Description: In this incendiary new work, the controversial author and speaker Peter Rollins proclaims that the Christian faith is not primarily concerned with questions regarding life after death but with the possibility of life before death.
In Insurrection, I endeavor to outline what this radical expression of faith beyond religion might look like and how it has the power to give birth to a radically new form of Church, one with the power to renew, reform, or even transcend the present constellation of conservative, liberal, evangelical, fundamentalist, and orthodox communities. This work of pyro-theology will involve outlining the present understanding of God, exploring the way Crucifixion and Resurrection open up a different reality, and charting what might arise should we be courageous enough to step into this reality.
The following will not be an easy read; many will find it disturbing, for some of the things we hold precious will be attacked from the very outset. But it is written with a firm conviction that we must not be afraid to burn our sacred temples in order to discover what, if anything, remains. -Peter Rollins, Introduction xiv
Reflection
Peter Rollins changed how I believe. I gobble up just about everything the man shares with the world these days. I love the way he thinks, philosophizes and reflects - and manages to do so in a way that brings others into the conversation. Some authors make their work about themselves so much that you tend to adopt their beliefs as your own. Not so with Peter, because he never really states what it is that he believes. And that, he would say, is exactly the point of pyro-theology. It's less about beliefs and more about the questions and doubts.
It was pretty difficult to choose only a handful of passages from Insurrection. This was really the book that ignited my spiritual quest last year. A quest that is still going strong. I have since become a paying customer, a non-member, as Peter calls us, to his Patreon page full of his current and past work. To say that Peter knows The Deep End would be an incredible understatement. Here then, are some of his words that lit my brain on fire:
Pg 22 It is perfectly natural for us to construct mythologies in order to make sense of our fragmented and complex world. However, it is a mistake to read the Crucifixion in this way. By committing to a mythological reading, the fundamentalists strip away the central scandal of the Cross, domesticating the truth we find there. By approaching the Crucifixion in this way, the church integrates it into a larger cosmic narrative and thus betrays it. The result is nothing more than a roller-coaster version of Christianity--one that offers a voyeuristic sense of danger robbed of its trauma. When Crucifixion is understood as offering security of meaning, rather than being the site where meaning is ripped away, then any experience of doubt, unknowing, and loss that is found there is eclipsed by an even greater certainty that everything is really fine.
To participate in the Crucifixion is to experience the breaking apart of the various mythologies we use to construct and make sense of our world. The Crucifixion experience is nothing less than the taking place of the Real.
Just when mythology had become my go-to way of understanding all things spiritual and/or biblical (to a certain degree), here he dismantles any attempt to make the Cross into a means-to-an-end, something to be celebrated as "good." It's not good. Death sucks. To create meaning out of such an event as a man's senseless crucifixion is problematic--disturbing, even. It makes sense doing so to help cope with our discomfort with unknowing; the reality of such pain and cruelty is rampant, and we want a reason. We want above all else to know WHY. But doing so in the case of the Cross, is to "domesticate the truth we find there."
Photo by Joshua Newton on Unsplash
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