics and weak theology.