The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief (Paperback)

~ (Author) "There was once a small town filled with believers who sought to act always in obedience to the voice of God..." (more)
Key Phrases: religion without religion, Word of God, Son of Man, Gospel of Matthew (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Rollins possesses the freshest theological voice of the emerging church movement. The leader of an ecclesial community called Ikon that meets in pubs in his native Northern Ireland came out of nowhere with his How (Not) to Speak of God in 2006, where he made the tools of postmodern philosophy accessible to nonspecialists. That book's virtues are again on display: clarity (rare enough for an academically trained philosopher), wit and playful, counterintuitive readings of Christian scripture. He argues that the most faithful response to Christianity may be Judas's betrayal of Jesus over against fundamentalists who would violently defend Jesus and academics who would imprison Jesus. Rollins paints with an overly broad brush—not every theologian since Descartes has been boxed in by his categories. At times an academic degree would be helpful to understand his use of Zizek or Nietzsche. All the same, Rollins puts postmodern philosophy to work for those trying to rethink their faith for a new day without stifling modern categories. Even those who disagree will find the pages turning themselves. (June)
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Product Description

It may be necessary to betray your faith in order to keep it

What if one of the core demands of a radical Christianity lay in a call for its betrayal, while the ultimate act of affirming God required the forsaking of God? And what if fidelity to the Judeo-Christian Scriptures demanded their renunciation? In short, what would it mean if the only way of finding real faith involved betraying it with a kiss?

Employing the insights of mysticism and deconstructive theory, The Fidelity of Betrayal delves into the subversive and revolutionary nature of a Christianity that dwells within the church while simultaneously undermining it.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 196 pages
• Publisher: Paraclete Press (MA) (May 6, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557255601
• ISBN-13: 978-1557255600
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #114,365 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Giving up Christianity in order to truly fulfill it, May 15, 2008

By	Adam Moore (Waco, Texas) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Ever since reading Peter Rollins' first book, "How (Not) to Speak of God," I have been looking forward to his next book. In fact, I can't remember a book I have anticipated more highly. So when "The Fidelity of Betrayal" arrived on Tuesday I quickly devoured it. I couldn't read it fast enough. It was wonderful. Sometimes I find it helpful to start engaging a book by reading through it quickly, in order to gain the overall big picture, and then to go through it slowly, savoring every word. I am really looking forward to reading it again, slowly.

Here are a few initial comments related to the new book (not a review, just a few comments).

First, I think this book successfully builds upon the concepts in Rollins' first book and takes them to the next level. So if you're interested in Rollins' work, I recommend buying both books but starting with "How (Not) to Speak of God." Basically, "The Fidelity of Betrayal" builds on an idea Rollins started working with in the first book. In fact, he builds on the idea that most intrigued me in his first book - the notion of giving up Christianity in order to truly fulfill it. In his first book Rollins relates a powerful story from the movie "Amen" in which a priest in Nazi Germany gives up his Christian faith and becomes a Jew in order to identify with the persecuted, a move the priest believes is necessary in order to truly live his Christian faith. "The Fidelity of Betrayal" takes this concept and examines it through three lenses, the Word of God, the Being of God, and the Event of God, which forms the structure for the book.

Second, I'm convinced that Phyllis Tickle is right in her assessment of Rollins' work. She writes, "Here in pregnant bud is the rose, the emerging new configuration, of a Christianity that is neither Roman nor Protestant, neither Eastern nor monastic; but rather is the re-formation of all of them. Here, in pregnant bud, is third-millennium Christianity." I really believe it. What Rollins (and others) is writing about and doing may not be THE future of Christianity but it is certainly A future of Christianity. And the possibility of this future gives me much hope. I believe the core concepts of this book are going to, and already are starting to re-form Christianity in our world. I'm not talking about a simple shift in the core beliefs of Christianity, but rather a revolution of how Christianity is experienced and expressed in the world.

Third, Rollins ends his new book with some discussion about starting communities that are forged in the midst of these ideas. He quite literally proposes "a church beyond belief" (the subtitle of the book). In short, Rollins is looking at the implications of moving from the church as a bastion of beliefs, towards communities of transformation. Just as Rollins argues for a "religion without religion" I think he is imagining a sort of church that is not a church, which is exactly what I am most interested in.

So buy this book. Read it. Think about it. Argue with it. Soak in it. And in the process, allow God to transform you.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Peter Rollins Responds, June 8, 2008

By	Norman Jeune "Norman Jeune III, christiansinc... (Long Beach, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is definitely a provacative and much anticiapted release from Dr. Rollins. The Fidelity of Betrayal is a fascinating book, regardless of whether or not you tend to agree with writers like Rollins, who are part of the emergent movement. Rollins offer a lively, insightful, and controversial interaction with a variety of historical primary sources, ultimately providing a vantage point from which he is able to question the very theological and metaphysical foundations of western christendom.

I will say that I think he went a bit too far in his assertion that its impossible to make any ontological inferences about God, but his critiques of western metaphysics are important, and are definitely worth considering. His practical conclusions are also quite insightful, and I think Rollins has his hand on the pulse of church life as we forward.

The biggest strength of this book, in my opinion, is that Rollins seeks to develop a position reagrding the status of the biblical text. No other emergent writer I have seen up to this point has been willing to address the question of what the biblical text actually is in their view, and I think this is a key question for the continued development of the postmodern church. I only wish he would have taken the implications of his textual presuppositions to their conclusion. Unfortunately, I think his skeptical presuppositions about the text itself are not sufficiently grounded in adequate interaction with historical-criticism, even though negative assertions in this arena are what drive his metaphysical and ontological assertions about our ability to know anything about God.

Overall, this is one of the most important books for one to read in regard to the Emergent Movement at this point. Pick it up!

For those of you who want to look at some deeper interactions between myself and Dr. Peter Rollins personally, check out christiansincontext.org

Dr. Rollins was kind enough to respond to my chapter-by-chapter pre-release review of his book.

5.0 out of 5 stars Bursting Through the Dilemma of Doubt, November 12, 2009

By	T. T. Turner II "Everyday Liturgy" (New Jersey) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Going on my trip to Montana I thought I picked up Peter Rollins' first book, How (Not) to Speak of God so I could read his books through in order. This is a review of The Fidelity of Betrayal. I grabbed the wrong one.

The summation of Rollins' argument in this book is the profound and provocative statement: "In Christianity as a religion without religion one cannot make this distinction between one's actions and one's beliefs." (165) The Fidelity of Betrayal is a book that uses the catalysts of postmodern philosophy, narrative, and wonder to form a mystical framework for a Christianity beyond belief.

Though Christianity beyond belief may sound nebulous, Rollins does a fantastic job laying out his philosophically nuanced arguments in a captivating and easy to understand way.

The heart of Rollins argument is that the idea of Christian religious belief has been co-opted by academics, a way of fixing the problem of Christian theology not by adding additional research and discovery. Far from being an anti-intellectual stance, Rollins paves a third way by requiring that the truth of Christianity rests not in orthodoxy but in orthopraxy, the right living of Christian belief. One's actions cannot be separated from one's beliefs.

This reasoning brings up the dilemma of doubt, and how that figures into a system that rests beyond the regular definition of belief as right doctrine. Rollins argues that doubt is an after-effect of an event, and that belief and doubt are formed after an initial event (142). Far more important than belief or doubt, Rollins argues, is "a happening, an event, that we affirm and respond to, regardless of the ebbs and flows of our abstract theological reflections concerning the source and nature of this happening." This argument flips the Cartesian understanding of self-reasoning on its head, as the event that is outside of us is the determining factor, not ourselves, in our lives. The story of Jesus healing the blind man is used as an example of this. When questioned by the Pharisees if Jesus is a sinner, the blind man replies: "I don't know. One thing I do know, I was blind but now I see" (141). There will be doubts and triumphant surges of belief during our lives, but the one thing we cannot doubt is what has happened to us.

Key also to this argument is the deconstruction of the walls that people build to differentiate their faith and how it is put into action within the world. For Rollins, the source of our faith cannot become abstracted, because once it is abstracted (believed or doubted) then we can begin to act in ways that are contrary to our belief. He writes:

"One of the results of thinking about the truth affirmed by Christianity as comprised of facts that can be externalized and reflected upon (i.e., as made up of substantive claims concerning God, the world, the ministry and person of Christ, and the status of the Bible) is that it introduces a distance between a person and that person's faith....In this way a distinction is set up between the subject (the one who thinks) and the object (that which is being thought). (90)

The goal of a Christianity beyond belief is one that ties the subject and object together: the thinker and the thought become unified in life. Rollins explains this deconstruction of the Cartesian mode of viewing religion in a short philosophical journey through the thinking of Descartes, Hobbes, Pascal, and Nietzsche, culmunating in his claim that

"the truth affirmed by Christianity is not merely similar to the notion of life, in the sense that it is undergone rather than experienced, but rather it is that which claims to bring us life. Just as God is presented as speaking life into the formless void in Genesis, so the truth affirmed by Christianity is that which breathes life into the darkness and desolation of our own lives" (116).

Thus, the first faithful betrayal we are called to are the reach of both anti-intellectuals and academics who try to influence and manipulate the right understanding of the Bible and accept the fact that "in order to accept the Bible we need to reject any interpretation as final, being ready to engage in an ongoing, open-ended dialogue and discussion with it" (125). We have been taught to think that this is incorrect and intellectually dishonest, but in fact this betrayal is one of humility and openness to the foundation of theology since Christianity's inception (and what Rollins calls the second faithful betrayal): our God is greater than any theological interpretation or understanding, therefore "we must learn that in order to approach the God of faith and truth affirmed by Christianity, we must betray the God we grasp---for the God who brings us into a new life is never the God we grasp but always in excess of that God" (125).

In all frankness, what Rollins calls us into is a humbling of ourselves and an acceptance of the tangled web of belief and doubt in this world, while at the same time exhorting us to hold fast to the God who lives, and moves, and has being within our lives.