Christianity, as we have been endeavoring to explore, exhibits a somewhat disconcerting vertigo-inducing rupture at its very core, a divine rupture that gives it the form of a religion without religion that asks us to betray our faith tradition precisely so as to affirm it in the deepest and most radical manner. In order to express the idea of religion without religion in a concrete way let us consider the following parable:
There was once a fiery preacher who possessed a powerful gift. Far from encouraging people’s religious beliefs, he found that from an early age, when he prayed for people the result would be the individual’s loss of all religious convictions. When he prayed for people he found that they would often walk away having lost all of their religious beliefs, beliefs about the prophets, the sacred Scriptures, and even God. Since this was the case he would, as you might expect, rarely pray for others and instead would limit himself to sermons.
However one day, while traveling across the country, he found himself in conversation with a businessman who happened to be going in the same direction. This businessman was very wealthy, having made his money in the world of international banking. The conversation had begun because the businessman possessed a deep faith and had noticed the preacher reading from the Bible. Because of this he introduced himself and they began to talk. As they chatted together, the rich man told the preacher all about his faith in God and his love of Christ. It turned out that although he worked hard in his work he was not really interested in worldly goods.
“The world of business is a cold one,” he confided to the preacher, “and in my line of work there are situations in which I find myself that challenge my Christian convictions. But when confronted by such situations, I try, as much as possible, to remain true to my faith. Indeed, it is my faith that stops me from getting too caught up in that heartless world of work, reminding me that I am really a man of God.”
After listening carefully to the businessman’s story, the preacher responded by asking if he could pray for him. The young man readily agreed, not knowing what he was letting himself in for. And sure enough, after the preacher had said his simple prayer, the businessman opened his eyes in astonishment.
“What a fool I have been for all these years,” said the businessman. “There is no God above who is looking out for me, there are no sacred texts to guide me, there is no spirit to inspire me.”
As they parted company the businessman, still confused by what had taken place, returned home with one less item than he had left with. But now that he no longer had any religious beliefs to make him question his work and hold it lightly, he was no longer able to continue with it. Faced with the fact that he was now just a hard-nosed businessman working in a corrupt system, he began to despise himself. And so, shortly after his meeting with the preacher, he gave up his line of work completely, gave the money he had accumulated to the poor, and started to use his considerable expertise in helping a local charity. One day, years later, he happened upon the preacher again while he was walking through town. The man ran up to him, fell at his feet, and began to cry. After a few moments he looked up at the preacher and said, “Thank you for helping me to discover my faith.”
The key to understanding this parable lies in grasping how one’s very religious convictions can actually fuel actions that would stand opposed to them. In the above example we can imagine the businessman thinking that his faith in Christ and his involvement in a local church are what encourages him to pose certain ethical questions about the industry he works in, questions about the type of investments his bank backs, the damage of debilitating international interest rates, and the greed that fuels so many of the decisions that the bank makes on a daily basis.
He thinks that it is his faith that pushes him to influence banking decisions in a manner that includes the consideration of moral issues. Although he is a tough and committed businessman who is making a great deal of money, he knows deep in his heart that he is a Christian who does not place his true value on earthly treasures. Indeed, his attempts to influence the bank in ethical ways hint at this deep truth: namely, that he does not take the world of making money and business success too seriously. It is what he does in order to provide for his family and the local church, but it is not who he is.
However, in contrast to this commonsense view of the situation, let us offer a different interpretation. In contrast to the idea that the man’s faith is the deep inner truth that prevents him from fully engaging in a heartless capitalistic drive for wealth, one could say that it is precisely his faith in God that enables him to be a hard-nosed business man in the first place. While slightly moderating his drive for financial success at any cost, his supposedly true inner identity simply acts as the fuel that powers his work by allowing him to escape from facing up to the reality of his actions. In Christianity as a religion without religion one cannot make this distinction between one’s actions and one’s beliefs.
There are very few of us who would want to knowingly dedicate our lives to the selfish pursuit of making money at the expense of others, yet it would seem that so many of us do in fact work in such environments (in businesses that make use of child labor or that cause significant environmental damage). What if these types of destructive businesses run efficiently precisely because most of us who are involved, when asked, will voice concerns and even some guilt about what we do? What if, over a drink, we confide that we are really people with deep ethical and/or religious convictions who have moral dilemmas about our work and are attempting, in small but important ways, to address these problems. While we may think that these deep ethical and religious identities are the deep truth of our being that helps us to undermine the immoral aspects of our activities, perhaps these very identities are the fantasy that allows us to engage in the activities we really desire.
In the above parable the “deep truth” of the businessman’s inner life (that he has faith in God and his family) is actually a pragmatic fantasy that enables him to engage in making money at other people’s expense. When his faith is removed and he looks at himself as he really is, he can no longer embrace his occupation.
Another way in which we can see this play out concerns various forms of political protest. We can so easily make claims concerning the need to end child labor or look after the environment, and yet we continue to buy the products that employ child labor or damage the eco-system. Our religious or political ideology here functions as that which allows us to continue living in the way to which we have become accustomed with a minimum of guilt. The last thing we really want is to get what we are asking for, because this would cost us so much in terms of how we live. We do not want to sacrifice our comfortable lives, yet we find it hard to acknowledge that distasteful truth, and so we engage in forms of protest that enable us to blame another (the government, big business) while enjoying the benefits that such a corrupt system offers us. It is a little like employees talking about their manager behind her back while at the same time working hard, coming in on time, and seeking approval. The backbiting that goes on in the office is not, contrary to expectation, something that undermines the manager. If anything, it is the very valve that enables the manager to keep the employees from taking their grievances further.
From the above examples we can begin to see how the affirmation of Christianity as a religious system can allow us to think of our identity as somehow not directly implicated in our activity. However, in addition to this, religious belief systems can also directly encourage the behavior they seem to condemn. In order to understand this aspect of religious conviction let us imagine a child being told that under no circumstances is she to go into a certain cupboard and open a particular tin. It is this very prohibition that fuels the desire to engage in this activity. Yet this happens in such a way that the child experiences the prohibition as an obstacle. So the prohibition actually acts as a type of disavowed command. Or alternatively, if someone grows up in an environment in which a certain lifestyle is strongly endorsed over and against another, it is only natural that the individual will be intrigued by what is prohibited and be captivated by its pull. The power of the prohibition does not lie in whether it is correct or not but rather in its disavowed command. Hence religious and political convictions can act as the very thing that fuels the prohibited action.
Is this not what Paul intimately understood when he wrote that the law and sin are interconnected, that is, that religious prohibitions generate the very activity they attempt to abolish? And is not the radical message of Paul, a message that takes Jesus to be instigating a way out of this dichotomy, a way that emphasizes love as that which enables us to transcend our enslavement to the law and its obverse—sin? Paul understood that the law, while manifested as the obstacle to sin, secretly provided it with oxygen. So then, strange as it may first sound, religious convictions can thus provide an implicit command to act in a way that they explicitly reject.81
We need then to rediscover Christianity as a religion without religion that focuses upon the miracle of faith as that which transforms our subjectivity to such an extent that we do not need the law (which causes us to move toward sin), but which overcomes the law with love. For love fulfils the law by transcending it. Here everything is permissible even though not everything is beneficial.82
This idea of Christianity, that of a religion without religion, is made manifest in its own unique type of (anti)system. An ideological system is traditionally composed of a set of beliefs that attempt to reveal the way life ought to be lived. The problem with such systems, however, is that when they become powerful they become destructive, for in the affirmation of every system there are those who stand outside it and who are excluded from it. Political and religious systems implicitly or explicitly sacrifice individuals whose beliefs and actions do not fit with the ideology.
Christianity, conceived of as a system, begins with a religious or political mode of thinking and then seeks to impose it upon the world. Here a strong Platonic influence is at work whereby we mold the particular (the individual) into the Universal (the idea), and if the individual can’t—or won’t—be molded, then he or she is rejected.83 For instance, if a certain lifestyle is perceived to be wrong within the system’s framework, the individual in question will be asked to change or leave. The disavowed obverse of “all humans are part of my family” is then, “if you will not be part of my family you are not human.”
Various systems or worldviews fight for power and authority. Yet Christianity, as a religion without religion, offers a radically different approach. Christ opens up the idea of a system that seeks always to find those who are excluded from the system that is in power. The Christian “worldview” is thus manifested as always seeking out those who have been rejected from the worldviews that have authority. The way this works itself out in practice is that whatever political or religious idea is dominating the society at any given time, Christianity seeks out those who are excluded by it, the one sheep who is not in the pen, the one coin not in the purse, those who have not been invited to the party, the nobodies, the nothings.84 The Christian “system” can thus never take power for, by definition, it is always that which stands against power, seeking to identify with the powerless and the voiceless. It is a system in the sense that it systematically seeks out those who do not fit into the system offered up by the currently prevailing political and religious authorities.
What we see being worked out within Christianity can thus be said to be a prejudice toward those who are excluded and marginalized, those who are oppressed by our religious and political systems. This means that every time a “Christian” system is created, the Christian is the one who seeks out those who are excluded from it. Christianity, as a religion without religion, affirms a system that undermines every system of power by seeking those who are oppressed. The Christian critique is not then directed at the people in power so much as at the place of power itself. When a system of thought, however great, is given authority over all, it becomes oppressive and undermines its own liberative elements. The point then is not to find the “right” way of thinking and then give it a place of power and influence, but rather to question the place of power and influence itself. Is this not what we learn from the following biblical insight?
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.85
Here we see that a radical Christianity is not about overthrowing the one who is in authority (who is flesh and blood) but rather about overthrowing the place of authority itself (e.g., instead of overthrowing the king we overthrow the whole idea of a king). Here the scandal of Christianity is that it offers a view of God, not as a master, but as a servant. In the Gospels we learn of God as one who comes in weakness to overthrow the religious powers. We should then always be sensitive to the subtle ways that our own thinking can act as a power that excludes and oppresses. Once we identify those whom we exclude, then we can seek them out and allow them to subvert our own ideas. This movement is expressed beautifully in the following parable written by Philip Harrison:
The other day I had a dream. I dreamed I arrived at the gates of heaven, heavy-shut, pure oak, bevelled and crafted, glinting sharp in the sunlight. St. Peter stood to greet me; the big man wore brown, smile set deep against his ruddy cheeks.
“You’re here,” he said.
“I am,” I said.
“Great to see you—been expecting you,” he smiled. “Come on in.”
He pushed gently against the huge door; it swung silently, creakless. I took a couple of steps forward until, at the threshold, one more step up and in, I realized I wasn’t alone. My friends had joined me, but they hovered behind, silently, looking on. None spoke. I realized only I could speak. I looked at them; some were Christians, some Hindus, some Buddhists, some Muslims, some Jews, some atheists. Some God knows what. I stopped, paused. A hesitant St. Peter looked at me, patiently, expectantly.
“What about these guys?” I asked him. “My friends. Can they come?”
“Well, Phil,” he replied, soft in the still air, “you know the rules. I’m sorry, but that’s the way things are. Only the right ones.”
I looked at him. He seemed genuinely pained by his answer. I stood, considering. What should I do? I thought about my reference points, and thought about Jesus, the bastard, the outsider, the unacceptable, the drunkard, the fool, the heretic, the criminal, and I knew exactly where I belonged.
“I’ll just stay here then too,” I said, taking my one foot out of heaven. And I’ll tell you, I’d swear I saw something like a grin break across St. Peter’s face, and a voice from inside whispered, “At last.”86
The point that is being made here is that Christianity, as a religion without religion, always resists being implicated in the dominant ideological systems within society by seeking to stand with those who dwell outside of them. As religion without religion Christianity’s ir/religious expression cannot be reduced to a tightly held worldview without being effaced, for it is expressed fundamentally in the texture of one’s life particularly in relation to the poor and oppressed. Is this not the deep insight expressed in James 2:26 when we read that faith without deeds is dead?
So how does this faithful betrayal work itself out in practice? How can we construct an architectural space that (1) challenges this temptation to reduce the truth affirmed by Christianity to an oppressive religious system and (2) simultaneously provides room for that truth to breathe?
By attacking the constant desire to reduce Christianity to a religious system, there is a real need for Christians to provide spaces in which religious beliefs are exposed as, at best, secondary to the deep miracle affirmed by Christianity, and, at worst, a fantasy that betrays a total absence of the miracle. Once this is understood and people are invited to begin to deconstruct their religious systems, individuals will either be brought to a deeper understanding and appreciation of their faith or they may find that they never really had faith in the first place. In the former case the deconstruction will enable the individual to delve deeper into an appreciation of his or her faith, while in the latter the individual will leave such things behind. Both of these are preferable to either mistaking the true miracle of faith for a system of thought or of using that system as a way of hiding from oneself a lack of faith.
Following on from this there is a need to continue the long Christian tradition of forming spaces in which we collectively invite, affirm, and celebrate this miracle that lies beyond the miraculous, beyond magic, beyond the sacred, and beyond the secular. We need to continue forming places that can render these ideas accessible at an immediate level, a level that does not depend upon the contingencies of one’s education or the ability to think in abstract ways.
The question here is not “how do we make these ideas intelligible,” for the miracle itself can be rendered intelligible only as unintelligible. What this means is that the miracle of faith is a happening, an event, that defies reduction to the realm of rational dissection. It can be known only as that which ruptures the sensible world of give and take, proportionality, and exchange, and is thus a truly supernatural phenomenon.
In contrast to forming a space that will make sense only to people who are highly educated, we must endeavor to form spaces that make sense to nobody, regardless of the level of education—spaces that rupture everyone and cause us all to rethink. Amidst the myriad religious communities that seek to be places that provide understanding, we need to form a space that takes this away, even if just for a few moments, so that something else can take place.
The point of such gatherings cannot be to offer some kind of occult, hidden truth that requires a certain level of education or intelligence. The idea of books such as this one is not to attempt to offer up the deep truth that is affirmed by Christianity, but rather to argue that no book could accomplish such a task—because that truth, if it exists at all, is not something that can be grasped as if it were a concept. Such a project, while it has a place, is in no way necessary for an encounter with that truth. The question then is how we can form collectives that seek to invite, affirm, recall, and relay this deep truth, not to provide a space where we try to understand it.
When writing about such spaces I will avoid using the word church, not because churches are excluded in any way from providing this space, but because the word can refer, in many people’s minds, to the acceptance of a variety of doctrinal creeds, sacramental activities, and authority structures that are not necessary in the formation of these spaces. The type of space that I am referring to cannot be described as a new type of church, an alternative to church, an addition to church, or as a pathway that leads people back to church (although to those who attend it may legitimately act as one or more of these). So I will describe the type of collective that celebrates the miracle as a place of “transformance art.”87
The point of transformance art is not simply to short-circuit our beliefs but, in doing so, to uncover and celebrate the truth that is affirmed in Christianity. It is not then a place of affirming the centrality of doubt but rather of exploring how an affirmation of religious doubt can help us to appreciate the indubitable event that may be housed within it.
In order to prepare people for an environment that is dedicated to exploring the miracle in a theatrical, ritualistic manner, it is useful to begin by creating projects that encourage individuals to question and rupture their belief system. In my own context we have developed a number of projects designed to facilitate this. These include “The Evangelism Project,”88 “The Last Supper,”89 “The Omega Course,”90 and “Atheism for Lent.”91
None of these are designed to change people’s belief systems any more than they are designed to help solidify them. However, these outcomes may, and indeed sometimes do, happen. The main point of each of these projects is to introduce different perspectives on faith and life that help to expand our understanding and, more fundamentally, help the participant begin to reflect upon questions regarding what it means to affirm Christianity in the midst of complexity and doubt.
Once such projects are underway, the main challenge for practitioners concerns the development of a context that moves beyond such intellectually provocative environments toward something that allows us to reflect upon the miracle of faith, or rather reflect upon our faith in the miracle. Here I am referring to the formation of passionate, provocative gatherings, operating on the fringes of religious life, that offer anarchic experiments in theodrama that re-imagine the distinction between Christian and non-Christian, priest and prophet, doubt and certainty, the sacred and the secular—gatherings that employ a rich cocktail of music, poetry, prose, imagery, soundscapes, theatre, ritual, and reflection: gatherings that provide a place that is open to all, is colonized by none, and that celebrates diversity.
Such an immersive, theodramatic space would aim to affirm the need for (1) collective reflection; (2) a space where individuals can lay aside political, religious, and social identities; and finally (3) offer creative, ritualistic acts that invite, affirm, recall, and relate the event housed within the religion without religion that is Christianity.
In terms of providing a space for collective reflection, I am not referring to the development of a community with some central hierarchy that offers pastoral, financial, and spiritual support to those in need. Indeed often the most destructive element in the development of a community arises from the very statement that one is attempting to build a community. For what can so often happen is that those who need the most help join up in the hope that they will find support and encouragement. The result is that, for many fledgling groups, this places too high an emotional demand too early and leads to burnout.
To develop a healthy community, the best approach can actually involve being clear that one is not starting a community at all and that there will be no pastoral support, that no one will be charged with the job of taking in money and distributing it on people’s behalf, and that no one will be responsible for calling you up if you stop attending events. In short, it must be clear that the group does not care about people’s needs in the slightest. While this may sound deeply uncaring, the reason for stating this is precisely in order to help provide a healthy soil for real pastoral and financial support to grow.
Providing a space with no welcoming team or pastoral support group means that individuals need to take responsibility for welcoming and caring for others themselves. Here the role of those setting up the group is not to create a new priest/laity divide but rather to refuse to act in the role of a priest precisely so as to encourage a priesthood of all believers,92 offering relational, mutually dependent, pastoral support. This does not mean that there is no place for leadership, for here the leader is the one who attempts to prevent any one person, including the leader, from taking over the space and taking on the role of some high priest. In such a space there is a radical refusal, by those who organize the gathering, to take on pastoral responsibility. For by refusing the place of power, the “pastors” equip everyone to be a pastor, simultaneously discouraging an unhealthy dependency in those who attend.
In this way we can focus on affirming our belonging together as equals in light of the event of faith. In maintaining a focus upon the miracle of faith, a context is thus created in which genuine relationships can develop and flourish. Instead of the de-politicized, privatized idea of a relationship involving two or more people looking toward one another while blocking out the world, here one provides the context for relationships in which people look out to a common horizon and as such enter into close proximity with others.
The second aspect of transformance art that I mention above relates to the formation of a space in which individuals can lay aside their various political, religious, and social identities for a time. Here I am referring to the formation of a space in which we place our various identities at the door for an hour in a theatrical performance of that Messianic vision of a time when all will be equal and all be bestowed with the same dignity. This is called a performance because it is not really possible to set aside our location in society, our political views, moral ideas, gender, sexual preferences, and so forth. But we can freely enter into a theatrical space in which we act as through there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, employed nor unemployed, married nor unmarried, rich nor poor, oppressed nor oppressor. The hope here is that as we leave such a sacred place some element of this performance would remain with us, influencing our various identities in the world. For the various identities we have are themselves a performance. In philosophical terms this formation of a suspended position can be called the moment of epoche.
The third aspect of transformance art that I mention above concerns the development of creative, ritualistic acts that invite, affirm, recall, and relate the event housed within the religion without religion affirmed by Christianity.93 There are any number of ways to do this, for the various spiritual practices of prayer, fasting, meditation, service to the poor, liturgy, baptism, communal singing, and anointing with oil, to name but a few, represent so many practices designed with this in mind. At their best, these practices are designed, not to reduce Christianity to a system, but rather to help us approach the central miracle of faith. Yet today so many of these practices have become mired in the project of an exclusivist, violent expression of Christianity and thus need to be renewed and rethought. This may mean that they are expressed in radically different ways than we would ever have expected and may go by very different names. But, at the end of the day, transformance art is simply a contemporary expression of what Christianity, as a religion without religion, has always been about, namely a set of passionate, provisional practices birthed from and responding to the earth-shattering undergoing of God.
The beauty of such communities is that the only treasure they have is one that can never be stolen but only shared. This is beautifully captured in a Zen parable concerning Master Ryokan. Ryokan was known to dwell at the foot of a great mountain in a humble dwelling. One day while he was out walking, a thief, who knew that no one lived near by and that Ryokan’s house had no door, sneaked inside to steal the contents. But once inside the house he realized that there was nothing to steal. At that moment Ryokan returned to meet his startled guest. Saddened by what he saw, Ryokan said, “You have traveled so far to rob me and yet I have nothing for you; please take my clothes and blanket.” With that Ryokan took off the clothes he was wearing and handed them to him along with the blanket he slept on. The thief, who was completely dumbfounded, grabbed the items and ran. When he had gone, Ryokan smiled as he lit a fire outside and considered the moon. “Poor man,” he thought to himself, “if only he knew that I wanted to give him the moon.”94
In this story the true treasure that Ryokan possessed was not something that could be stolen, because it was not something that Ryokan possessed. All one can do when one’s treasure is of this nature is point toward it, recall it, and invite people to bask in it.