Insurrection

To Believe is Human. To Doubt, Divine.

By: Peter Rollins

Narrated by: Joshua Swanson

Length: 4 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

In this incendiary new work, the controversial author and speaker Peter Rollins proclaims that the Christian faith is not primarily concerned with questions regarding life after death but with the possibility of life before death. In order to unearth this truth, Rollins prescribes a radical and wholesale critique of contemporary Christianity that he calls pyro-theology. It is only as we submit our spiritual practices, religious rituals, and dogmatic affirmations to the flames of fearless interrogation that we come into contact with the reality that Christianity is in the business of transforming our world rather than offering a way of interpreting or escaping it. Belief in the Resurrection means but one thing: participation in an insurrection.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©2011 Peter Rollins (P)2011 Oasis

Good and Challenging and Encouraging and Wounding

but the good kind of wounding. probably will have to read it again. I did a lot of relistening to sections. very good and worth it for belief and not believing and used to believe and anything inside or outside of those made up categories.

One of the 10 eat theology books I have ever read

First, I do not agree with everything in Insurrection. But after a third reading, I'm not sure if the problem is just resistance on my part. Rollins is brilliant, challenging, winsome, and frankly right on so much I HAVE NEVER considered. Christ an atheist on the cross is the most challenging, and probably correct, exegesis I have ever struggled with. Listen to it once to yell at it and a second time to bathe in it. #pyrotheoelogy #thecrossmatters #itsnotaboutwhogetsin #tagsgiving #sweepstakes

The deconstructed cliff

I am guessing the perception of this book by new age Christians is summarized well in the quote on the cover. The problem with this is that you can think you are being pushed off a cliff by Peter, but he can't acknowledge what he is offering in the book is a safety net of another rewrite of Christian fundamentals. He is still working within the framework of the existence of a cliff. Once the cliff disappears, the conversation is meaningless, because life is. True honesty doesn't involve trying to convince yourself or anyone else that Christianity holds any deeper understanding of the world.

I was actually leaning toward a mystical view of a god being, collective unconscious, etc. after being a rather concrete thinking agnostic after being saved out of the baptist cult. Until this book. Without knowing he is playing on the side of the machines, Peter showed his cards that he didn't even know he had and blew the whole thing up for me in the process. Life is meaningless and we are all on our drug of choice. Including Peter. Including Rob Bell. Including me. Thanks for the helping me find the backdoor way to seeing life as barren, lonely, pointless and full of cheap thrills that are worth every last moment of enjoyment!

Christianity in HD

Its a little clunky in the beginning.
Once Rollins digs deep into his point however, it is quite a beautiful look into Christianity.

Listen again

This is one of those books, that to properly digest it you have to listen to it again. I have been following Peter for the last 2 years, and this is one of those works that sets to sail a thousand ships of thought.

Very challenging

What did you love best about Insurrection?

Applicable and relevant critiques of modern Christianity. Rollins meaningfully challenged my comfort level and gave helpful new trajectories. I am recommending this to all of my other friends who also desire healthy analysis and rupture of comfortable patterns of existence. May God truly rid us of our incorrect and often harmful notions of who God is.

Any additional comments?

At the end of the recording, there was an interesting phenomenon. The reader said,

Unfortunately I see ego

My Christian faith is deconstructed. While I would have enjoyed this book pre-deconstruction, I see a lot of ego in the story telling now. We only hear about Peter’s personal “dark night of the soul” in high school. It hits this reader, as if he is asserting he’s made this spiritual passage many years ago, and the rest of Christianity is so far behind him. He has no current tales of recent continual personal transformation. His anecdotes are of other people’s failings and ridiculous behavior. I’m in 12 step recovery for codependency. Here we learn to “change the things we can” which is only ever ourselves. This book was not a book about personal transformation, but a book of stones cast at others in church. We can’t change things by throwing stones.