Patrick Mitchel, Director of Studies and lecturer in theology at the Irish Bible Institute in Dublin and author of Evangelicalism and National Identity in Ulster, 1921-1998 (Oxford University Press 2003), spoke at the launch. Mitchel’s book was influential on me as a wrote this book with Claire, as well as my first book, Evangelicalism and Conflict in Northern Ireland (Palgrave 2008). Mitchel also maintains a lively blog called Faith in Ireland. So it was an honour that he accepted our invitation to speak at the launch. Below are excerpts of Mitchel’s reflections on our book.

Patrick Mitchel on Evangelical Journeys

Evangelical Christians often get a bad rap  … sometimes rightly, and often not. If in Northern Ireland evangelicals are often associated with social and political conservatism, in this part of the world (the Republic of Ireland), they are less known and more often equated with fundamentalism or the political ambitions of the American Right. But the stereotypes tend to reduce down what is a lively, complex, theologically diverse, adaptable, and changing tradition … to a purely political analysis.

So I found this book refreshing for at least three reasons:

1. Transparency

There was no hiding behind the safe boundaries of the supposedly omniscient sociologist – who can decode everyone’s true motives but who remains pure and objective, above the fray in a pristine world of detached observation!

Claire and Gladys are transparent in telling of their own positions and journeys – we can be grateful here for the postmodern importance of the authors’ own perspectives – and the book is all the stronger for this.

And in this respect the methods chapter is a model of transparency – the aims and conclusions are realistic and solid.

2. Understanding and Respect

I teach a course on evangelicalism within our MA – and trying to keep up with the endless flow of books, debates, and movements, is quite a job. What I liked about Claire and Gladys’ approach is that, well aware of the spectrum of evangelical identity and praxis across denominations, they are not reductionistic but keenly aware of the need for nuance and understanding.

And not only understanding … this book represents a mammoth amount of time – in interviewing 95 people, transcribing and analysis – in building relationships. 

The actual breakdown into the various categories is not surprising – the spectrums within evangelicalism have been well sketched – by Gladys in her first book, Glenn Jordan, my book – and many other broader studies outside Ireland …

But the authors’ overall approach here is very helpful – they don’t get into the myriad debates of evangelical self-understanding and definitions. For how you understand evangelicalism will to a significant degree depend on what criteria you are using to define it. There are many approaches to definition:

• historical – 18^th century onwards – inherently Protestant
• theological: – a belief in certain doctrines
• experiential – a particular religious experience of personal faith cradled in a theology (Grenz)
• narrow spiritual – where being a Christian = being an evangelical
• sociological – like this book

In a sociological approach, the focus is not on who is or is not a ‘true’ evangelical, or whether some expressions of faith here are compatible with Scripture or historic orthodoxy, or even if they are self-consistent. There is a suspension of judgement in this sense.

Now for someone like me who loves theology, at times such suspension of critical theological evaluation of what people are saying makes me want at times to say:

‘BUT … what about?’ There were quite a few places in this book where that happened!

But that’s OK – no book can do everything. And the great strength of this one is the achievement of Gladys and Claire drawing out people’s stories in a non-judgemental framework. I don’t know if you agree – but even within families it is darn hard to talk about a private thing like personal faith. They have done remarkably in getting people to talk so openly. They have described those stories without trying to prove their own agendas. They have respected those stories and the people telling them and are to be congratulated on the fascinating pictures that emerge.

3. Insights

And that understanding leads to a genuinely useful and constructive contribution into the nature of evangelical Christianity within the culture of Northern Ireland. These are some things that stood out to me – and there are many others:

i. Re-emphasised – the essential place of conversion –and personal faith. The fact that pretty well all interviewees had this experience is a good indicator of evangelicalism – whether you are Prod, Roman Catholic, agnostic, atheist, etc – everyone needs to have a spiritual new start through faith in Christ and the Spirit of God. But what is helpful here is the complexity and messiness of conversion – and how far more is involved than abstract rational ideas.

ii. The importance of personal choice is rightly stressed. The dark side of course here is individualism – and ‘me-centred’ theology – and a lack of theology of church and sacraments. This is both the strength and weakness of evangelicalism.

iii. The importance of context – especially for the conservative becoming more conservative/fundamentalist – is tied up with the political context. This is where as an evangelical in the Republic, how different a shape and ethos it has to the alien North becomes obvious: in the Republic many evangelicals are former Catholics and Irish in culture. An interesting area of future research would be differences between evangelicalism north and south, emphasising how evangelicalism is not just some pure abstract set of doctrines – but has ‘many faces’ globally.

iv. The importance of openness, theological discussion (especially with other traditions like Catholicism) and engaging the mind: the church at a local level needs to be a place of questions and discussion. The perennial issue of evangelical spirituality lies close to the surface of many of these stories  – and the question of how can spirituality flourish or not within the church? And linked here is the importance of further study and travel. As someone who teaches at an evangelical third level college  the repeated thing  I hear is that students absolutely love the study – of new ideas – perhaps not something there is space or time for at the local church?

So to sum up – congratulations on not only an interesting and easy to read book – but one that I think adds to the understanding of a diverse strand of Christianity in Northern Ireland – and poses some constructive challenges to that community.

Further reviews of Evangelical Journeys:

The Belfast launch of the book took place in November at East Belfast Mission and featured remarks by Glenn Jordan.

You can purchase the book at the UCD Press website, where you can get it at a reduced rate of €22.

Read a review of the book, by Blogger Alan in Belfast, here.

Read a review of the book, by  George Irwin in the Church of Ireland Gazette, here.

Newell joked that he has been coming to Clonard longer than many of the Catholics who were attending the service, pointing out that he first came to Clonard in 1981.

Newell’s long-standing relationships with people at Clonard, and his impeccable, lived-out commitment to ecumenism over the years, enabled him to deliver a powerful message on the theme ‘What Does Communion Mean?’

You can watch a video of the Gospel reading, and Newell’s sermon, here. The Gospel relates the story of Jesus’ calling of the first disciples, fishermen who quickly left what they were doing to follow Jesus.

Newell reflects on that passage, emphasising that the fishermen brothers from Capernaum – Peter and Andrew; and James and John – had to leave prosperous and promising careers for Jesus’ sake. Then, they had to learn to get along with, and love, the once-hated tax collector Matthew. The following are excerpts from Newell’s sermon.

Ken Newell on ‘What Does Communion Mean?’

Jesus began to show them [Peter, Andrew, James and John] that they were all brothers, and even in the most unlikely people [Matthew] there are hidden treasures that Jesus can unlock.

… Jesus was teaching them about communion, with each other and with him. That the hands that must reach out to receive the body of Christ in the Eucharist are taken by Jesus … and expanded to reach out to the body of Christ in the other churches.

Now if there is a spiritual exercise I want you to take home that is revolutionary and life changing, here it is: when you reach out your hands in the Eucharist to take the body of Christ and draw it into yourself, automatically your hands will be stretched out to reach out to his body in all the other Christian churches. That’s the deal of the gospel, and that’s the story of the Christian faith.

… Peter discovered on the beach that day that the parochial spirit … was expanded by Jesus … Jesus [expanded Peter’s parochial spirit] … as wide as the new emerging universal church.

To be catholic is go be universal. … The heart of being catholic means the development and the expansion from the parochial to a universal heart. .. For Peter to be expanded he had to let something go …

If you don’t feel your Christian spirit to be expanding and to be reaching out to those of other Christian traditions in this city and in this country, I’m asking you is there something you need to let go to let Jesus expand your spirit?’

• Could it be fear? If I go there I’ll feel out of place and uncomfortable?
• … Could it be a hidden hurt, something was done to you in … your life? That someone from the other community put you down? And if they did can I apologise? From the bottom of my heart, for all the hurt and pain that my community has inflicted on yours, and on your church. … Is there a hurt there that you need to let go of?
• … Or is there in a back of your mind … a sense of pride … [that] I belong to a great big church, I’m not interested in these minnows? Well I’ll tell you something, Jesus is. Is there a pride that stops you connecting?
• … Or is there a feeling of indifference? … Why would I be interested in going to any other church or meeting any other people?

Jesus is not indifferent to our divisions and that’s why he prays for our unity.

I end with this radical truth at the very heart of our faith:

If tonight, you get down on your knees at your bedside and you say, our Father, who art in heaven; and if I get down by my bedside and pray to our Father in heaven, that means that we have one Father. Whatever church we come from.

Here’s the radical thing. If he’s our Father, what does that make us to each other? We are brothers and sisters. We are blood brothers and blood sisters through the cross. And when we make the sign of the cross we take up a lifestyle that is prepared to move out of a parish mentality and cross all the divisions that have separated Christians in this country for centuries.

We’re here to restore the family and bring it together again. We are here to win that battle. And friends, can I say to you, we’re not playing for a draw. And neither is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Because communion means connecting.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

The Irish School of Ecumenics, where I work, annually produces resources for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. These resources are available online, and include an order of service, homily resources notes by Polish priest Marcin Lisak OP, and alternative hymns.

This is the homily by Marcin Lisak:

‘We will all be changed by the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (1 Cor.15:51-58)

Saint Paul warns us and gives us encouragement simultaneously. Firstly, all people are touched by corruption, whether in a physical way – such as illness and death – or in a spiritual way – such as that caused by the deception of sin. The latter is far more radical and hazardous. Sin is the cause of death and as long as there is but one sin in this world, there will be death.

As Paul says, sin is strengthened by the law, but this does not mean that the law is sinful in itself. However, each of us breaks every God-given law multiple times. And that gives laws a strength to measure human weakness and judge over sinners. On the other hand, there can be a fascination that puts us at risk when we become fixated on the letter rather than the spirit of the law, or on strict formal observance without epikeia (reasonableness which allows for setting aside a rule to achieve a greater good).

Concurrently with the obtuseness of the law and the poisonous power of sin, every human person is saved and will be deeply and finally changed by the triumph of the Messiah who has fulfilled the law, cleansed us from sin and restored us to wholeness of life. With the victory of Jesus Christ, no longer is sin strengthened in the life of a believer. Rather, the grace of the Holy Spirit now carries the faithful across the road of despair into the life in God.

To understand better how promising is the hope given by Paul in his letter, we need to go back again to the warning text: “The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law”. Then wherever there is sin, death can deal a fatal blow, but wherever sin has been paid for, forgiven, and removed death has neither a sting nor does harm. It is sin that is our real enemy. And I would like to call to mind that each and every sin has its social consequences.

I remember as a teenager living in Poland, my country of birth, in the grey and faded world where ordinary people did not trust one other and suffered a lot of pain. That was the time of so called “real communism” or “real socialism”. Making social distrust stronger was an agenda of the government which purposely followed the rule of divide et impera (divide and conquer). There were, of course, some physical attacks inflicted on ordinary people of the time – maltreatment, persecution, violence, martial law. But probably just social exclusion and disorder were the worst – a lack of transparency, a ban on freedom of speech and association can be a sickness far more devastating than physical persecutions or even death.

From that point of view it seems to be clear that social oppression, or we should rather say – social sin – is a real weapon against humanity, and accordingly, in Paul’s words – a sting of death. Avoiding defeatism in social life and working to prevent social mistrust were the most demanding challenges. In the end, the impulse of social solidarity emerged from the Christian calling to rebuild the community and strengthen solidarity with one’s fellow countrymen and women . Thus, determination, activity, creativity and the sense of human subjectivity became the very remedies for the social structures of sin. But the risk of social mistreatment is still not far away. It calls to my mind a warning of Pope John Paul II:

“[...] it is not out of place to speak of “structures of sin,” which. . . are rooted in personal sin and thus always linked to the concrete acts of individuals who introduce these structures, consolidate them, and make them difficult to remove… “Sin” and “structures of sin” are categories which are seldom applied to the situation of the contemporary world. However, one cannot easily gain a profound understanding of the reality that confronts us unless we give a name to the root of the evils which afflict us”. (John Paul II, Sollicitudo rei socialis, 36).

Social structures of sin had devastated the people living under the communist regime in Central and Eastern Europe. But even now, in our different corners of the world, we are not immune. Dangers lurk within the neoliberal economy: social irresponsibility, whether in economic management or money-making without any respect for “human ecology” reproduces other sinful structures. So, it is not only physical persecution and harassment that cause suffering and death. We should remember that sin is the sting of death – sin with all its social consequences.

Fortunately, we are promised that death shall vanish and we are not going to die. We will be changed by the victorious power of the risen Christ Jesus. With the birth, obedience, death, and resurrection of his Son, God made death to be swallowed up forever. St Paul says that death is defeated, but he warns that death still has its power to deceive (Hoses 13.14). Paul’s reference to the “sting” – as of a bee or a venomous snake – is reminiscent of Eden. If we want to realise how flourishing is the victory of Christ we need to distance ourselves from sin today, and work for reconciliation amid so many signs of social disorder, at one with Christ who breaks down the walls between people of different cultures and nations.

Marcin Lisak OP

Gay’s insightful and original treatment of this matter, almost entirely overlooked in the popular and academic literature on the emerging church, is just one reason why this book deserves a wide and careful reading.

Gay is a Lecturer in Practical Theology at the University of Glasgow and a Church of Scotland minister. He has been involved with the development of emerging communities the Late, Late Service and Host, so he writes both as an activist and a scholar, making his theology particularly practical and readable for the non-academic theologians among us.

He describes the book as ‘a provisional attempt to theorize the concept of ‘Emerging Church’, a term which he admits ‘may be … very close to the end … as a useful term for the Church’ (p. xi) He prefers to talk about what he calls ‘the Church: Emerging’ (p. xiii):

I prefer to speak of ‘the Church: Emerging’, as a conscious attempt to re-weight the term towards ecclesiology – the Christian practice of reflecting on the nature and practice of Church.’

I’m not sure that the Church: Emerging is going to catch on – the words just seem clunky to me compared to ‘the emerging church.’

But I can appreciate Gay’s foregrounding of ecclesiology, which he helpfully defines as ‘the Church’s practice of critical theological reflection upon its own practice’ (p.xiv).

And I can understand his exasperation with the ‘debate’ over the emerging church label (he says he is ‘bored … with … the promotion and criticism,’) p. xi. The term also seems to be falling out of favour with some in the movement, as noted in James Bielo’s book Emerging Evangelicals (another on the list to be reviewed on this blog!).

Gay’s treatment of the history of the Church: Emerging, grounded as it is in a UK context, brings something to the table that other studies of the emerging church lack – especially studies which focus on its American expressions.

And what Gay brings is a broader perspective on the context and influences that have contributed to the development of the movement. Like other writers and scholars, Gay correctly sees it as emerging in large part from evangelicalism, or more broadly, Low Church Protestantism (LCP).

In my own research on Ikon, which can be considered a Northern Irish expression of the emerging church, I also have argued that it is emerging from, and therefore critiquing, evangelicalism.

But as I explained in my earlier post, Gay argues that the ecumenical movement also has been significant in this process, helping:

‘to create a context in which low church Protestants … felt freer to critique their own tradition and to experiment with the insights and practices of other Christian traditions.’

Added to this, Gay explores the importance of the charismatic renewal and the liturgical movement, in addition to Vatican II. For him, Vatican II has helped to ease tensions between Catholics and Protestants, again creating a context in which those all-important Low Church Protestants feel more comfortable interacting with the more ancient expressions of the Christian faith.

Gay illustrates this with a Northern Irish-based story on the very first page of the first chapter of the book (‘When Were You Robbed? – Auditing’) about how encounters with the ‘other’ have shaped the Church: Emerging. I can’t resist sharing it (p. 1-2):

… I love the story told by Belfast-based Presbyterian minister and writer Steve Stockman about a cross-community project in which Protestant and Roman Catholic young people visited one another’s places of worship as part of a reconciliation programme of encounter and exchange. The visit to the Roman Catholic chapel having duly taken place, the young people headed off to the Presbyterian church. As they all filed in, one young Catholic boy looked around in surprise and said: ‘When were you robbed?’

… the first stage of emergence was marked by a move I will call ‘auditing’ – a reflexive moment reached within our own development as low church Protestants. As in the Belfast story, this was provoked by experiences and encounters that challenged us to look and listen beyond the limits and boundaries of our own tradition.

Auditing is just one of the five key ‘moves’ that he sees the Church: Emerging undertaking. If I am reading him correctly, Gay interprets these moves as vital to a re-formation of Christian practice and sensibility not all that different from the Reformation (an argument taken up more pointedly in Phyllis Tickle’s The Great Emergence). There is a chapter devoted to each of the five moves, which are:

• Auditing
• Retrieval
• Unbundling
• Supplementing
• Remixing

The chapter on remixing is of course an important one, given that ‘Remixing the Church’ is the title Gay gives his book and it is in this chapter that he ‘ventures a definition’ of the emerging church, which I shared in my earlier post.

What intrigues me about this definition is its emphasis on a DIY-style grassroots ecumenism, which sees the Church: Emerging as ‘… a set of possibilities, which will be performed in very different ways in different locations.’

So ‘Remixing the Church’ means to draw on resources from a rich variety of Christian traditions, in an effort to live more authentically as Christians.

This does not mean that emerging Christians are engaging in syncretism, a watering-down of historic doctrines, or making the church ‘fit’ into a post-modern, relativistic milieu.

As Gay demonstrates expertly in this book, if (as?) the emerging church as we know it disappears, its contribution to global Christianities may be more important than we now think.

The event will take place on Thursday 26 January at 4.15 pm at the Irish School of Ecumenics, Bea House, Milltown Park, Dublin.

This event comes at the end of the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (18-25 January).

I am really looking forward to what Patrick Mitchel has to say about the book. He also maintains his own thoughtful and informative blog called ‘Faith in Ireland.’

Evangelical Journeys will be available at a special launch price of 20 euros.

You can download a flyer for the Dublin event here.

The Belfast launch of the book took place in November at East Belfast Mission and featured remarks by Glenn Jordan.

You also can purchase the book at the UCD Press website, where you can get it at a reduced rate of €22.

Read a review of the book, by Blogger Alan in Belfast, here.

Read a review of the book, by  George Irwin in the Church of Ireland Gazette, here.

Please RSVP to Gladys Ganiel by 23 January on gganiel@tcd.ie

I recommend you read the full post for yourselves. It covers a lot of ground, from Fischer’s description of the Conflict Transformation module to her thoughts on the hell debate sparked by Rob Bell’s Love Wins.

The Conflict Transformation module features an intensive week at Corrymeela, where Little and Verwoerd guide the students through the process they use with various groups from opposing ‘sides’ in the conflict in and about Northern Ireland (and from other conflicts from around the world).

Fischer sees conflict as an inevitable part of life and she urges those in the emergent conversation to face up to – rather than hide from – it:

I bring this up here, because I see the danger of continuing a bad ‘family’ trait even into this new emergent generation.  I grew up in a non-christian home and a Christian extended family, both of which pretended that if we didn’t talk about conflict, it meant that we didn’t have any;  I studied theology at an inter-denominational college where conflict as a theme in and of itself was never addressed theologically; and I spent years in churches, seminars, conferences, retreats and missions (Evangelical, Charismatic, and Lutheran; in America, Sweden, Australia, PNG and Germany), where, besides an occasional reference to Matthew 18:15-17, and the ever-present lapel to forgive, there was no strategy and no underlying concept for helping their communities deal with conflict constructively.  The cardinal assumption being that good Christians don’t do conflict!

But rather than fostering fraternities exuding peace and justice in the world, this refusal to take conflict head on theologically, exacerbates the friction inevitable in any human plural, and conditions cultures to fester and fracture over matters both profound and piddling.  Of greater consequence even than the personal stories of disillusionment with Christian fellowships that abound, as grim as that is, however, is the general disconnect that many faith communities and institutions have toward complex societal ills, the prolific number of armed conflicts around the world, and trans-global injustices.  With the exception of my brief time in Church of the Savior, DC, of which Sojourners Magazine is a part, nary a mention of these realities in the Christian sub-cultures I’ve experienced in over twenty years!

She sees some of the present debate about hell, whether you agree with Rob Bell or not, as distracting from more important questions in the here and now such as dealing with conflict, and one of its roots, poverty.

As a lecturer, I’m of course pleased to see Fischer making links between one of our modules and debates in the emerging church. The emerging church is one of my current research areas and I’m always looking for connections between what I know from the fields of conflict resolution and reconciliation, and my work on the emerging church.

I’m also intrigued by her observation that Christians have refused to take conflict on theologically, other than issuing some rather glib urgings for victims to ‘forgive’.

This is not a million miles from the argument put forward in the new book about the churches in the Northern Ireland peace process by John Brewer, Gareth Higgins and Francis Teeney: that the churches as institutions didn’t adequately analyse the conflict sociologically or theologically – meaning that they struggled to help transform it.

I look forward to the emerging conversation moving forward on these themes.

That’s a question posed this week by Jon Hatch in the Church of Ireland Gazette (16 December), which features his front-page story on the ‘Occupy’ movement’s priorities.

Hatch’s article is based on a talk he delivered recently for The Churches in Ireland’s Church in Society Forum.

Hatch is a doctoral candidate where I work, the Irish School of Ecumenics. He has also been a resource developer for groups like Corrymeela and the Irish Peace Centres.

When the Occupy movement’s London protest settled down at St Paul’s, I couldn’t help but think it was the perfect location for the protesters to tap into Jesus’ radical message about challenging the rich who unjustly oppress the poor.

Apart from the Pharisees (the self-righteous religious virtuosos of their day), Jesus was most critical of the rich who rigged the rules of the economic game so that the poor stayed poor and the rich and powerful got ever more rich and more powerful.

I’ve been disappointed by the difficulties that the Church of England has had in accommodating the protesters, especially when I see so many resonances between their message and Jesus’ intensely political messages about economic injustice.

I recommend you get your hands on a copy of the Gazette to read the full story (or subscribe online for just £20 per year).

Hatch’s article offers a short explanation of the Occupy movement’s claims, followed by some theological reflection on what ‘a rigorous, public theology might look like in the midst of the Occupy movement.’

Hatch says Occupy’s four claims are:

• Democracy is eroding
• The ‘rules’ don’t apply equally to everyone
• Global markets exert too much power over people’s lives
• The situation is getting worse, not better

To conclude, I’ll quote quite liberally from Hatch’s theological reflection, which I think provides some valuable insights:

First … God identifies himself as deeply concerned with justice, peace and equitable economies (Proverbs 11:1; Hosea 12:7; Amos 8:5).

In a world where some lives seem more valuable than others, the people of faith can unequivocally declare the absolute, basic, intrinsic value of every human in the eyes of God. We can say this in a very unique way and we need to be saying it as publicly as possible, at every opportunity. It literally underpins everything else we believe.

Second … the people of faith begin from a place that affirms that all ‘space’ is God’s; there is no place that he does not already occupy (Psalm 24:1; Psalm 139: 7-12) and we are his stewards …

Third … neither the State nor the markets have any rights over life and death. Neither has the right to devastate livelihood and ruin economies. We must not bow or make the sacrifices they demand. This was the witness of the earliest martyrs of our faith.

Lastly, there is hope. We must always and everywhere, as Christ did, proclaim as publicly and as openly as possible the good news of the Kingdom of God: life, equity, peace, justice, freedom and generosity.’

Given that the comment appeared a few days after the post, and therefore may have been overlooked by readers, I’d like to bring this discussion back into the main body of the blog and consider some of his points.

Today I’ll consider Monty’s perspective on Rollins’ appropriation of Galatians 3:26-28, and whether this makes Rollins a universalist. First, I’ll quote from Monty’s response:

“I think the philosophical bankruptcy of Rollins’s deconstructionism can be seen most plainly in the quote below. Can someone explain to me how- at any level – the following makes sense?

“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 … Christian nor non-Christian, for all are made one in Christ Jesus.”

Does the conditional nature of the first sentence not negate his second sentence? At one level this is warmed up classic universalism, at another level it is playing games with words- something Rollins is usually adamantly against.”

Yes, I can see how the conditional nature of the first sentence seems to negate the second sentence, which Monty does not reproduce in full, most likely because of its length. The full quote is here:

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, Fox nor CNN, citizen nor alien, capitalist nor communist, gay nor straight, beautiful nor ugly, East nor West, theist nor atheist, Israel nor Palestine, hawk nor dove, American nor Iraqi, married nor divorced, uptown nor downtown, terrorist nor freedom fighter, paedophile nor loving parent, priest nor prophet, fame nor obscurity, Christian nor non-Christian, for all are made one in Christ Jesus.

The impact of what Rollins is trying to get across is more obvious in the full quote, where traditional ‘enemies’ are juxtaposed with each other in an effort to illustrate how Christ has broken down the dividing walls between them.

Rollins wrote this in the spirit of Galatians 3:28, which I think he is playing with. Ever the promoter of the parable, Rollins has built much of his work around playing with stories and words. So I disagree with Monty that Rollins is always against playing with words.

I think Rollins’ rewriting of Galatians 3:28 works primarily as a device to get Christians to think about our own prejudices against other groups and to ask ourselves if we are treating them as Christ would.

But Monty is most concerned with the ‘Christian nor non-Christian’ contrast, and quite rightly so, given the nature of Rollins’ appropriation of Galatians 3:26-17:

‘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.’

It does raise fundamental questions about Rollins’ use of this scripture, especially because the writer of Galatians specifically mentions ‘faith in Christ Jesus’ and being ‘baptized into Christ.’

So what does it mean when Rollins includes Christian and non-Christian in his list of former enemies?

• To Monty, and certainly others, Rollins’ inclusion of non-Christian in this list just makes no sense. I can certainly understand this perspective.
• To others, Rollins’ inclusion of non-Christian in this list may seem radically open and encouraging, a recommendation that the church itself should be open to those who directly and explicitly identify as ‘non-Christian.’ Rollins does seem to be implying that the church should not be trying to change non-Christians, it should not be trying to ‘convert’ them. Rather, he advocates welcoming all into a ‘suspended space’ where people can encounter each other beyond the social, political and religious categories we normally box each other into.
• To still others, Rollins’ inclusion of non-Christian in this list may seem imperialistic. After all, why would non-Christians want to be included in this list? Isn’t it rather arrogant of a Christian writer to assume that they do?

I have sympathy for all three of the positions I have outlined above. It certainly would have made it easier to ‘explain’ this quote to Monty – and others – if Rollins had not included the quotation from Galatians 3:26-27. Just verse 28 on its own, even acknowledging that it was somewhat taken out of context for interpretative purposes, could have made his point effectively.

So why did Rollins quote Galatians 3:26-27, and then include Christian and non-Christian in the list?

The best explanation I can muster is that I suspect Rollins is indeed ‘playing games’ with this scripture, in an attempt to get us to ask ourselves how far we are willing to go in our inclusion of the ‘other’ in ourselves.

I don’t think this necessarily makes it ‘warmed up classic universalism’, as Rollins’ wider body of work does not support this position.

Monty raises some other points in his comment, which I hope to consider later in the week.

(Image: from Peter Rollins’ Insurrection Tour)

(In due course means that we are coming to the end of our academic term, and I am even more busy than ever, so my work on this blog tends to fall by the wayside!)

But today I want to focus on one of the aspects of Gay’s work that most excites and intrigues me:

His careful consideration of the relationship between the ecumenical movement and the emerging church.

This relationship is usually overlooked by the people involved with the emerging church, and by the growing band of scholars that is investigating it and trying to understand its wider sociological and theological significance.

But Gay argues that the development of the emerging church wouldn’t have happened without the wider changes in global Christianity which were hastened by the ecumenical movement and the reforms of Vatican II.

Ecumenism, he believes, helped to create a context in which low church Protestants – those most usually credited with ‘founding’ the emerging church – felt freer to critique their own tradition and to experiment with the insights and practices of other Christian traditions.

(For example, think of all the evangelical Protestants you may know whose lives have been so enriched by the practices and outlook of the ecumenical Taize community.)

Gay thinks that the connection with the ecumenical movement is so important, that this is how he chooses to define the emerging church (p. 93-94):

The Emerging Church can perhaps best be understood [and defended] as an irreverent new wave of grassroots ecumenism, propelled from within low church Protestantism by a mix of longing, curiosity and discontent. It is what we in the UK might call DIY ecumenism, constructed by means of a series of unauthorized remixings and emboldened by an (evangelical) ecclesial culture of innovation and experimentation. It is a variant of ecumenism which for the most part is ignorant of the history and protocols of institutional ecumenism, but which ‘frankly might not give a damn’ for them in any case, since it still carries a genetic confidence about remaking the Church and its mission in response to the Spirit’s prompting. Even the language of ecumenism will sound unfamiliar and irrelevant to many of those active within the emerging church conversation, since they were, for the most part, not formed in contexts that used or valued it. My decision to embrace it here as a key identifier may therefore seem strange, but I am increasingly convinced that it may be a fruitful approach, both in terms of seeking to deepen the reflection of those within the conversation as to what we are about and as a way of translating and defending ‘emerging church’ to at least some of its detractors.

I think Gay is on to something by making the connection between ecumenism and the emerging church so explicit. A question for me then is:

If Christians who are involved with the emerging church or with the ecumenical movement become aware of this connection – can this help them to better work together to renew the wider church in our time?