Peter Rollins's Blog
February 12, 2017
Enduring Love, online
It would be difficult to find anyone who seriously questions the power and wonder of love. Yet the work of love is far from easy and oceans of blood have been spilt in its name. Love may motivate people to do wonderful, truly sacrificial things, but the crime scenes of depression, suicide, murder and wars all show evidence of its involvement. Love is heaven as well as hell. Love is a potent chemical that can save us and kill us.
The challenge then concerns how we might endure love. Neither closing ourselves off from it, nor destroying our world with it.
In this Valentine Pyro-Seminar, we’ll delve into the nature of love, exploring some of its problems and pitfalls, as well as how we might navigate them. We’ll look at love from both a personal and a political perspective, examining how we might enter its blazing furnace without being burned up.
This seminar will happen at 2pm PST, but the audio and video will be available after the seminar to everyone who has signed up.
This is exclusively for my Patreon friends who are signed up to $5 or more. Click here to get access
February 9, 2017
Pyro-Seminar, Online
Every month I give an in depth talk or facilitate a discussion on-line, exclusively for people who support my work via Patreon. These events encourage people go deeper into the subversive heart of pyrotheology from the comfort of their homes. They delve into incendiary philosophical and theological ideas in an endeavor to provide some good old-fashioned intellectual stimulation. But they’re also designed to penetrate our hearts and do surgery to our souls. The ideas will help us discover how we might experience a deeper, richer and more engaged form of life.
This month I will be faciliating a Q&A session. Some of the questions will be taken from the private Pyro-Seminars Facebook page, and others will be fielded live. To join up for this session, and get access to the previous seminars, click here.
January 26, 2017
The Loft, LA, CA
Join me for a conversation about faith, the absurd, atheism and politics. For more information, click the link
January 7, 2017
Atheism for Lent, Online
Atheism and theism are almost always portrayed as mortal enemies battling to the death. But this just conceals a truly disturbing and shocking truth. For in reality they have been bound together in the most passionate and torturous of love affairs.
There are times when they only speak to each other to hurl insults. Times when both suffer horribly, and when the world darkens. But when they embrace, the world becomes a brighter, more beautiful place. Together they are able to take on the oppressive forces of religion in its sacred and secular forms. Together they reveal a depth and density, mystery and texture, in the very heart of life.
Atheism for Lent is designed to bring you into the heart of this scandalous love affair and expose the liberation and freedom that is found there.
By exploring atheism as a spiritual practice of purification, we allow it to enact a ritual of exorcism powerful enough to cast out the religious dogmatism and festering fundamentalism that lurks within our souls.
Offensive as this is to those friends on one side or the other, the deepest and richest veins of atheism have always held the same passion and purpose found in the deepest and richest veins of theism.
Together they make straight the path into what some mystics call the Cloud of Unknowing.
This year marks my second online Atheism for Lent course, and this year we have a whole batch of brand new material to delve in to.
Prometheus: Interrupted, NY, NY
At the heart of the Alien films the terrifying and unrelenting Xenomorph manifests an obsessive drive without restraint. In Prometheus we are offered an origin story that reveals how this alien isn’t something seperate from us, but rather represents a deep part of us. From a psychoanalytic perspective, the alien is not some foreign agent outside of ourselves, but rather a foreign agent that is more a part of us than we are to ourselves: it is a material expression of our immaterial drive.
We’ll watch the movie together, and at various points we’ll pause the show and I’ll draw out some of the philosophical and theological insights it explores.
This is a free event, but it is strictly limited to 50 people because of the theatre space.
More information to follow shortly.
Building on Fire, NY, NY
Often Christianity is presented as a set of spiritual experiences, religious rituals and dogmatic affirmations that enable us to interpret our world, escape it or inscribe ourselves more fully into it. In contrast, we’ll explore an explosive understanding of faith that is concerned with transforming it.
This is a faith that expresses salvation as a form of critical engagement with the world; an engagement that is testified to in a life overflowing with love, passion and a joyous embrace of existence. A faith that demands we critique our most dearly held beliefs and make room for our deepest doubts.
I’d like to invite you to spend the day with me as we delve into these themes and unpack what life before death might actually look like.
January 6, 2017
Beyond Belief, Online Seminar
For my next pop-up seminar I want to take you on a journey into the slippery subject of belief. For most of us, Christianity is a worldview, i.e. it offers a set of beliefs and practices that can be compared and contrasted with other belief systems. Both advocates and critics of Christianity see it as making claims about the existence of God, the nature of the universe, and the meaning of life.
In this seminar I want to explore a radically different way of approaching the relationship between Christianity and belief. Over 2 hours I’ll be exploring how Christianity can actually be understood as a critique of all worldviews. With the truly scandalous heart of the gospel lying in its invitation to embrace a life beyond belief.
While this is a stand alone seminar, it will compliment my last pop-up – When Atheism Isn’t Atheist Enough. So you’ll also receive a link to that when you sign up. Think of it as homework.
The purpose of these pop-up seminars is to provide good old fashioned intellectual stimulation. But I’m also committed to creating content that effects our heart. Not only will we touch on thinkers like Žižek, Lacan and Tillich, we’ll also explore how their ideas can help us experience a deeper, more substantive type of life.
December 31, 2016
Pop-up Lecture: When Atheism Isn’t Atheist Enough
This is the first in a series of pop-up lectures I’m giving over the next year. In this seminar you’ll enter a surreal world of ideas, where you’ll encounter a theology more atheistic than New Atheism, and an atheism more theological than Contemporary Theism.
Instead of outlining the tired conflicts between theism and atheism, we’ll delve into the explosive point where they meet. The clearing that this explosion creates is not only fertile ground for all sides, but can help to uncover the truly subversive core of Christianity.
This course will provide intellectual stimulation, but it also aims at nourishing the soul. For not only will we touch on thinkers like Kierkegaard, Pascal and Camus, but we’ll ask how their ideas can help us experience deeper, more substantive lives.
Add to Cart – $6
December 30, 2016
Pints and Parables, LA, CA
Parables are a type of weaponised dis-course that knock us off course, onto radically new ones. They tactically confront us with disturbing truths we might otherwise miss and reveal what lies in darkness. At turns funny, poignant, irreverent and shocking, they cut into us with surgical precision, reaching deep into the hidden recesses of our soul, operating on those parts of our being that more direct speech can’t touch.
Over the years, Peter has written dozens of parables and collected hundreds more, deploying them in both his books and public presentations. In this intimate event, he’ll be offering some of his favorites along with some reflections and conversation.
Everyone will receive a limited edition J.T.C. styled parable called The Rapture written by Peter.
There are only 60 spaces for this event
December 20, 2016
Atheism Beyond Atheism, Belfast, NI
In this lecture I’ll be exploring a radical reading of Easter that unveils a theology more atheistic than New Atheism, and an atheism more theological than Contemporary Theism.
Instead of outlining the tired conflicts between theism and atheism, we’ll delve into the explosive point where they meet. The clearing that this explosion creates is not only fertile ground for all sides, but can help to uncover the truly subversive core of Christianity.
This talk will provide intellectual stimulation, but it also aims at nourishing the soul. For not only will we touch on thinkers like Kierkegaard, Pascal and Camus, but we’ll explore how their ideas can help us uncover a deeper, more substantive experience of life.
Everyone will receive a limited edition J.T.C. styled parable called “The Rapture” written by me and illustrated by Laryn Kragt Bakker.
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