So This Christian Walks into a Bar and . . .

By Jana Riess, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 11/12/2008 10:31:00 AM

Irish philosopher Peter Rollins (The Fidelity of Betrayal, Paraclete) and leader of an ecclesial community called IKON that meets in pubs in his native Northern Ireland took time out of his packed six-week tour of the USA to talk with RBL about theology, Emergent, and his next book.

RBL: What are you doing on this tour?

 Rollins: It’s been a mix of talks, conferences, lectures at universities, book discussions, interviews and storytelling. We’re doing everything from churches and seminaries to universities and pubs. In each setting I am seeking to engage in provocation. I tell people at the beginning, the point is not to agree with me or to affirm every word that I utter. My talks are more like listening to an album. You may not like all the songs on the album, but there might be some you like and return to.

 RBL: You’ve been on the road about a week. How’s the reaction so far?

 Rollins: Everything seems to be relatively positive. The problem is that Americans are all so nice. They’ll tell you that they liked something even if they didn’t. Back home, it’s the other way around: even if someone likes you, they’ll tell you that they don’t.

 RBL: How did you get interested in these questions about God?

 Rollins: I had no interest in religion as a young man. One evening when I was 17, I was going to the cinema, and I met some people engaged in street evangelism. A friend of mine converted right then and there on the street. A few weeks later I made my own faith commitment. It changed me fundamentally, although not all of the change was positive. I embraced a very aggressive form of religious expression that involved distancing myself from my family and rejecting many of my friends.

RBL: Why such an about-face?

 Rollins: Something so radical had happened that I wanted to reflect that in radical action. I felt like everything had changed, like I had been reset and reformed. It took me five or six years to realize the fundamentalism I’d embraced didn’t do justice to the experience I’d had. I wanted to find another way to do justice to that experience of transformation in my life. I began to study theology and philosophy, and to talk to other people both within the Christian tradition and outside it. And what I found was so liberating that I wanted to form a space where I could help others take the same journey.

 RBL: So you founded IKON. What is that?

Rollins: I used to drink in this bar called the Menagerie in Belfast. I was with a friend one night and telling her I wanted to explore faith in an open environment where everyone could be a part of each other’s further conversion, where people could ask questions without fear. I said, “I’d love to do it in a bar like this.” She said, “Why don’t we ask the barman?” So I went to the barman and said, “I’ve got an idea for a meeting in your pub. I’d like to do something spiritual. It’ll involve poetry, ritual, music and art.” He looked at me like I had two heads, but he said okay. And IKON was born. We’ve been doing it for seven years.

 RBL: Do you consider yourself “Emergent”? What does that label mean to you?

 Rollins: In some respects, the definition of someone who’s Emergent is that they’re not comfortable with the label Emergent. Often people labeled in this way are individuals who wish to question labels, who want to blur boundaries and avoid being easily pigeon-holed. But if we have to call these people something then “Emergent” seems okay. Such people want to embrace doubt, complexity and ambiguity. They want to show how faith is not about having the right answers but about being part of a passionate journey that transforms peoples’ lives.

 RBL: How did you hook up with Paraclete Press?

 Rollins: I wrote a book called How (Not) to Speak of God, and a friend sent it to them. On the surface I’m very different from the people at Paraclete. They have these beautiful liturgies in hymn books, and at IKON we scrawl rituals on the back of beer mats. They have a basilica, we meet in a pub. So when they first saw the book, I think they thought it had nothing to do with who they were. But when they read the theology, they underlined everything that resonated with their own theology, and saw that they had underlined much of the book. They realized that it looked different, but was actually emanating from the same source. So they took a risk, and they’ve been taking risks with me ever since.

 RBL: What’s your next book?

 Rollins: The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales is coming out in April of 2009 from Paraclete. It’s a book of 33 parables that I’ve written to explore the idea of faith beyond belief—faith that is passionate, provocative and changes people’s lives.