What do people in the emerging church want? This is a question that is being posed increasingly in one form or another by academics, critics of the emerging church, and people who are themselves involved with the movement. Of course, if you ask the people who are involved with the emerging church, you will probably [...]
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Poloma and Hood Book Review: Blood and Fire – Is this the Emerging Church?
Margaret Poloma and Ralph Hood’s recent book, Blood and Fire: Godly Love in a Pentecostal Emerging Church (NY University Press, 2008), left me feeling more than a little uncomfortable. Poloma and Hood offer a sociological account of a church that has ‘failed.’ By ‘failed’ I mean that Poloma and Hood’s research coincided with a time [...]
Fr Michael Bennett on Peter Rollins — Doubting Doubt?: Guest Post
Some time ago, Fr Michael Bennett, a missionary priest of the St Patrick’s Missionary Society (Kiltegan, Wicklow) now serving in South Africa, wrote a series of guest posts on this blog about the Irish Catholic Church. Now, Fr Bennett reflects on a post on this blog about a talk given by Dr Peter Rollins at [...]
Are there any Christians in Religionless Christianity?
In the West, where ‘institutionalised’ forms of Christianity seem more tired, creaky and discredited by the day, some people involved with ‘emergence Christianity’ or the ‘emerging church’ are advocating a ‘religionless’ approach to Christianity. The term ‘religionless Christianity’ is associated with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor implicated in the plot to assassinate Hitler during the [...]
Emerging Women? Is the Emerging Church Dominated by White Men?
During the question and response time at a seminar last week by Dr Peter Rollins (a philosopher whose ideas have been associated with the emerging church movement), a member of the audience asked: where are all the women? About 30 people had turned up to listen to Rollins, and there were only three women among [...]
Brian McLaren Book Review: What Else is New about A New Kind of Christianity?
Back in March, I noted the intensity of the debate that had been provoked by Brian McLaren’s latest book, A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions that are Transforming the Faith. Now that I’ve had a chance to read the book, I’m struck by how so many of the book reviews that I read before [...]
Peter Rollins Seminar: The Uprising of Christ
Dr Peter Rollins, a Research Associate with Trinity College Dublin at Belfast (the Irish School of Ecumenics) returned to Belfast today for a seminar on ‘The Uprising of Christ: The Resurrection as Insurrection.’ Rollins is currently based on the east coast of the US. Rollins is fresh off his Insurrection Tour of US and Canadian [...]
Philip Pullman Book Review: The Good Man Jesus & the Scoundrel Christ
There’s not much in Philip Pullman’s latest book, The Good Man Jesus & the Scoundrel Christ, which would be new to anyone familiar with the Gospels. Sure, his story has two characters, Jesus and Christ, in the place of a singular ‘Jesus Christ’ figure. In Pullman’s story, Mary gives birth to twins: Jesus and Christ. [...]
Re-Emergence in Belfast: De-Institutionalising Christianity
Last week as the conference, ‘Re-emergence: Christianity and the Event of God,’ was coming to a close, we were shaken out of our conversations as the fire alarms in the Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin at Belfast, reverberated throughout the building. It wasn’t a fire. The alarms had been set off by the [...]
Notes from the Insurrection … Peter Rollins Pub Tour
It wasn’t tongues of fire descending on the disciples in an upper room. Rather, images of burning churches flickered across the back wall of a basement room in McHugh’s Bar in Belfast. And on Tuesday of this past week, that’s where the Insurrection began. The event was the launch for both the Re-Emergence Conference in [...]
About me
Welcome to Building a Church Without Walls, a website for people who are excited about how Christianity is developing in the 21st Century. I am a Lecturer and Coordinator of the Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation Studies Programme at Trinity College Dublin at Belfast (the Irish School of Ecumenics).
Please note this is my personal site. All views are my own and are not representative of TCD.
