Be Part of the Problem, Not the Solution: Free Chapter From Insurrection

I remember once the collective ikon putting on an event in The Black Box called 'Sell Church' in which the evening mimicked a type of advertising sales pitch. During the gathering the music, words and visuals were all designed to convince those attending that ikon had the solution to our problems (with subtle disclaimers hidden in various places). The evening culminated with a huge video projection of the Crucifixion in all of its gory detail overlaid with the music from a well known advertising jingle. The result was almost impossible to watch.

After a rather light-hearted night this visceral projection seemed scandalous. This scandal was not however intellectual in nature, it was more primordial than that. Most of us in attendance had grown up in an environment where the crucifixion was revered. Whatever our view of the Church, God or religion this image of an innocent, dying man had made a deep impact on us. As a result we couldn't help but be offended by what we saw. A comedic advertising jingle providing the sound track to this oversized, hyper-real crucifixion scene felt sickening.

What was most disturbing however was the way in which staring at that footage felt like staring at ourselves. Many of us glimpsed in it a repressed truth that we had reduced this event to the status of a product that promised satisfaction, happiness and fulfilment. In a world where we are constantly told that we can be fulfilled we realised that we were guilty of joining the choir and adding one more product (God) to the cosmic vending machine.

In contrast to this way of understanding the message of Christianity Insurrection offers an alternative vision. One that presents Christianity, not as yet another promise of direct fulfilment, but rather as the act of laying down such ideas and discovering how to embrace life without the need for a final solution. Here I seek to show that it is only as we directly lay down our obsessive pursuit of fulfilment that we may indirectly find it.

But in order to understand what this might mean we must first place into question the idea that there is a Solution to life, an Answer that will fulfil us, a Secret that will fill a perceived void in our existence. We must expose how this idea of there being a Solution is inherently problematic and place the idea of an ultimate Answer into question. For it is from the ashes of this product-oriented form of Christianity that we shall discover the subversive core of faith as an insurrectionary way of life that invites us to embrace the difficulty of existence rather than fleeing from it.

Some who are wiser than I have warned that my new book is more challenging and provocative than anything I have written before and thus is likely spark some angry reactions. Indeed I feel like I am currently experiencing the calm that comes just before a storm.

As readers of my blog I would like to offer you the introduction and first chapter in the hope that you might share it with others. I gave these to my mail subscribers around a month ago and my Twitter/Facebook followers a couple of weeks later (so please do sign up to these if you would like occasional advance gifts). The book itself drops on October 4th…

Introduction and First Chapter