The Political Limits and Possibilities of the Eucharist: A Theatrical Intervention

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The Political Limits and Possibilities of the Eucharist: A Theatrical Intervention

“The Political Limits and Possibilities of the Eucharist: A Theatrical Intervention” in Studies in Christian Ethics (2023). Read

Abstract

In this article I build on recent critiques of theological accounts of the eucharistic which overextend the practice's potential to form a Christian ethic and alternative polis. In analysing these critiques, often drawing on historical and contemporary cases of Christian malformation and its basis in liturgical practice, I suggest a greater distinction is needed between the practice's ability to raise political consciousness and the necessity of separate material political action. I approach this reconfiguration through appeal to debates on the political efficacy and responsibility of art, focusing in particular on contemporary German theatre director, Thomas Ostermeier and his influential production of Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People. Ostermeier distinguishes theatrical performance from material politics, while still demonstrating how theatre might enact a repoliticisation, provoking audiences to think beyond the story on stage to the world beyond where they live and try to act. Connecting the theological critiques with Ostermeier's work, I offer three areas in which a reconfiguration of the relationship between the Eucharist and Christian ethics might focus: depristinising in practice, disrupting catharsis, and being sent. These theatrical interventions allow for clearer recognition of the practice's ethical and political limits and potential.

(Image source, The Irish Times - production photo from The Enemy of the People (dir. Ostermeier)

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The Shaping of Revelation, Scripture, and Imagination

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The Shaping of Revelation, Scripture, and Imagination

“The Shaping of Revelation, Scripture, and Imagination.” Colloquium: The Australian and New Zealand Theological Review, Vol. 53 Issue 2 (2021), pp.53-71.

 Abstract 

Garry Deverell writes that “a theology that seeks to engage both the grace of God made known in Jesus and the spirituality of First Peoples must . . . regard our experience with God . . . as a legitimate source of revelation.” In response, this paper develops an account of the relationship between Scripture, revelation, and imagination, which positively renders the role of imagination within that relationship, and makes space for revelation to exist more robustly beyond and within Scripture. Because revelation exists to draw humanity into God’s saving mission, it should not be separated from human participation, nor consumed by the imaginative worlds of those human participants. Revelation is limited by and seeks to expand human imagination. This relationship shapes the doctrine of Scripture. Contra those positions that conflate revelation and Scripture and employ the latter as epistemic grounding for all subsequent theological claims, this paper proposes that Scripture is the paragon of the relationship between God’s revelation and humanity’s imagination. By reframing the cross-cultural movement of the Christian faith as a movement that births new imaginative possibilities into which God can communicate and so reveal the gracious mission of salvation, this proposal has positive implications for theology and church practice in these lands now called Australia. 

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No Country is Perfect: the doctrine of sin and relativised wickedness

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No Country is Perfect: the doctrine of sin and relativised wickedness

No Country is Perfect: the doctrine of sin and relativised wickedness. The Cooperative. February, 2022. Read it here.

In response to being asked about the recent Amnesty International report which accuses Israel of committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians, Prime Minister Scott Morrison replied that “no country is perfect.” Like many of Mr. Morrison’s quips and speeches, a theological current or tradition can be found lurking beneath the surface. It can be helpful, therefore, to draw this theological background out to consider why Mr Morrison might have so quickly drawn on this remark as a defence for such an accusation.

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James Cone’s Constructive Vision of Sin and the Black Lives Matter Movement

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James Cone’s Constructive Vision of Sin and the Black Lives Matter Movement

Liam Miller (2020) James Cone’s Constructive Vision of Sin and the Black Lives Matter Movement, Black Theology, 18:1, 4-22, DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2020.1726010

Abstract

The Black Lives Matter movement faces persistent opposition by those who shift the discussion from structural and societal inequality toward individual responsibility. This socio-political outworking of a universalised and individualised doctrine of sin is common amongst White, conservative Christian communities. James H. Cone’s constructive doctrine of sin is an alternative in the contemporary context. For Cone, sin is particularly expressed based on the concrete existence of a community, and its overcoming is bound up in the oppressed’s struggle for liberation and the affirmation of their humanity. This paper explores Cone’s community conception of sin, demonstrating its power to combat the idol of Whiteness and equip churches to take practical steps to ensure that Black lives matter in a White society.

Read it here

(or reach out if you don’t have access)

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Christification of the Least: Potential for Christology and Discipleship

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I have an article published in Studies in World Christianity 24.3. (2018) University of Edinburgh Press. You can access it here.

Abstract:

This paper argues that the christification of the least should shape Christology and subsequently Christian discipleship. Christification is articulated as the process by which individuals or groups, inside or outside the church and marked by displacement, marginalisation or persecution, are recognised as bearing Christ's presence in a special way. Those christified share in Christ's revelatory, soteriological and sanctifying role for the community who encounter, serve and learn from them. This illuminates the ethical and missional impact of christification. Taking Jon Sobrino's argument that Christology must take into account the historically received texts about Christ and the reality of Christ in the present, I argue that Christology cannot be complete without a transformative encounter with the christified least. For those in places of privilege, Christologies employing christification have an immediate effect on discipleship, locating the presence of Christ in the least amongst their community. For the marginalised, christification grants agency; seen as the embodiment of Christ, they facilitate revelation and shape ethical engagement. Attention is paid throughout the paper to how christification, as modelled particularly by theologians writing from or for marginalised or migrant communities, could be applied to my own Australian context, particularly current debates around refugees and Indigenous peoples.

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A House Built on Sand– Waterfront Views and Primordial Seas: Job 38, Matthew 7, coastal erosion, and beachfront development

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A House Built on Sand– Waterfront Views and Primordial Seas: Job 38, Matthew 7, coastal erosion, and beachfront development

My first article published in an academic journal! And thankfully it is free to read here!

And, if you want to be a sweetheart, cite it in your work sometime 

Pacifica, Vol 30, Issue 1, pp. 42 - 55 (First Published October 27, 2017)

Abstract:

This article begins with an examination of the state of coastal erosion at Collaroy and Narrabeen Beaches in NSW, Australia. In light of recent severe storms, which damaged the homes along the beachfront, and the increasing awareness of the coastal erosion caused by such properties there is a need to determine what lies beneath the decision to continue to develop along Australian beachfronts. Taking an ecotheological approach this article proposes that the philosophical and theological concepts of hubris and foolishness characterize these decisions, and the desire to live so close to the coast. In response to this, ecotheological readings of Job 38 and Matthew 7 are proposed to help provide an ecologically conscious and environmentally stable way forward. In Job 38 God speaks out of the whirlwind declaring that it was God who ‘shut the sea in with doors’ telling the waves ‘thus far shall you go and no farther’. By persisting with beachside development in light of our growing ecological awareness humans breach and encroach upon the natural and, perhaps, God-ordained borders between the sea and the land. In Matthew 7 Jesus compares the foolish, who refuse to act when they hear, to someone who ‘built his house on sand’. By refusing to heed and act in light of the growing ecological crisis and coastal erosion, and examples such as the $300 million Collaroy/Narrabeen coastline, beachfront developers are perhaps examples of Jesus’ fool. How might the church contribute to conversations within, and critiques of, a culture which places such a high esteem on proximity to the ocean that it would risk both human homes and non-human ecology?

IMAGE SOURCE - ABC

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