The impact of Gilles Deleuze's philosophical corpus resounds within and resonates across disciplines as diverse as physics, psychology, political science and the performing arts. Theoreticians and practitioners in these and other fields have been discovering what his literary body can do – and what can be done by extracting the revolutionary force of his massively energetic texts. My project is the extraction of resources for the production of an iconoclastic theology. I will argue that Deleuze's whole oeuvre is a theological icon-breaking machine that liberates thinking, acting, and feeling from the repressive power of Images of transcendence. His work is not only this, but all of his work is also this. This introductory chapter sets out my plan for tinkering with Deleuzian concepts, connecting them with insights from the bio-cultural sciences of religion, and releasing revolutionary forces that have for too long been domesticated within the discipline of theology.

In his last book with Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy?, Deleuze insisted that “Wherever there is transcendence, vertical Being, imperial State in the sky or on earth, there is religion; and there is Philosophy only where there is immanence … only friends can set out a plane of immanence as a ground from which idols have been cleared.” Throughout his writings, Deleuze hammered away at all sorts of figures of transcendence, psychological and political as well as priestly. The task of the Deleuzian Friend is clearly a destructive one, especially when it comes to religion.