What is via ex machina
The Way Out of the Machine
Welcome to Via Ex Machina: “ The Way Out of the Machine.”
It’s a term we’ve derived by blending deus ex machina, a literary device, and via, the Latin word for “the way,” a term the first Christians used to describe their faith pilgrimage following in the footsteps of Jesus. In ancient Athenian drama, deus ex machina was the literal, mechanical lowering (or raising) of a divine figure onto the stage to turn the tide of the story when the main characters found themselves stuck in a seemingly hopeless situation.
We see this theatrical contrivance as a metaphor for the artificial manipulations that continue to take place in our own contemporary world. The people and powers behind the scenes manipulate the action on all manner of cultural, social, and political stages. These manipulations perpetuate racial, social, and economic stratification and help shape a non-threatening cultural narrative for those whom the status quo serves well and makes comfortable.
This is “the machine” Via Ex Machina exists to confront and disrupt and find a way out of, especially where “the machine” has infiltrated and influenced the Church.
VIA EX MACHINA IS
A platform for voices, perspectives, and ideas that challenge the status-quo and disturb the machine-like cultural, political, economic, and religious systems that foster inequality.
We seek to advocate for prophetic social justice at the intersection(s) of faith, art, and culture and to offer creative resources for the engagement of God, self, and community in hope of what the Church can be and become following in the footsteps of Jesus.
The people of Jesus weren’t called to form an institution.
They were called to follow a Way:
A way of love, a way of justice, a way of purpose valuing all people, not as commodities or conformities, but as human beings made in God’s image with whom God seeks to dwell and through whom God can and does speak.
Thank you for joining us on the journey in pursuit of the Way out of the machine.
