Insurrection: To Believe is Human; to Doubt, Divine

I quite enjoyed Pete Rollins' Insurrection. I feel it's a worthwhile project to try to pick up Dietrich Bonhoeffer's unfinished thinking about religionless Christianity. One of the things I like about Rollins' thinking is his seeming delight in the paradoxical and in exploring oppositions which seem to fold into one another and I think he's right to work with the crucifixion to ground that exploration in the Divine economy.
What emerges then, is a way of approaching faith which takes the experience of life seriously and also is resonant with mystical experience and a worldly-lived spiriituality. Rollins is, I think, an apophatic theologian.

You'll get something of a flavour of that from the quotes I've highlighted -shown below.
Rollins' has roots in what was the Alternative Worship movement and it shows, not least here: "Such a community would need to ritualize the full range of human emotions, bringing radical doubt, ambiguity, mystery, and complexity into the very heart of the liturgical structure itself. "

I enjoyed his comment about the Batman stories in the sense of exposing what bad politics stories can sometimes be: "Batman’s archvillains would have a difficult time carrying out their crimes if they did not have an unlimited number of poor and desperate people to prey upon, people who turn to crime in order to survive and find identity. If Batman spent his time and money supporting a life-giving infrastructure, the crime wave in Gotham might be broken.  [location 2099]"
Somehow that seems to be a message for certain approaches to political economy too, but it rightly alerts us to the power of stories to re-present to us ways to view life and community and can actually make harder contstructive, collaborative and co-operative and real solutions.

the task of working through a circumcision question can never be described as some project in constructive theology; it is a work of pyro-theology.   location 123



the question for us today is whether or not religion is necessary in order to participate fully in the life testified to by Christ.  location 142

perhaps it is not what remains after the fire has died that is true, but rather the fire itself. If so, then we need to take the words of Spanish anarchist Buenaventura Durruti seriously when he boldly declares: The only church that illuminates is a burning one.  location 159

our desire for those we love is not merely superior to all other desires, it is of a fundamentally different kind.  location 214

when we lose the one we love more than life itself, we do not simply lose something we desire; we begin to lose the very ability to desire. In other words, when we lose our beloved, we find that the other things that once tempted us lose their seductive power. Thoughts of promotions, vacations, and new homes lose all of their glittering appeal. A chilling melancholy slowly envelops us, fading our once vibrant world into various shades of gray. In these times, we discover that our beloved is not simply the object of our desire, but the very source of it. In that dark dungeon of despair, we find that the other is the one who invests our activities with meaning and significance.  location 217

the one who invests our activities with meaning and significance.   location 224

Note: attractive vision: appealing. But is bereavement really this? a revelation of the importance of the beloved, yes. but this is overdetermined I think.

it is our beloved’s desire for us that has this luminous effect. We might even still be with the one we love, but if we feel that they no longer love us, we experience the profound pain and suffering described above.  location 228

the most sought after material in the universe is not some precious metal or limited resource but rather the attention of those whom we desire.  location 240

Getting people to believe is easy precisely because it is so natural for us. Any persuasive human can do it—and even make some money in the process. But to truly unplug from the God of religion, with all the anxieties and distress this involves, takes courage. Indeed, one could say that it takes God.  location 406

The Crucifixion, however, stands in opposition to mythology. It is a reflection of the experience in which we lose any sense of being connected with a higher truth or reality. Something we see foreshadowed in the book of Ecclesiastes. Is not the Teacher’s cry, “Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless,” a precursor to Christ’s cry of dereliction on the cross? This event thus speaks of an explosion that fundamentally breaks apart mythology in all of its various forms (spiritual, social, and political).  location 468

All religions have generated their atheistic oppositions, but in the Crucifixion this atheistic opposition is brought into the very heart of the Christian faith. It is no longer to be thought of as a response one makes to faith but is part of that faith’s very expression. As such this negation is not something that we must fight or merely endure; rather, it is something that we must step into and courageously embrace.   location 485

the famous exchange between Elizabeth Anscombe and Ludwig Wittgenstein: It is said that Anscombe commented, “I can understand why people once believed that the sun revolved around the earth.” In response, Wittgenstein said, “Why is that?” Anscombe looked up, pointed to the sky, and said, “Well, it looks like it does.” “Yes, yes,” Wittgenstein replied. “But tell me, what would it look like if it was the other way around?”  location 579

what we see taking place on the Cross? As Christ is cut off from his own essence, so our loss of the religious God is not the loss of some foreign power external to ourselves, but instead a loss of that which is fully us. When we truly participate in the event of the Cross, we (as Number Six) are forsaken by ourselves (cut off from Number One)—we are cut off from the system that we construct and which constructs us.  location 673

In order to participate in the Crucifixion, we must find leaders who openly experience doubt, unknowing, and a deep mystery, leaders who see these as a part of Christian faith and important in our ongoing development of a healthy and properly Christian spirituality. The problem is not that there is a lack of leaders who have these experiences; rather, there is a lack of leaders who can admit to these experiences.  location 1062

We often change our behavior in light of a documentary dealing with some ethical issue, not because we are confronted by something we don’t know, but rather because we are confronted with something we already know but refuse to admit to ourselves. When we are directly confronted by what we know but have refused to admit, we can no longer pretend that we are ignorant.  location 1096

The whole religion industry is thus fueled by our desire to escape suffering and avoid the gnawing sense of meaninglessness. The certainty is marketable because it is a response to our unhappy situation, and it keeps selling because it is ultimately ineffective in properly transforming it. In this way, the religious structure operates in a similar way to how movies functioned during the Great Depression. Despite the poverty, theaters showing musicals, gangster films, and comedies were packed. These films were so popular because they offered people a way of escaping their dire reality for a couple of hours.  location 1128


One other thing to note about the opening anecdote is the way that the only people naïve enough to take the game seriously are those on the outside, the ones watching on in disbelief at what is transpiring. Does this not represent one of the major drawbacks of the New Atheist movement? Their critique misses the mark by attacking the beliefs of people playing the religious game rather than attacking people’s material participation in the game itself. Indeed, some of the major voices in the New Atheist movement express this explicitly when they claim that they have no real problem with people participating in Church life, going on a Sunday to sing and pray, as long as they don’t really believe it all. For the radical Christian, however, belief in God, Jesus, and the various claims of the Church are not where the insidious power of religion lies, but rather in one’s direct material involvement within a structure that uses these beliefs to protect us from facing the difficulties of life. In contrast to the New Atheism, the radical Christian affirms what may be called “a/theism.” A/theism aims to rupture, not the actual beliefs of a person, but the way those beliefs function as a crutch to prevent the individual from actively participating in the difficult challenge of embracing the world. In short, the critique is not concerned with the content of our mind but is aimed directly at our involvement with a game that many of us do not believe in yet continue to support by our participation.  location 1147

Such a community would need to ritualize the full range of human emotions, bringing radical doubt, ambiguity, mystery, and complexity into the very heart of the liturgical structure itself. Hymns would need to delve into absence, sermons excavate doubt, and prayers probe the possibility that no one is on the other side. The structure would need to reflect back the experience of Christ on the Cross in such a way as to invite a direct encounter with that event horizon.  location 1164

Note: interesting -is this why some find northumbria community liturgies hrlpful? Edit
But there will always be those who act more like the critic, those who seek to protect themselves by avoiding full emotional involvement in any liturgical practice that seeks to bring us into contact with our pain and suffering. This type of refusal is something that brings us close to what John Wesley called the experience of being “almost Christian.” In this state of almost-Christian, nothing is missing in terms of our actual beliefs and practice, nothing is missing but the subjective participation itself.  location 1191

Note: but i am not convinced that wesley was on about the same thin

her life reflected that experience of Christ on the Cross, the cry which addressed God while simultaneously testifying to experiencing the absence of God. In this way her belief was not a security blanket that helped her avoid a confrontation with the experience of unknowing. Mother Teresa continued to affirm God at an intellectual level, but she passed through the white-hot fires of forsakeness. She is, as such, a shining example of what it means to enter into the fundamental Christian event of Crucifixion.  location 1229

On the Cross, God as a psychological crutch dies, and we are overtaken by a deeply felt dark night of the soul.   location 1267


Hitler was well known to be a strict vegetarian who avoided alcohol, loved animals, was kind to his staff and enjoyed the company of children. Hitler was likely an interesting person once one got to spend time with him in a more private and intimate setting. This is so difficult for us to accept because we are accustomed to thinking that the truth of a person is discovered best in such a setting. When confronted by the article above, we are forced to acknowledge the dark underbelly of the popular wisdom that an enemy is simply someone whose story you have not heard. What if this is true? What if most people, at a subjective level, are not that different from us and might actually be people we would enjoy spending time with?   location 1408


we must read Resurrection in its full radicality: as the state of being in which one is able to embrace the cold embrace of the Cross. If the Crucifixion marks the moment of darkness, then the Resurrection is the very act of living fully into this darkness and saying “Yes” to it. The faith that is born in Resurrection does not enable us to escape these deeply troubling anxieties; it provides the power to face up to them.  location 1708


In both of these responses (where God is believed to await us in the next life or is something we can encounter here in specific places or states), life as a whole itself is negated, and we are left unable to fully embrace and enjoy it. In religious terms, God is an object who is either totally distant or only present at very specific, highly regulated times.  location 1766

In contrast, we are introduced to a radically different way of understanding God’s presence in the Resurrection. Here we no longer approach God as an object that we love. Indeed, the idea of loving God directly becomes problematic. Instead, we learn that God is present in the very act of love itself. We do not find happiness by renouncing the world and pointing our desire toward the divine, but now we discover the divine in our very act of loving the world. God is loved through the work of love itself (Matthew 18:20, 1 John 4:20). It is in love that we find new meaning, joy, and fulfillment. location 1787


This is why the idea of God being love is such good news. For when we love, we gain what we desire while remaining at a distance from it.   location 1792

love does not stand forth and vie for our attention but rather brings others forth. When we love, our beloved is brought out of the vast, undulating sea of others. Just as the Torah speaks of God calling forth beings from the formless ferment of being, so love calls our beloved out from the endless ocean of undifferentiated objects.  location 1828

This is why religious experience cannot be properly approached as an experience at all. To experience is to encounter something. But in the Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection we discover that God is not something we encounter directly and thus is not some-thing that we experience. Rather, God is that which transforms how we experience everything, i.e., love. God is the name we give to the way of living in which we experience the world as worthy of living for, fighting for, and dying for.  location 1857


what if Resurrection life is marked by the acceptance of our role as creators of destiny rather than mere pawns to be moved around by it? In the Christological frame, the idea of destiny remains, but it is understood as forged through the free acts of those dedicated to the bringing of life. Here destiny no longer refers to some predetermined reality that history conforms to, but rather comes into being through our direct participation in the transformation of the world. In short, we participate in the creation of the eternal itself.  location 1991


Resurrection houses a deep violence, an ethical violence. This is not a violence directed against individuals, but rather a violence against those systems that would oppress, destroy, and bring death. People like Martin Luther King, Jr., in his pacifism express this Christian violence beautifully, for in his nonparticipation in institutionalized racism and uncompromising stance against passive involvement with oppressive norms, he directly expressed an alternative vision of the world. In his seductive picture of a new world and unrelenting quest to see its realization in reality, he ruptured the corrupt systems of power that surrounded him.  location 2054


In order for Bruce Wayne to fund his high-tech, covert military campaign against the criminals of Gotham, he must secretly siphon off vast sums of money from Wayne Industries, the business that he owns. The amount he pours into his work would run into the millions, if not billions. When confronted by this, one must wonder whether it might not be much more effective if he took that money and spent it on developing a strong educational system within the city, setting up training programs for the unemployed, and helping small businesses develop. location 2090

Note: this is a really important point: batman retains the individual against the world myth eschewing collectve effort and collaborative or participatory solutions

Batman’s archvillains would have a difficult time carrying out their crimes if they did not have an unlimited number of poor and desperate people to prey upon, people who turn to crime in order to survive and find identity. If Batman spent his time and money supporting a life-giving infrastructure, the crime wave in Gotham might be broken.  location 2099


What if the Church should be less concerned with creating saints than creating a world where we do not need saints? location 2109

By really changing things, Bruce Wayne might actually create a world where his own lifestyle is challenged. By avoiding these questions, Bruce Wayne is able to look and feel like he is part of the solution when, in his overall material practices, he is really a part of the problem.  location 2114

in the spirit of the text, we must push further: 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, Catholic nor Protestant, citizen nor alien, capitalist nor communist, gay nor straight, beautiful nor ugly, East nor West, theist nor atheist, Israel nor Palestine, American nor Iraqi, married nor divorced, uptown nor downtown, terrorist nor freedom fighter, for all are made one in Christ Jesus.  location 2442

Of course, an opaque biological, socio-symbolic background constitutes us; of course, we cannot forget our gender, sexual preferences, political opinions, nationality, etc. But while being within them, we can find ourselves no longer of them. In other words, we can occupy a space in which they are no longer the absolute horizon. We see them rather than simply see through them. A collective founded upon Crucifixion and Resurrection invites people into the experience of this neither/nor, not by offering signs that point toward this reality (like a road sign), but by offering sacramental and liturgical performances that open up a participation in it.  location 2496

Instead of offering some system of explanation for what had happened, the appropriate response lay in creating a space for deep, honest, and compassionate human interaction. In the same way, it is not the job the community of faith to offer ways of escaping the suffering that is part of being human (namely the anxiety brought about by the sense of death, meaninglessness, and guilt), but rather to form spaces in which it can be acknowledged and worked through. It is a community fully embracing life in all its joy and pain that is faithful to the way of Christ.

Insurrection: To Believe is Human; to Doubt, Divine: Amazon.co.uk: Peter Rollins: Books