According to an interview with John Milbank on the PBS website, Rowan Williams, the current Archbishop of Canterbury, emphasizes the importance of imagination in spreading Christianity. Milbank states Williams believes that "if you unleash the imagination, you grasp much wider dimensions to truth, and you're open to the kind of truths that religions are talking about." I became aware of the connection between John Milbank and Rowan Williams after reading an article on the Killing the Buddha website called God's Own Knowledge by Jeff Sharlet, which dealt with Radical Orthodoxy, a new movement seeking to revitalize Christianity. In short, Radical Orthodoxy decries the vapidity of postmodernism and deconstructionism. Yet it harnesses techniques developed by postmodernists like Michel Foucault and deconstructionists like Jacques Derrida to make the nihilistic postmodernist/deconstructionist worldview turn in on itself.
The animation running above, which requires a high-speed Internet connection, represents my attempt to thread a path between deconstructionism and spirituality.
© 2005 Peter Schmideg