Peter Rollins's Blog, page 2

Building on Fire, Seattle, WA

A common concern people have when first encountering my work relates to how we might rebuild our lives and communities after the fires of doubt, self-critique and complexity have burned bright. What happens after we’ve set light to some of the negative parts of our cultural, political and religious past?

In this intimate all-day event we’ll explore how the real challenge actually lies in keeping that white-hot fire lit; building our lives around it, within it, and on top of it. During the day we’ll explore a truly liberating understanding of faith that keeps this purifying fire alive. A form of life that has the power to impact our individual lives, our relationships, our communities and wider society.

What to Expect

We’ll be gathering together at 9:30am for some coffee/tea and a chance to meet everyone. Over the course of the day I’ll be offering some talks, engaging questions and wrestling with some of the issues you bring to the table.

Who Should Come

This day will be of primary interest to faith leaders, activists, therapists and those more generally interested in fostering healthy community. It will also be of value to those of you moving out of a more restrictive religious past and attempting to cultivate a richer, more expansive faith.

Click here to get your ticket

When Atheism Isn’t Atheist Enough, Online

I’d like to invite you to find a quiet room, pour yourself a nice drink and join me for my first ever pop-up 2 hour course.

We’ll be entering a surreal world of ideas, where we’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 for sure, 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.

This is a free course

Click here to register

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

Click here to book

The Largo with Rob Bell, Los Angeles, CA

I’ll be one of the guests at Rob Bell’s regular Largo event. I love Rob and I love the Largo. Hope to see you there. To book your ticket, click here

James White Lecture, Colorado Springs, CO

I’ll be spending two days giving lectures and leading discussion in Colorado Springs. For more information, click here

Current Wake Line-up for 2017

2017 year marks the fifth anniversary of my Wake festival, and it’s shaping up to be a great one. The festival itself offers incendiary theological exploration mixed with the very best in art, music, magic, comedy, whisky tastings, street art and cosy bars. This is a full-spectrum sensory exploration of Pyrotheology. One where I share the stage with some of the people I respect the most.

Every year we open the event up to 50 people. Over four days we hang out, share our lives, explore radical ideas and conspire together by open fires.

It’s called Wake, because a wake is an Irish ritual that accompanies a funeral. A wake is a time of remembrance, mourning and celebration that helps the living bear the weight of the lost, and offers rituals that help people move forward. Many who attend Wake are there because they’re working out how to live in the aftermath of a loss. Often it is the loss of a religious system that defined their past. But it is also often the death of a political position, cultural reality or personal relationship.

So who’ll be joining us this year? The lineup is still being finalized, but so far some of the thinkers who’ll be contributing to the festival are Jeff Robins, Gladys Ganiel, and Miranda Van Holland. There’ll be music from the incredible Duke Special, and Trevor Gordan Hall. Poet, activist and musician Padraig O Tuma will be joining us, and there will be a photo exhibition from Stephen Wilson. I’ll also be launching my comic book Enduring Love, and we’ll be spending a day at the beautiful Temple of the Winds in Mount Stewart (pictured above).

We’ve already sold 60% of our tickets. So, if you’d like to attend, grab a ticket quick.

Contributor Bios

Jeff Robbins is a thinker situated at the very forefront of Radical Theology. However, he is not just a world class academic (Chair and Professor of Religion and Philosophy at LVC, and Fellow of the Westar Institute), he’s also an engaging and inspiring communicator who was awarded the “Thomas Rhys Vickroy Award for Outstanding Teaching”. Jeff has authored numerous works, and has just released the brilliant book, “Radical Theology: A Vision for Change”. This is a visionary text that wrestles with the themes of liberation, gender, and race, as it traverses the landscape of radical theology and revolutionary thought.

Gladys Ganiel has been a friend of the festival for many years. Gladys is a Research Fellow in the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice at Queen’s University and has done extensive research into the Emerging Church in general and Pyrotheology. Indeed her fantastic book on the subject (written with Gerardo Marti) was awarded the prestigious “Distinguished Book Award” from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. Gladys is an academic with her ear to the ground. Her work is grounded in close, in-depth study of communities and extensive interviews. A perfect accompaniment to the philosophical bent of Jeff Robbins. Gladys is a perfect fit for Wake because her academic expertise is blended with her commitment to push academic research beyond the walls of the university.

Miranda van Holland has a background is in art history, but she has also worked as a make-up artist, photo-stylist, radio DJ, event producer, road manager and festival programer. In addition to all this, she’s just finished her second Masters degree in the Science of Religion, and is currently researching the intersection where religion, neo-spirituality and modernity collide. Miranda started to engage my work early on. Indeed she has has been stoking the fires of Pyrotheology since 2008 through articles, talks and interviews.

Duke Special is a distinguished artist who has twice been nominated for the Choice Music Prize and nominated for three Meteor Music Awards. In 2008 he won the Meteor Music Award for Best Irish Male. He has appeared on stage at the Royal National Theatre with Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage and Her Children”, has played Last Night of the Proms, and presented a documentary on the life and songs of Ruby Murray. His live performances have a theatrical style inspired by Vaudeville and music hall, and often incorporate 78s played on an old-fashioned gramophone.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is a world renowned poet, musician and public theologian who works in the area of conflict mediation and group dialogue. While known for being team leader of Corrymeela Community, for his work in advocacy across the world, as the founder of Tenx9 and for his regular appearances on Krista Tippett’s “On Being,” he was also one of the key contributors to ikon and key people in the development of pyrotheology. His latest book is the beautiful “In the Shelter”, and he has an album of music and poetry called “Hymns to Swear By”. Krista Tippett says of Pádraig, “[he] is an extraordinary person, whose influence extends quietly and gracefully across the world. His poetry bears these same qualities and brings him close. It is a gift to us all.”

Over the last 20 years, Stephen Wilson’s photographs have featured in numerous international publications. He has made a reputation by covering conflicts in Afghanistan, Kurdistan, Mozambique and Romania, famine relief in Southern Africa and the Peace Process in Northern Ireland, among other things. Now a university lecturer, Stephen continues to work on long form documentary projects dealing with identity and running photography workshops in interface areas.

Rated one of the top 30 guitarists in the world under 30 years of age by Acoustic Guitar magazine, Trevor Gordon Hall is an instrumentalist from Philadelphia whose compositions range in style from edgy driving rhythms to soft melodic phrases. Trevor leaves no physical aspect of the guitar untouched, weaving together different textures into grand yet intimate and lyrical compositions. He has been featured on various national radio stations including NPR and national and international television networks including NBC, and PBS.

Wake Update: Jeff Robbins

I just discovered that we’ve sold 1/3 of the tickets for my Wake Festival in Ireland this April, and we haven’t even announced the line-up! There are only 50 tickets in total, so this is a super intimate event that combines incendiary theological exploration with the very best in art, music, magic, comedy, whisky tastings and tours. You can find out more here.

Over the next few months we’ll be announcing the various musicians, thinkers, artists, and activists who will be working alongside me at this circus of ideas. But let’s begin now with someone who I’ve been a fan of for quite some time… Jeff Robbins.

Jeff isn’t just a world class academic (Chair and Professor of Religion and Philosophy at LVC, and Fellow of the Westar Institute), he’s also an engaging and inspiring communicator who won the “Thomas Rhys Vickroy Award for Outstanding Teaching”.

Jeff works at the coalface of Radical thinking and has just dropped the bomb Radical Theology: A Vision for Change into the theological playground. This is a truely visionary text that wrestles with the themes of liberation, gender, and race, as it traverses the landscape of radical theology and revolutionary thought.

As a world class scholar, gifted teacher, pioneer in Radical Theology, and all round great guy, Jeff will be an incredible addition to the “ideas” part of the festival.

Get your ticket here!

Pints, Parables, Fire, and Death

First up, sorry I haven’t been blogging much. I’ve been enjoying the FB live videos too much, and so have been using my energy making them. You probably know this already,  but I also did a 4-part “God” interview with my friend Rob Bell. You can hear them by clicking here. I’m even considering writing a book on the material discussed there.


I wanted to write a quick update to let you know that this year I have been working to streamline my teaching into a few different buckets to make it easier for people to access. While I’m still doing one-off talks, podcasts, FB live videos, etc. I’ve been tidying things up by splitting my work into different areas. Here is what it currently looks like,


 


– Pints and Parables : I rent a cool bar that can hold around 100 people and we delve into some meaty issue via stories, parables and fairytales. These mostly happen in the US, but occasionally go further afield (like New Zealand, Australia, Ireland).


 


– Building on Fire : These are one-day (and occasionally two-day) events where 50 people come together to delve into the theory and practice of Pyrotheology. Depending on the audience, the material will focus on personal enrichment, social transformation, or community development. There are talks, discussions, and a visit to the pub afterwards for a little informal processing.


 


– Wake : This is the highlight of my year. A four-day boutique festival (five, if you include the pre-event drinks) set in Belfast, N.Ireland. It involves talks, art, music, comedy, tours, whisky tastings and much more. Basically I create a type of immersive wake ritual that helps people come to terms with and work through the death of an old way of doing religion. In the midst of this, we explore what a religionless faith might look like. But don’t worry, it’s not too heavy… it’s basically a chance to hang out with an amazing group of people, unwind and have a mind-bending holiday.


 


On top of this, I’m currently working on my online content. This includes a yearly Atheism for Lent event and Omega Course (you can purchase ones I’ve already done in my on-line store). You can find out if I’ll be in a town near you by clicking here. Or you can always help me set an event up near you if you feel brave enough!

Pints and Parables, Detroit, MI

Parables are a type of weaponized dis-course that knock the sensitive listener off-course and onto a radically new one. They tactically confront us with disturbing truths we might otherwise miss, and bring to light what otherwise 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 I’ve written dozens of parables and collected hundreds more, deploying them in both my books and public presentations. In this intimate event I’ll be offering some of my favorites along with some reflections and conversation.

Everyone will receive a limited edition J.T.C. styled parable called “The Rapture”.

Click here to get your ticket

Beyond Belief, Melbourne, Victoria

I’ll be speaking at 5pm in “Church At: Collective” on the subject of a Church Beyond Belief. This is a free event. Hope to see you there!

Click here for more information