Transgressive Devotion: Theology as Performance Art

Academic theology is in need of a new genre. In "Transgressive Devotion" Natalie Wigg-Stevenson articulates a theological vision of that genre as performance art. She argues that theology done as performance art stops trying to describe who God is, and starts trying to make God appear. Recognising that the act of studying theology or practicing ministry is always a performance, where the boundaries between what we see, feel, experience and learn are not just blurred but potentially invisible, Wigg-Stevenson brings together ethnographic theological fieldwork, historical and contemporary Christian theological traditions, and performance artworks themselves. A daring vision of theology which will energise anybody feeling ‘boxed in’ by the discipline, Transgressive Devotion blurs borders between orthodoxy, heterodoxy and heresy to reveal how the very act of doing theology makes God and humanity vulnerable to each other. This is theology which is a liturgy of Divine incantation. In other words: this is theology which is also prayer.

Table of Contents:
Opening 1 Father 27 Spirit 53 Son 87 Church 114 Salvation 139 Humanity 172 Closing 196 Acknowledgements 204 Bibliography 207 Index 217

About the Author :
Natalie Wigg-Stevenson teaches Theology and directs the Contextual Education Program at Emmanuel College, Toronto. Her research focus is on how ethnographic methods help create theological conversations across church, academy and everyday life. She is the author of "Ethnographic Theology: An Inquiry Into the Production of Theological Knowledge". She is the co-chair of the ‘ecclesial practices’ group at AAR.

Review :
“This is a mesmerising and suggestive book that reworks what it means to be a theologian” "Transgressive Devotion will take your breath away, at first, but it will return it to you in new form and with new energy, if you follow where it leads. With Wigg-Stevenson as your guide and muse, you’re invited on a pilgrimage through (in)famous performance art pieces and real-life theological discussions. By keeping company with others feared and familiar, ancient and contemporary, Wigg-Stevenson seeks to open herself and her readers to new ways of being faithful. Beautifully written, profound, and moving." Gorgeous, moving, and marvelously queering, Wigg-Stevenson’s work feels like falling through a series of trap doors located at the foundations of our faith — places of instability that have, until now, been off-limits. The result unfurls a vast, new territory of theological exploration that pushes past constraint and taboo. In this new land, there is room to roam and reconstitute our relationship with God. In language that is precise, poetic, subversive and unflinching, Wigg-Stevenson embraces the invitation of performance art to bump up against the borders of decency. In the process, God is both undone and illuminated; the moralizing, normatively, and assumptions that have so long held theology captive are unbound. An excavation of the author’s own landscape of doubt, faith, and ecstasy, the work reveals that the places where theology tears and frays are, in fact, the sites of a live relationship with an untamed God. Here, the old, old story can, as it should, cause us to tremble. Certainly it can seem that performance art is now an old and institutionalised form without the scope it once had for failure, and for transgression, to which we are all latecomers, participating in awkward re-enactments or studying footage. Perhaps this sense of belatedness, or rather of being both too late and too early, is what makes Wigg-Stevenson's comparison so compelling.