Peter Rollins Is Ironic<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I'm in Greenwich, Connecticut for the next few days, speaking at various events at Trinity Church. Trinity is an exceptional church -- emergent by\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tonyjones\/2008\/11\/07\/peter-rollins-is-ironic\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Peter Rollins Is Ironic\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I'm in Greenwich, Connecticut for the next few days, speaking at various events at Trinity Church. 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{"id":1174,"date":"2008-11-07T06:57:24","date_gmt":"2008-11-07T12:57:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tonyjones\/2008\/11\/peter-rollins-is-ironic\/"},"modified":"2015-03-13T17:08:45","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T22:08:45","slug":"peter-rollins-is-ironic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tonyjones\/2008\/11\/07\/peter-rollins-is-ironic\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Rollins Is Ironic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I\u2019m in Greenwich, Connecticut for the next few days, speaking at various events at Trinity Church<\/a>.\u00a0 Trinity is an exceptional church \u2014 emergent by any measure \u2014 in an area not exactly known for innovative churches.\u00a0 I\u2019ve known a couple of Trinity\u2019s staff members, including Sean Witty<\/a>, associate pastor, and Ian Cron<\/a>, who founded the church nine years ago, has recently stepped down as lead pastor, and is the author of Chasing Francis: A Pilgrim\u2019s Tale<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last night, Sean emceed a private event for the leadership of the church with me and the inimitable Pete Rollins<\/a>.\u00a0 Pete is a \u201cworking philosopher\u201d (so says his book jacket), the facilitator of Ikon<\/a> in Belfast, and the author of How (Not) to Speak of God<\/i><\/a> and The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief<\/i><\/a>, two of the best books on faith and the church that I\u2019ve ever read. (My review of the former book here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

I really have a great deal of affection for Pete.\u00a0 We\u2019ve only met a handful of times, but we\u2019ve struck up quite a friendship.\u00a0 He\u2019s off-the-charts brilliant, as well as funny, endearing, and self-deprecating (in a very Irish way).<\/p>\n

Last night we spoke about many things as about 30 people looked on.\u00a0 We pushed hard on some concepts of God and God\u2019s activity in the world, about the real shape and meaning of the biblical narrative, and about theism and a\/theism.\u00a0 Here\u2019s Pete talking about irony from last night:<\/p>\n

What I found most interesting was how we were received by the group.\u00a0 They were a group of well-heeled Greenwichers, many of whom work on Wall Street, and most of whom were probably a decade older than I.\u00a0 And they loved the conversation.\u00a0 These are not people who want a conventional Christianity, nor do they want a comfortable church.\u00a0 They found compelling our descriptions of a faith that, in my words, \u201cdisassembles us.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019ll reflect more on my time in Greewich over the weekend.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, speaking of irony, from his room at the La Quinta Inn to mine, Pete sent me this YouTube video this morning:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"