He's apparently a self-described heretic.

What was going on for me as I listened to him: Interesting, challenging, intriguing, questioning, thoughtful, engaging, depressing, hopeful, faithful, heretical, annoying. Here he is psychoanalyzing Christianity:

ARM,

Is heresy akin to mythology ... all being beyond the comprehension of hard things like the law ... a human fallacy? Gotta be as the law is not yet large enough to cover all incidents in warped space ... the human psyche ... which is hardly logical and reasonable considering the excess of emotions ...

But if you don't believe in soul ... how could limited being get a grip on the biblical unseens? Wisdom that is planely out 've here as Pan!

One just has to draw catagorically on beyond being ... thus that is what is Toby/to be? It's still dark ... film noire spreads ... satyrs on what we don't know? Really thows a curve to those that have faith they know it all (everything, g_d)? Such defines abstraction that witch's wicca'd lyre in completion! Some really come unstrung as being quantumly examined ... in chance details ...

They don't like you to go there peering into their recessive jinns as King Leer in ... that inside Eis? Maybe a frigid Isis that causes a chill when you contemplate some of the things we've dunne in ... as part and parcel of isolation of Maan ---Merelin!

He was fairly regular on homebrewedchristianity's podcast when I was listening regularly. Love him but have only heard him speak on various podcasts and haven't actually read his books yet. A bit cheeky but also very intelligent in his approach to faith (he's actually a philosopher rather than a theologian IIRC).

Mendalla

I spent awhile checking him out. I'd like to read one (maybe more) of his books. Interesting stuff. I'm simultaneously attracted to and put off by it. I watched one video with him and Rob Bell, and thought "a bit flakey", but I went to his blog and enjoyed reading it. Quite challenging, not flakey. Still processing it.

Is philosophy (love of knowledge and wisdom) bad to those that believe they already are familiar with everything (god, cosmos, etc)?

Any thing of new nature could shake up institution-ism ... a moving or Jared sense as ij Arian? Maybe ij'ariette if you substitute the "h" for a crude y (ij) in the way the language on paper evolved ... ark you lyon fashion ... or Herculean as rendered down ... how myths flow ...

Fixations don't understand this as they're stuck on LOGOS enigma ... but they didn't wish to understand the unseen part as un scientific ... or work of sole ... bottom line foundation? Some fall all over it and can't see the rapture ... as a void! Requires cyclic full fill ments or scro'd rounds ... ba-gaels?

This guys been on my mind. Uh, oh. Lol. Actually, this might be someone my husband could relate to. I see parallels. He might even go to church with me if Rollins was speaking. Or, at least at an open mic at a pub. There's no sugar coating. He's a non-institutional Christian. Life is hard, we're broken. Live with it. And you'll find joy in the small stuff. People bonding through their brokenness. No BS. That's very real.

Well, I hadn't actually heard the name before, but when I read the list of the people who influenced him, I immediately resonated with him: Mystic! Experiential spirituality!

Any good Christian has to be a heretic. To the orthodox Jews of his day, Jesus probably was a heretic.

Oh, do read or listen to some Rollins, Arm. I think you'll love him. He's Irish and not afraid to show it, too. About as entertaining as philosophy/theology can get.

Mendalla

Any relation to James Rollins who wrote  Map of Bones?

Having such a thing in your closet might creep some out ...

Thanks for that link, Kimmio, very interesting. I googled some more youtubes of him and will forward them to some church friends who are not so fortunate to use WC as a resource. It will be a good starting point for discussion.

this was my first experience with Peter Rollins

no more 'atheism'. no more 'theism'.  mere words...

young people are pretty schmart...trying out so many different things, laughing, playing...no wonder their parents (like the UCC) can be confused by them, going 'b-b-but you're supposed to hold sacred and love what i do...' as they go away, laughing and experimenting into the future...

oh, and his voice is a total turn on for me

Don't you love you helliotropic smiles as light gathering talent of the unconscious sous a learning? 

Can you imagine emotions that obvious? Thoughts are more subtle ...

This goes against the stoic frown of the patriarchal inhibition thereof ...  :-( !    The exclamation point being an expletive caught in the old phart's throat as he was about to say omega'd they-Ire thinking about emotions ... whatever wile they l' earn?

Perhaps devious  ... perhaps just satyrs ... hated by corrupt authority in resonance ... with what is oppressed ... you just can't do nothing alone ...

Sum phunny dervish is always observing ... even in the dark ... say so in the bible ... in the parts disregarded by those that thought Beta 've ID ... this is called redacting or rendering ... to be done out doors due to the chance of vapourus explosions ... destructive de stillation of the fat of the mind ... there's a pile 've ID!

Yes, mere words!

What a lot of blather! This guy must have kissed the Blarney Stone more than once! The Irish just love to hear the sound of their own voice, eh?

Sure, his ideas are great. But I have little patience with people who embellish their point to the point of boring the listener. I, personally, am greatly in favour of clarity and brevity, in writing as in speech. I quickly lose patience when a speaker does not come to his point within a few sentences. Long-winded rhetoric is not my forté. I prefer to read. Then I can skim over the blarney, and distill the essence.

New Age, New Atheism, New Religion. What else is New? To me, spirituality is experiential, and spiritual expression is the artistic expression of spiritual experience. It is always old and new. And, in artistic expression, there is no right or wrong. The expression of spiritual experience is as unique as the experiencer and the experienced. We are the cosmos experiencing itself and expressing our experience through the medium of our choice.

Why is my verse so barren of new pride?

So far from variation, or quick change?

Why, with the time, do I not glance aside

To new-found methods and to compounds strange? 

Why write I still all one, ever the same,

And keep invention to a noted weed,

That every word doth almost tell my name,

Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?

O know, sweet love, I always write of you,

And you, and love, are still my argument;

So all my best is dressing old words new,

Spending again what is already spent;

For as the sun is daily new and old,

So is my love still telling what is told.

So oft have I invoked thee for my muse,

And found such fair assistance in my verse,

That every alien pen hath got my use,

And under thee thy poesy disperse.

Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing,

And heavy ignorance aloft to fly,

Have added feathers to the learned's wing,

And given grace a double majesty.

Yet be most proud of that which I compile,

Whose influence is thine, and born of thee:

In other's works thou dost but mend the style,

And arts with thy sweet graces graced be;

But thou art all my art, and dost advance

As high as learning my rude ignorance.

-William Shakespeare

You will also find references on JesusJazzBuddhism and on face book Process Philosophy for everyone,

You might rather read some of the articles on his blog, Arm. Yes, he is a little bit long winded, but a couple of his points make sense. It really seems as though he's giving a critical "psychoanalysis" of Christianity and has come to some honest conclusions. I liked his metaphor about God being an ocean, we are a vessel immersed in the ocean- we contain some of the ocean but the ocean contains all of us and is so much more vast than whatever little bit we can contain. I think he has some good ideas. His ideas are a shift away from pre-fabricated notions and expressions of faith- he's saying some of those notions and expressions are not honest. However, his honesty seems too hard to take, a bit nihilistic to some, perhaps.

Shamayim? Go way with yah ... and thus the waters departed ... as the muses required for love of some dry land ... and there they fell!

Speak of LOGOS and fallacy! There they went with a great smear ... some say something that's coming/calm'n/common. Would this be a gathered sense?

Yes, Kimmio, I'll gladly read his articles. Then I can skim over his Irish longwindedness and distill his essence. I'm sure I'll agree with the essence of what he says.

Like Inanna, I didn't really mind listening to his accent. ;)

I like his accent all right, I just have no patience with people who don't quickly come to the point of what they are trying to say. If I want to listen to melodious speech alone, it would be different. But when I listen to philosophy, I want to hear philosophy, not melody.

 But this is my shortcoming, not his!

Like this which was called a special blessing from anonymous sources ... yet recorded in Romans 15:4  NIV ... as a real Roman couldn't say such things .. thus it was writ, or rite as a fixed silent speach ... soap boxing or catharsis-like so it could wash ... about in a Zea of time ... such is a Cae Sar out there in the upstanding world of  E mote'm ... discomboobulated ET-Xs?

Did I mention about the English moto Ca? It'll carry you through the physical realm as sole will in the mental world ... some think mental people are right out of here like Webster's definition of intellect! Thus in generalized romantics intelligence is a myth ... but not specific ... if can exist as a fallacy elsewhere than in myth (beyond ammon, d' emmet)!

Infallability ... thus takes flight ... creating flashes of insight ... sometimes referrd to as apocalypse now when you have 8 in hand that the reins of 4 hoer sis ... eiM that are dim mere in eL when they get going faster than is controllable ... like de mayer of de soul ... as sort of Shadow persona of he that is the main hoersman ... that's the page buoy'd on the wind as propaganda spreads about areopagites ... flyers that sometimes are delivered by male men. This could go on in phtttzzz ... like bumps in the quantum field ... bi chance!

Now again does god play deis (in literary fashion) if that individual of mental fields is pure love and is out of thought? This allows for flaws, Rifts and RIPP'eyres in the entire bull ... sometimes known as moloch-entire if you can catch how if goes around ...