{"id":18264,"date":"2013-09-27T16:08:56","date_gmt":"2013-09-27T20:08:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/?p=18264"},"modified":"2013-10-10T15:12:02","modified_gmt":"2013-10-10T19:12:02","slug":"emergent-church-theologian-peter-rollins-brings-provocative-message-to-emu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2013\/emergent-church-theologian-peter-rollins-brings-provocative-message-to-emu\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Emergent church\u2019 theologian Peter Rollins brings provocative message to EMU"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a scene in the 1993 movie Cool Runnings in which, on the eve of the Jamaican bobsled team\u2019s improbable shot at Winter Olympics glory, the team\u2019s coach \u2013 a disgraced former bobsledder stripped of a gold medal for cheating \u2013 offers a bit of final advice to his unlikely prot\u00e9g\u00e9.<\/p>\n

\u201cA gold medal is a wonderful thing,\u201d the coach says. \u201cBut if you\u2019re not enough without one, you\u2019ll never be enough with one.\u201d<\/p>\n

In church, lessons like these are often taught about all sorts of worldly accomplishments: the dream job, the big raise, the right friends. This week at EMU, an influential theological writer in the emergent church movement, Peter Rollins, delivered a similar message about God, who, Rollins argued, is too often (and falsely) imagined as an idol capable of providing true wholeness and fulfillment.<\/p>\n

Sin \u2013 from denying pain of life?<\/h3>\n

Rollins, originally from Northern Ireland and now living in New York, argued that sin is the result of everyone\u2019s relentless drive to escape the pain of being alive, regardless of whether relief is sought in drink, in friends or in the church. Salvation, then, doesn\u2019t come from attaining closeness to God and relief from pain, but rather by embracing that pain of being alive and letting go of our drive to heal it.<\/p>\n

\u201cReligion helps us avoid facing up to our brokenness and troubles \u2026 [and] that is devastating,\u201d said Rollins, during his chapel presentation. \u201cWe need to have spaces where we can be open about the places where we\u2019re suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rollins, whose most recent book is titled The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction<\/em>, also hosted a \u201ctalk back\u201d at the Common Grounds coffeehouse<\/a>, spoke at the year\u2019s first University Colloquium, visited classes and led an evening conversation hosted by EMU\u2019s Freethought Coalition.<\/p>\n

At the colloquium, Rollins criticized contemporary religion\u2019s tendency to place itself right beside competing products in a \u201cvending machine\u201d that purports to offer people various paths to fulfill our primal desire for wholeness. What the church should be doing, he said, is taking a sledgehammer to that vending machine and disabusing us of the idea that we\u2019ll ever be whole. (During chapel, Rollins criticized the church for getting people \u201cdrunk on sermons\u201d and on God to distract them from the reality that everyone \u201cwill die and never be again\u201d and everyone we love \u201cwill die a cold death.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Community based on love<\/h3>\n

During his coffeehouse talk, Rollins said he finds hope in building a community in the present \u2013 not in some next world or afterlife \u2013 where love exists among people who embrace their collective and individual hurts.<\/p>\n

Rollins\u2019 ideas have become influential in the emergent church movement, which offers critiques of religious institutions and traditions that cut across denominational and ideological lines. This criticism can be as applicable to seemingly counter-cultural religious institutions like EMU as they are to mainstream Christianity.<\/p>\n

Christian Early<\/a>, professor of philosophy and theology<\/a>, noted that Rollins\u2019 \u201cversion of being counter-cultural would be different from the ones we are most used to hearing.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Anabaptist traditions may emphasize alternative ways of living and thinking about God, they often still reinforce the notion of longing for wholeness.<\/p>\n

\u201cRollins argues that you instead learn to live with being human, being broken, being, in a sense, unfulfilled. And in the shared humanity of that, you find true fulfillment,\u201d said Early. \u201cThe move that needs to happen is not that you abandon being a Mennonite or being an Anabaptist, but that you hold it differently\u2026. It\u2019s something that\u2019s really important for us to wrestle with.\u201d<\/p>\n

The value of the “light of inquiry”<\/h3>\n

Thomas Millary, a junior and co-president of the Freethought Coalition, said he admires Rollins\u2019 call to embrace, rather than trying to escape, the brokenness that everyone experiences in life, and hopes Rollins\u2019 visit will spark wider conversation on campus about finding joy and community in the midst of pain.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis campus could really benefit from dialogue about faith and [Christianity] from a perspective like Peter\u2019s,\u201d said Millary, who founded the Freethought Coalition to provide a space for honest exploration and discussion of difficult or controversial topics.<\/p>\n

When introducing Rollins at the University Colloquium, Provost Fred Kniss<\/a> said that inviting Rollins to present his provocative ideas at EMU offered the university the opportunity for self-reflection.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s important that our basic assumptions are not just taken for granted, but that they are held up to the light of inquiry, that they are examined,\u201d Kniss said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a scene in the 1993 movie Cool Runnings in which, on the eve of the Jamaican bobsled team\u2019s improbable shot at Winter Olympics glory, the team\u2019s coach \u2013 ... read more about \u2018Emergent church\u2019 theologian Peter Rollins brings provocative message to EMU<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":18266,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5583,14184,5185,409],"tags":[5838,11352,15108,13982,11933],"feature":[],"class_list":["post-18264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-community","category-campus-guests","category-campus-ministries","category-chapel","tag-christian-early","tag-fred-kniss","tag-peter-rollins","tag-thomas-millary","tag-university-chapel"],"yoast_head":"\n\u2018Emergent church\u2019 theologian Peter Rollins brings provocative message to EMU - EMU News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2013\/emergent-church-theologian-peter-rollins-brings-provocative-message-to-emu\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u2018Emergent church\u2019 theologian Peter Rollins brings provocative message to EMU - 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