geekchicohio’s #CBR5 review #13: Insurrection by Peter Rollins

Insurrection: To Believe Is Human; To Doubt, Divine, the spectacular 2011 release by pyro-theologian Peter Rollins is a book that’s difficult to summarize or explain in brief. All the more difficult because I’d like to explain to EVERYONE, not just those that self-identify as Christian, why it’s so great.

In short, Rollins’ work hinges on the idea of dismantling what he sees as a wrongheaded understanding of God. He calls it the deus ex machina God, but we all know it as the bearded guy in the clouds calling the shots. Rollins asks his readers to look at the simple idea that “God is love” and from there begin to zoom out to the idea that God is manifest in the act of love, and is not some sort of celestial entity.

He gets to this through various means: Jesus’ words on the cross “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” which Rollins posits is the moment when God becomes an atheist, the writings of Mother Theresa in which she describes living her entire life with a core-deep sense that there was no God out there watching over her, but that she experienced God in her work with the poorest of Calcutta, and through various parables that he uses to introduce each chapter.

Rollins asks his readers to strip away what he’s previously referred to as the idolatry of God, until all that is left is a person willing to live a life of love, kindness, peace, and humility. Understanding that in living that life we are producing the place where God dwells. He goes on, then, to extrapolate the idea that God’s will for our lives becomes our own will for a life based in love, charity, mercy, and respect.

I would struggle to recommend Insurrection to those not familiar with the basics of the Christian faith, though I’d struggle equally to recommend it to anyone who holds to those tenets with too much fundamentalism as Rollins’ work towards an a/theistic form of an understanding of God is all but heretical by comparison to what most think of as Christianity. But to those open-minded enough, or to those unable to fully embrace or fully leave the faith, it’s something of a revelation.

ElCicco #CBR5 Review #34: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

I make the mistake sometimes of thinking that a novel of fewer than 300 pages will be a quick read. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson proves the lie. It is a very dense 280 page novel written as a letter by a 75-year-old midwestern preacher to his 7-year-old son circa 1955. It’s heavy on religion and theology, and it’s sometimes repetitive, which is perhaps not too surprising with a septuagenarian narrator. Robinson makes her preacher John Ames a kindly, gentle, flawed, but likable fellow whose family history spans the Civil War, the influenza epidemic, the Depression, and the two world wars. But those earth-shaking events seem to make less of an impression on him and his flock than the vagaries of their common, every day lives and relationships in the small prairie town of Gilead.

John Ames is writing this letter to his little boy in preparation for his own death. It’s sort of an explanation of his life and an apology for not leaving more for the boy and his young mother. It’s also John Ames’ attempt to come to terms with his impending death and making sure that his spiritual house is in order. In the course of the rambling letter, he discusses his grandfather, a preacher and abolitionist who helped settle Kansas and fought in the Civil War; his father, a preacher who embraced pacifism; his brother, who rejected religion for rationalism; his friend preacher Boughton, who is also old and dying; and Boughton’s wayward son, John Ames Boughton, godson of John Ames. John Ames struggles with anger (as his father and grandfather before him) and his distrust of his godson, recently returned to Gilead for reasons no one seems to understand.

Naturally, as this is a rambling letter, we do not get a linear story line, and there are certain mysteries about John Ames’ father, grandfather and godson that take some time to clear up. While the novel can sometimes be ponderous and drag, there is at its heart a pure and forgiving love that better exemplifies John Ames’ Christian theology than any of the texts he is fond of quoting. Gilead won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005, and while I liked the story, I can’t say I loved it. I found it okay, but it’s probably outstanding to those who enjoy theology and have a lot more time to reflect on it than I do.