How (Not) to Speak of God: Marks of the Emerging Church

by Peter Rollins

Christian faith, it could be said, is born in the aftermath of God. Our fragile faith is fanned into life in the wake of what we believe to have been the incoming of a life-giving encounter in which we feel connected with, and transformed by, the source of everything that is. This belief may result from an immediate and psychologically penetrating experience or may arise more gently over time, but, regardless of the means, such faith cannot be reduced to the mere affirmation of religious dogma, a regular visit to some religious institution or the reciting of mechanical prayers. For Christians testify to having been caught up in and engulfed by that which utterly transcends them. In short, the experience that gives birth to faith, at its most luminous, is analogous to the experience of an infant feeling the embrace and tender kiss of its mother.