The Orthodox Heretic: And Other Imossible Tales - Softcover

"Rollins has already established himself as a major voice and an astute, generative force within the emergence Christianity. The Orthodox Heretic is his most accessible and engaging work to date."--Phyllis Tickle

"Pete Rollins writes with clarity and compelling conviction."--Frank Schaeffer

"I remember driving around Belfast with Pete, sitting in the front seat listening to him tell these parables that he'd written--thinking, 'Everybody needs to hear these.' And now you can." --Rob Bell, author of Jesus Wants to Save Christians

As Peter Rollins, a barroom philosopher from Northern Ireland with a Ph.D. in postmodern theory, re-imagines the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus and His disciples collect food from the crowd, bless it and eat like kings in front of the starving multitudes. In another "impossible tale," a man dragged before a court on charges of being a Christian is enraged when there is not enough evidence to convict him. Difficult, challenging and transformative, these 33 subversive parables get under your skin and become impossible to ignore, until they start to change not just the mind but the heart.--Relevant Magazine, September 2009

'This book should be banned! It's DANGEROUS!' ** So might any Christian say for whom faith functions like a comfortable chair and a lot of good will. If you are comfy and satisfied, then what you have might not be faith after all, explains Peter Rollins.Christian faith only has meaning if it affects the ways that people live their lives. For many who are not Christians, critiquing Christianity from the outside, this sort of 'faith' appears all-too common and is an easy target. Perhaps Christians are simply those possessed of an ideology that keeps them passive, childlike, and ineffectual, they seem to think.Rollins has crafted a series of parables that shatter these realities and popular perceptions. Parables that demonstrate how genuine faith is radical---and has never been concerned with escaping the world we inhabit, but rather, with engaging in it more fully. That genuine Christian faith has never capitulated to injustice but rather fought against it at every turn. In opposition to those who would claim that Christian faith embraces God at the expense of the suffering world, Peter shows how the true believer embraces God only inasmuch as he fully embraces a needy world.'I remember driving around Belfast with Pete, sitting in the front seat listening to him tell these parables that he'd written---thinking, 'Everybody needs to hear these.' And now you can.'---Rob Bell, author of Jesus Wants to Save Christians