Questions for Diana Butler Bass and Peter Rollins?

For Peter Rollins: Agreeing that suspension of belief is what's ailing Christians today, is there room for the reality of true miracles? Is there room for the reality of true "movement of the spirit"? Or is this illusionary remnants from our past?

and yet, at least for me, I don't want to leave the church altogether

Or what I should say... Rachel Held Evans post on the In-Betweens... who find ourselves not fitting in any box... and no where we go, what the hell do we do?! no matter where we go, we are outsiders...

What about those of us who feel caught between liturgy and the evangelical/charismatic movement? where only liturgy feels stale, and only "spirit led worship" feels over-acted. How do we fit in?

For DBB - Even though the UMC has made some strides in the direction of renewal, doesn't their deep commitment to itinerant clergy appointments and extensive denominationally-centered ordination processes continue to preserve the gap between clergy and laity that the spirit of "Christianity after religion" wants to challenge, if not eradicate?  I'm also concerned about how much ordination has been professionalized by denominations like the UMC, and the extent to which ordained clergy make much more money, for example, on average, than other equally important staff members of UMC churches - often in the service of or trust in outdated forms of institutions of higher education in denominational seminaries (i.e., massive student loan debt).  So a second question might be, what role do you see churches themselves playing in the education of ministers of the future, possibly in partnership with seminaries for the goal of lowering costs and improving discipleship-modeled leadership training?  

For Peter:

Your exposition of 'faith' from your website/blog ends, "Faith then is the experience of being taken up in the experience of meaning, of feeling the world to be wonderful, the other as sublime and our neighbour as worth dying for. We cannot will such a way of engaging with the world into being, at best we can invite it, hope for it, wait for it, pray and weep for it." And you explain it to be a way of living "as-if". 

I'm curious how you read Paul's introduction to the letter to the romans. In the first chapter, the 'obedience of faith(-fulness)' (1:5) is mentioned and is quickly followed by the quote that 'the righteous shall live by faith(-fulness)' (1:17). 

You and Paul agree that faith, as you stated, "has much more in common with a particular way of living." 

In Rom 1, Paul quotes from Habakkuk - a book that contains a clear message about Habakkuk's faithfulness to the faithfulness of YHWH despite the bleak circumstances (i.e. the life of righteousness). 

How you read your understanding of faith into both Habakkuk's and Paul's conception of it - who apparently share the sentiment that faith/faithful living is rooted in the faith/faithfulness of YHWH (or, at least, some type external Spirit or Other)?

My question is:

Is the assumed "as-if" of faith a way of externally mirroring something, or is it a new/different type of  realizing reality internally that births an experience-life of faith? Or is it both? 

Do you see  faith as type of justification for the 'righteous'  as an individual or communal event/process?

What are the responses of Diana and Peter about this:"While Christianity is dying in the West, God is bringing a spiritual awakening in third world countries like India and China."http://www.christiantoday.co.uk/article/church.in.china.experiencing.tremendous.growth/26420.htm

And what can we learn from this?

 It seems like both of them (in their work in general) settle for a less-than-robust faith (that is, not a whole lot of actual, concrete, positivist claims), and I think that a robust faith that DOES believe things is possible without dogmatic and dry legalism/literalism. For the both of them: do they think that a move to Paul Ricoeur's Second Naïveté is possible and/or desireable?

Second Naïveté Info

http://www.exploring-spiritual-development.com/Paul-Ricoeur.html

http://theimageoffish.com/2009/11/16/postmodernity-hermeneutics-and-the-second-naivete/ 

wish you could livestream!

@leadfromfringe @HomebrewedXnty For Pete, can pyrotheology speak to material political change, or is it intrinsically personal/existential?

DBB and PR: A question about Theodicy- How much of the movement away from traditional Church is related to questions of theodicy...and what sorts of answers are arising from those who are leaving, and for those who are staying?

As for DBB, I read her book and was confused by her language in the subtitle about "the end of church." Whereas in Peter Rollins' work there is a clear notion of moving into something beyond what we now call church, DBB doesn't seem to truly move beyond church. You note above that she says the Methodists have a leg up heading into the future, but that makes no sense if we are moving into some post-church period. Was the subtitle just a marketing gimmick? 

@leadfromfringe @PeterRollins @HomebrewedXnty will he admit even he doesn't know what his "parables" mean? :0)