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VU Research Portal Interrupting the church’s flow Barrett, A.D. 2017 document version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication in VU Research Portal citation for published version (APA) Barrett, A. D. (2017). Interrupting the church’s flow: Engaging Graham Ward and Romand Coles in a radically receptive political theology in the urban margins. General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. E-mail address: [email protected] Download date: 06. Oct. 2021 VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT Interrupting the church’s flow Engaging Graham Ward and Romand Coles in a radically receptive political theology in the urban margins ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad Doctor aan de Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, op gezag van de rector magnificus prof.dr. V. Subramaniam, in het openbaar te verdedigen ten overstaan van de promotiecommissie van de Faculteit der Godgeleerdheid op woensdag 13 september 2017 om 13.45 uur in de aula van de universiteit, De Boelelaan 1105 door Alastair David Barrett geboren te Portsmouth, Verenigd Koninkrijk promotor: prof.dr. E.A.J.G. Van der Borght copromotoren: dr. J.R. Sudworth dr. D. Hewlett ii Alastair David Barrett, Interrupting the church’s flow Contents Detailed table of contents iv Table of figures ix Acknowledgments x Chapter 1 Entangled Dramas 1 Chapter 2 Mapping the terrain: public, liberation and ecclesial political theologies 20 Chapter 3 Engaging Graham Ward as ecclesial political theologian 56 Chapter 4 Interrupting the church’s flow: Ward’s ‘schizoid’ christology, and repressed ‘others’ 96 Chapter 5 Engaging Romand Coles as post-liberal ‘theologian’ of receptivity 126 Chapter 6 Trajectories 178 Appendix 1 Interview with Graham Ward (transcript) 220 Appendix 2 Interview with Phil Howkins (transcript) 235 Bibliography 244 Summary 286 iii Alastair David Barrett, Interrupting the church’s flow Detailed Table of Contents Chapter 1 Entangled Dramas 1 1.1 Dramas of exclusion: discourses of ‘othering’, dynamics of ‘expulsion’ 1.2 Who acts? Discourses of agency and interaction within the ‘urban margins’ 1.3 Locating the church: questions of ecclesial agency within the urban margins 1.4 Research question: developing a radically receptive ecclesiology in the urban margins 1.5 Locating myself 1.6 Charting the trajectory/ies: overview of chapters Chapter 2 Mapping the terrain: public, liberation and ecclesial political theologies 20 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Political theology: in search of definition 2.2.1 Sharpening the focus 2.3 Public Theology 2.3.1 Defining the ‘public’: Who speaks? Who acts? Who hears? Who is heard? 2.3.2 Rules of engagement: how does theology ‘go public’? 2.3.3 Public theology in a post-secular context: gifts and challenges 2.4 Liberation Theology 2.4.1 ‘Doing’ theology: Who speaks? Who acts? Who hears? Who is heard? 2.4.2 Liberation Theology UK? 2.4.3 Recent developments and critical questions within liberation theology 2.4.4 Critical questions to liberation theology: a (re)turn to the church 2.5 Ecclesial political theology 2.5.1 Communities of faithful witness: MacIntyre, Barth and ‘Hauerwasian’ political theologians 2.5.2 Radical Orthodoxy: ontology, participation and ‘transcendent’ authority 2.5.3 The authority of Christ’s judgment: a mix of Barthian and Schmittian trajectories? 2.5.4 An ecclesial receptivity within EPT? 2.6 Political theologies and the urban margins: discerning a way forward iv Alastair David Barrett, Interrupting the church’s flow Chapter 3 Engaging Graham Ward as ecclesial political theologian 56 3.1 The ailments of the postmodern city 3.1.1 The economic 3.1.2 The cultural 3.1.3 The political 3.2 An embodied challenge: on Manchester’s Oxford Road 3.3 Diagnosis: two cities, two economies, two desires 3.3.1 Surveying the terrain 3.3.2 An ‘analogical worldview’ 3.3.3 Augustine, desire and the City of God 3.3.4 Postmodern and ‘Christian’ desire 3.3.5 The flow of love: kenosis and pleroma 3.4 Therapy: Church as ‘alternative erotic communities’ 3.4.1 Church and eucharist: overcoming division 3.4.2 Church and cultural politics: reschooling the (cultural) imaginary 3.4.3 Church and prayer: inhabiting the eschatological tension 3.4.4 Church and service of those ‘in need’: incorporating ‘the stranger’ 3.5 Evaluation: Ward’s ecclesiological equivocation 3.5.1 Church as ‘corpus permixtum’: humble, but anxious? 3.5.2 Church as ‘apophatic body of Christ’: ‘emerging’, or invisible? 3.5.3 Church as ‘erotic community’: ‘transgressive’, or colonial? 3.5.4 Church as ‘heavenly city’: ‘prefiguring’, or triumphant? 3.6 Summary Chapter 4 Interrupting the church’s flow: Ward’s ‘schizoid’ christology, and repressed ‘others’ 96 4.1 ‘Penetrating’ the urban margins: The Full Monty and ‘violent no-go zones’ 4.2 Ward’s ‘radical orthodoxy’: a patriarchal, sexual, and imperialist logic? 4.3 Christological openings 4.3.1 Irigaray and christology in the ‘between’ 4.3.2 The ‘schizoid Christ’ and the woman with the haemorrhage 4.4 Openings foreclosed: two versions of an anointing, and other displacements 4.4.1 ‘Economic’ problems and other ‘displacements’ 4.4.2 Retreating from the challenge of the other v Alastair David Barrett, Interrupting the church’s flow 1. The woman with the haemorrhage and the Syro-Phoenician woman 2. Luce Irigaray 3. Emmanuel Levinas 4. Jacques Lacan and the ‘real’ 4.4.3 Retreating from the materiality of Jesus 4.4.4 Retreating from the particularity of christology 4.4.5 Retreating from the engagement of praxis 4.5 A ‘mended middle’? Ward’s awkward appropriation of Gillian Rose 4.6 Holding open the ‘opening’: returning Ward to his senses 4.6.1 Reversing Ward’s ‘retreats’ Chapter 5 Engaging Romand Coles as post-liberal ‘theologian’ of receptivity 126 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Returning to the challenge of the other 5.2.1 ‘Traditionalism’: particular visions of flourishing and ‘overconfident’ communities? 5.2.2 Augustinians, ‘outsides’ and ‘one-way’ caritas 5.2.3 Derrida, deconstruction and ‘ateleological openness’ 5.2.4 A two-fold proposal: tension-dwelling between the teleological and the ateleological 5.3 Returning to praxis: developing a ‘visionary pragmatism’ for practised receptivity 5.3.1 The fecundity of the ‘edge’ 5.3.2 ‘Visionary pragmatism’ 5.3.3 Radical democratic practices of receptivity 1. Listening 2. World-travelling 3. Tabling 5.4 Learning from ‘David’ and ‘Goliath’: fleshing out a ‘visionary pragmatism’ 5.4.1 Re-visiting Ward’s ‘economies’ with Coles: ‘mega-circulations’, ‘disbelief’ and ‘polyface flows’ 5.4.2 Politics of shock and countershock 5.4.3 Reconfiguring hope for a ‘storm-shocked’ world vi Alastair David Barrett, Interrupting the church’s flow 5.5 Coles’ ‘ecclesial turn’: a ‘christeccentric’, dialogical, ‘radically insufficient’ church 5.5.1 John Howard Yoder: the vulnerable receptivity of the church’s ‘body practices’ 5.5.2 Rowan Williams: ‘Christ on Trial’ and the ‘penumbral’ edges of the ecclesial body 1. Ward’s Johannine trial: a contestation of authority 2. Williams’ Markan trial: kenosis of territoriality, kenosis of language 3. Williams’ ‘christeccentric’ ecclesiology 5.5.3 Charles Taylor, Sam Wells, and a radically ‘insufficient’, ‘thirsting’ church 5.5.4 Jean Vanier’s ‘footwashed politics’, a ‘receptive’ Jesus, and a mysterious ‘whirling’ 5.6 Summary: from Ward’s christological domestication to Coles’ christological equivocation Chapter 6 Trajectories 178 6.1 Re-cap 6.1.1 Developing a ‘radically receptive political theology’ 6.2 Tactical theological stances 6.2.1 Locating the theologian 6.2.2 Dis-locating the theologian 1. ‘Dislocation’, ‘exorcism’, and a Christ receptive to ‘initiation’ by others 2. Dis-identifying with Jesus 6.2.3 ‘Flipping the axis’: negotiating the equivocation of the christological 6.2.4 Expecting abundance: shifting from the ‘centre’ to the ‘edge’ 6.2.5 Letting the ghosts speak: re-awakening our senses to our repressed ‘others’ 6.2.6 The Full Monty and a ‘constitutive outside’ 6.3 Tactical ontologies 6.3.1 Participating in divine receptivity: ‘hearing with God’s ears’ 6.3.2 Returning to the flow(s): christological openings to capitalism’s ‘outside’ 6.3.3 From ‘penetrating bodies’ to ‘touching flesh’ vii Alastair David Barrett, Interrupting the church’s flow 6.3.4 The ‘go-between God’: a pneumatological trajectory? 6.4 Practices 6.4.1 Re-locating the theologian: re-rooting and re-routing 6.4.2 Resisting initiative: the ‘art of pregnant waiting’ 6.4.3 Practising ‘confession’ – with our ‘others’ 6.4.4 Spaces of contestation, negotiation and ‘contagious receptivity’ 6.4.5 Tabling and ‘para-liturgies’ 6.4.6 Liturgical gathering, formation in receptivity and liturgies of ‘countershock’ 6.4.7 Prayer 6.5 Returning 6.5.1 Returning to the Church of England 1. A parish church 2. A liturgical, eucharistic, ‘incarnational’ church 3. A national church 6.5.2 Returning