Dalit theology and Christian anarchism

My new book is now available. There are links to where you can buy it from at the related blog here. It's RRP is £50 but I've seen it for as little as £37.50 already. 

This book is as much my journey into anarchism as anything and it's how I got started on Christian anarchist dialogue. I was writing a PhD on Dalit theology with a supervisor with expertise in postcolonialism and the Bible. The more I looked at Indian liberation theology the more two important questions presented: Why has liberation theology stalled? What is a western response to all these theologies from the margins?

As a white, western, privileged man I found most of my answers to these to questions in the radical theology of the anarchists and the historic peace Churches.

I think it's a unique contribution but I hope it's a helpful one.

Pagan Christianity

Today I feel pagan.

It strikes me that both the worship of the wafer and the obsessive monotheism of Christianity are symptoms of a religion that has grown up in the context of civilisation and empire.

The Eucharist is a profound symbol of Christ's presence among us and his brokenness for us of a meal celebrated by and for all. But it is also a fetish of the staple food of civilisation - bread. Bread being from grain and grain being a food that only thrives in disaster-hit land and denudes it of both richness and moisture. So we search for more land and more water - destroying fertility, settling other people's hunting grounds, creating nations, salinating and desertifying land. The history of civilisation in a nutshell / grain kernel.

Judaism and therefore Christianity developed from henotheistic nomadic anarchy into monotheistic urban monarchy and with it the mores and liturgies of religion.

It may be that only paganism can save Christianity from it's imperialism. And why not? One good turn deserves another. The early British Christians 'Christianised' pagan Britain perhaps it's time modern animists paganised Christendom Christianity.

Perhaps then the symbol of wafer and credo monotheism can also be saved. Personally, I think they're worth saving.