adam moore | blog

"Theology comes in answer to the call that issues from the event harbored in the name of God, as a..."

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 20:02:06 -0500

““Theology comes in answer to the call that issues from the event harbored in the name of God, as a way to hear it, heed it, and hearken to it; to pray over it; and to set the music of this event to words. Theology tries to follow the tracks of the name of God, to stay on the trail it leaves behind as it makes its way through our lives. The name of God, it should be insisted, is not a term of art, a technical or lifeless word coined by philosophers for their speculative purposes, but it is a word forged in the fires of life, in the joys and sorrows of ordinary life, a word we invoke on the most casual as on the most solemn occasions, signaling something familiar, even commonplace, yet bottomless, always on the tip of our tongues, yet incomprehensible.””

- The Weakness of God | John D. Caputo (via rentfabric)

Scot McKnight interviews Brian McLaren

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 20:16:00 -0500

Scot McKnight interviews Brian McLaren

Brian Eno, as quoted by Barry Taylor: “whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and...

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 22:13:06 -0500

Brian Eno, as quoted by Barry Taylor:

“whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.

Note to the artist: when the medium fails conspicuously, and especially if it fails in new ways, the listener believes something is happening beyond its limits.”

Interesting news regarding Anne Rice, brought to my attention by Barry Taylor: “For those who...

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:03:00 -0500

Interesting news regarding Anne Rice, brought to my attention by Barry Taylor:

“For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten …years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else. As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of …Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.”

[a little more at CNN]

Two more posts worth reading regarding the “institutional retreat” discussion Kester...

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 11:50:04 -0500

Two more posts worth reading regarding the “institutional retreat” discussion Kester Brewin started yesterday:

Has What Emerged Retreated? - Kester Brewin

Romantic Tosh - Jonny Baker

I’m still thinking it through - good points all around. Perhaps I’ll put together my own response in the next couple days.

I’d love to hear what Pete Rollins has to say about this…

Two interesting posts by Kester Brewin about emerging church in the UK: Nothing Going on in the UK...

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 09:01:38 -0500

Two interesting posts by Kester Brewin about emerging church in the UK:

Nothing Going on in the UK Church?

Has What Emerged Retreated?

These posts are especially interesting to me as VOID attempts to create a space beyond the institution.

Also, in regards to the US, unfortunately there are not many churches I find especially creative in the US right now. And it is particularly difficult to find interesting and creative churches that are not fairly institutional/tradition in organization (hopefully I’m just ignorant of the exceptions).

"In search of disorganized religion"

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 08:45:00 -0500

From Spectator magazine in the UK:

“What groups like Grace grasp is that though some people are turned off by organised religion, they still feel basically Christian: what they want is a new, disorganised style of religion, a postmodern shook-up version, full of irreverence and irony, and arty events. They want a new style of sacramentalism, that isn’t steeped in authority. Now that the internet’s here to stay, it’s difficult to accept hierarchy any more — religion must become open-source.

“For the moment, the pioneers tread carefully — the stylistic reinvention of an ancient religion is a slow and difficult process, with huge pitfalls — but my hunch is that we should watch this space. God reconfigures his church in mysterious ways.” [full article]

[on a related note]

I kind of miss the days when I used this blog as a public way to sort through thoughts. I...

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 21:59:42 -0500

I kind of miss the days when I used this blog as a public way to sort through thoughts. I don’t know why I don’t do that anymore. I still find it valuable. I know a lot of people don’t like blogs that are so self-reflective. I’ve always liked them. I think that’s the true heart of blogging. For me those are the best blogs - the ones with serious self-reflection that in turn initiates reflection in the reader. I think it’s powerful. That’s why I’ve always loved Real Live Preacher. That’s why I loved Blue Like Jazz.

So why don’t I reflect on my blog anymore? I guess part of it is not wanting to put it out there for just anyone to read. A few years ago I at least had a sense that not many people would ever find what I was writing - though that probably wasn’t ever really true. I also don’t feel like I have much to say anymore. So much has changed and I’m still working through it all. But isn’t the working through it all what works so well on a self-reflective blog? Maybe I’m just scared (perhaps rightfully) to speak what I’m really thinking. To say the unspeakable things. I don’t know…aren’t the unspeakable things exactly what needs to be said?

Russell Rathbun, Lisa Cole Hawkins, Samir Selmanovic, and me...

Tue, 04 May 2010 15:16:03 -0500

Russell Rathbun, Lisa Cole Hawkins, Samir Selmanovic, and me during a panel discussion at the East Coast TransFORM conference this past weekend.

[more images via theexileinny]

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Religionless Christianity

Sun, 02 May 2010 11:13:00 -0500

A couple years ago I read Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison for the first time. It was a transformative experience. In particular, Bonhoeffer’s writings on “religionless Christianity” were responsible for changing the trajectory of my theological thinking. As a way of soaking in the material - and also to make it available to others - I went through LPP and compiled all of the material I felt was related to the “religionless Christianity” theme. I don’t know anywhere else online where you can find such a comprehensive collection of Bonhoeffer’s writings on this theme. If you’re never read this material before, I highly recommend checking it out. Here’s the link to download the material:

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Religionless Christianity

“The primordial fact is not Silence (waiting to be broken by the divine Word) but Noise, the...

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:38:55 -0500

“The primordial fact is not Silence (waiting to be broken by the divine Word) but Noise, the confused murmur of the Real in which there is not yet any distinction between figure and background.

“The first creative act is therefore to create silence—it is not that silence is broken, but that silence itself breaks, interrupts, the continuous murmur of the Real, thus opening up a clearing in which words can be spoken….

“Hard work is needed to create silence, to encircle its place in the way a vase creates its central void.”

- Zizek

"As a passionate believer in the democracy of reading, I don’t think it’s the task of the..."

Sun, 18 Apr 2010 10:16:13 -0500

“As a passionate believer in the democracy of reading, I don’t think it’s the task of the author of a book to tell the reader what it means.The meaning of a story emerges in the meeting between the words on the page and the thoughts in the reader’s mind. So when people ask me what I meant by this story, or what was the message I was trying to convey in that one, I have to explain that I’m not going to explain. Anyway, I’m not in the message business; I’m in the “Once upon a time” business.”

- Phillip Pullman (HT: Barry Taylor)

[From Seth Godin] People don’t coalesce into active and committed tribes around the status...

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:36:46 -0500

[From Seth Godin]

People don’t coalesce into active and committed tribes around the status quo.

The only vibrant tribes in our communities are the ones closer the edges, or those trying to make change. The center is large, but it’s not connected.

If you’re trying to build a tribe, a community or a movement, and you want it to be safe and beyond reproach at the same time, you will fail.

Heretical thoughts, delivered in a way that capture the attention of the minority—that’s the path that works.

[HT: Brandon Davidson]

VOID | Revival! (3/29/2010)

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 10:38:00 -0500

[Originally posted at the VOID collective blog]

Photos by Katie Wolfe

View all the images from VOID | Revival!

Follow VOID on Twitter

Upcoming Events with Peter Rollins

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 21:05:31 -0500

Peter Rollins is returning to Waco and Baylor March 29 and 30, and this time he is bringing two of his colleagues from the ikon collective in Belfast - Pádraig Ó Tuama and Jonny McEwen. There will be two primary events during Pete’s time in Waco.

Revival! - a collaborative event between VOID and ikon
Monday, March 29 at 7:30 pm at Treff’s

Revival! is a VOID event that utilizes a live mix of music, art, spoken word, personal reflections, and ritual to engage questions of faith and doubt. A creative, provocative, and experiential event, VOID is marked by the religious question but radically open and welcoming. For this event VOID will welcome guests from across the US and the UK, including Peter Rollins.

Public Lecture/Discussion - “I Believe in the Insurrection”
Tuesday, March 30 at Noon at the Baylor Center for Jewish Studies

Peter Rollins will present this public lecture sponsored by the Baylor University Center for Jewish Studies (free lunch served). The lecture will be followed by an informal discussion about the formation of radical faith collectives, such as ikon. This event will take place at the Center for Jewish Studies at Baylor University, located in Marrs McLean Science Building, room 137 (directions).

If you have any questions about these events, please contact adam(at)voidcollective(dot)com

Peter Rollins and "Faith Collectives"

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:00:00 -0500

“… The question then is how we can form collectives that seek to invite, recall, and relay this deep truth, not to provide a space where we try to understand it.

“When writing about such spaces I will avoid using the word church, not because churches are excluded in any way from providing this space, but because the word can refer, in many people’s minds, to the acceptance of a variety of doctrinal creeds, sacramental activities, and authority structures that are not necessary in the formation of these spaces. The type of space that I am referring to cannot be described as a new type of church, an alternative to church, an addtition to church, or as a pathway that leads people back to church (although to those who attend it may legitimately act as one or more of these). So I will describe the type of collective that celbrates the miracle as a place of ‘transformance art.’

…

“Here I am referring to the formation of passionate, provocative gatherings, operating on the fringes of religious life, that offer anarchic experiments in theodrama that re-imagine the distinction between Christian and non-Christian, priest and prophet, doubt and certainty, the sacred and the secular—gatherings that employ a rich cocktail of music, poetry, prose, imagery, soundscapes, theatre, ritual, and reflection: gatherings that provide a place that is open to all, is colonized by none, and that celebrates diversity.

“Such an immersive, theodramatic space would aim to affirm the need for (1) collective reflection; (2) a space where individuals can lay aside political, religious, and social identities; and finally (3) offer creative, ritualistic acts that invite, affirm, recall, and relate the event housed within the religion without religion that is Christianity.

…

“The concrete result of such ideas will continue to manifest in the development of subversive collectives that engage in creative acts of dis-course (discourse that send us off course) and that point toward, invite, and celebrate this unspeakable Happening. These temporary spaces will likely appear as much in art galleries, on street corners, in bars and basements, as they will in churches and cathedrals. They may involve rituals and creeds that have survived millennia, or they may have been dreamed up moments before they are acted out. The liturgies may be printed in hymnbooks or scrawled on the back of beer mats. They may be accompanied by angelic choirs or by someone beating out a rhythm on a battered, beer-soaked tabletop. But everything, absolutely everything, will be designed to invite, encourage, solicit, seek out, recall, remember, reach out to, bow down before, and cry out to that unspeakable miracle testified to by faith—that miracle beyond miracle that dwells, quite literally, beyond belief.”

- Peter Rollins, The Fidelity of Betrayal

Brian McLaren and "Faith Communities"

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 22:23:00 -0500

“Around the world in recent years, I’ve met many people who begin planting new churches, but in the process discover that the word ‘church’ just carries too much baggage. So, instead, they form what I call faith communities. Some are more formal and large and others informal and small; some last a long time and others a few weeks, months, or years; some have regular meetings and high commitment and others simply enjoy social interaction and the conversations that emerge spontaneously during meals, walks, or working together. Opinions differ as to whether these faith communities are in fact churches (I’m glad to have them ‘count’), but however they’re categorized, I believe we also need thousands of them, both to sustain the faith of followers of Christ who can’t survive in existing contexts and to create space for seekers to be exposed to the way of Christ. I think that in many cases established congregations and informal faith communities can learn to coexist and in fact develop a real synergy together.”

- Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity

"God and I came to an accommodation with each other a couple of decades ago, where he’s gotten..."

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 20:35:49 -0500

“God and I came to an accommodation with each other a couple of decades ago, where he’s gotten used to the things I’m not capable of and I’ve come to terms with things he’s not capable of. And we still care very much about each other, at least I would like to think so.”

- Rabbi Kushner

VOID | Revival!

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:52:10 -0600

With special guests Peter Rollins, Padraig O Tuama, and Jonny McEwen (aka dubh) from Ikon in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Peter Rollins is the founder of Ikon, which served as the inspiration behind the formation of VOID. Please join us, and our guests, for this event.

Pretty sweet poster from David Bazan.

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 02:57:00 -0600

Pretty sweet poster from David Bazan.