So I have arrived at a somewhat tentative conclusion regarding the Emergent/Emerging Church (see a previous blog), and in like Emerging fashion, I wish to share where I’m at on my journey.
[From here forward my greatest fallacy is that I will generalize all who fall under the umbrella of “Emergent”. Because the movement is so difficult to define, such generalizations are impossible to avoid, and so to avoid endless qualifications I make only this one: that not everyone who considers themselves to be emergent will agree with the generalizations below, my generalizations are based on the most popular, the most influential, and the most perceived expressions of the movement.]
You may recall my frustration over the seemingly hair-nose pulling task of defining this movement or “conversation”, especially in light of lumping solid respectable orthodox scholars such as N.T. Wright in the same pool as guys like Doug Pagitt. The true difficulty here is somewhat resolved by coming to an understanding and/or making a distinction between the words “Emergent” and “Emerging”.
Most writers I have come across are aware of a distinction, but almost none (at least that I have read) believe that the distinction is worth pulling out. And so I frequently read authors say things like “… emergent and emerging...” near the start of their book with a footnote below which will say; “some distinguish between ‘emergent’ and ‘emerging’, but for the purpose of my book, the two will be interchangeable”. For example; in Phyllis Tickles’ recent book on the Great Emergence she says that her overview uses the phrase “‘emergent and emerging’ Christians to indicate that the two are not quite the same thing” [p.163].
Perhaps – at least in so far as ‘in print’ goes – Scot McKnight is the only author I have come across who feels compelled as I do to make such a distinction, he says: “I maintain a crucial distinction between two related streams: emergent and the broader emerging movement. Emergent is crystallized in Emergent Village and its leaders Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, and Doug Pagitt. Emerging is a mix of orthodox, missional, evangelical, church-centered, and social justice leaders and lay folks. When I think of this broader emerging movement, I think of Dan Kimball… Alan Hirsch… and Donald Miller” [Christianity Today, 11/08 edition, p.60].
I wholly agree with McKnight that there is a crucial distinction to be made, and I admire his attempt to crystallize that distinction by drawing a clear line between the “Emergent Village” and those emergents who are not part of the Village; but I would probably take the substance of that distinction a step further. For me, the difference between “Emergent” and “Emerging” is the difference between “Liberalism” and “Post-Conservativism”. While post-conservatives seek to sincerely continue in their reform and understanding of things, they – in so far as I understand them – firmly stand within the tradition of solo scriptura as the final authority of all matters pertaining to the faith. On the contrary, those who by-in-large are, or align themselves with, the Emergent Church have sought – either consciously or unconsciously – to displace that authority with something else (see below). And when that happens, when the “authority of God exercised through his Word”, is replaced by an emerging church – which is what it is in order to keep pace and “relevance” with the emerging secular culture at large – Liberalism is inevitable. It’s the old Liberal/Conservative battle of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century all over again; albeit under a new guise and entering in stealth like fashion to infiltrate the Church from the back door.
This assessment may be unfair – I don’t mean it to be and often try and describe a movement in terms which those in the movement themselves would use – but it is how I have perceived the sum-total of Emergent voices.
When Doug Pagitt declares a rejection of the idea of original sin, even after listing several scripture passages which support the age old doctrine, then claims that the doctrine was created by Augustine and is a misreading of these bible passages [p.127 ff.] – without, I might add, attempting to offer a so-called ‘correct’ reading to the passages in question – and that he is not going to let anyone tell his friends and family members that they are “evil to the core” [p.130]; the authority of God as it is exercised through his Word becomes annulled! Is this not Liberal theology? What authority does Doug now have outside of himself?
Phyllis Tickle has suggested that if Doug (and most other Emergents’) were asked what authority they hold to, they would answer “in scripture and the community” [p.151]. This is not to be confused with the Catholic concept of the Authority of Church Tradition and the Scriptures (Church and Bible); for the heart of the Emergent movement is that it is (and always will be?) changing with the emerging culture, and consequently, its’ beliefs must therefore continue to change in order to adapt (and be an effective ministry to?) the culture at large; this is evident in the rejection of ‘original sin’ and the embrace of ‘homosexual relations’ by many within the movement. So unlike the Catholic idea of Tradition and Scripture, which seeks to (1) avoid conflict between the Church beliefs and the Scriptures, and (2) to maintain continuity with each previous generation, the Emergent Church is willing to (1) ignore as irrelevant or explain away frivolously any bible passage that may conflict with the emergent ‘feel’ of the moment (such as Pagitt’s use of the scriptures motif of original sin above) and (2) embrace discontinuity with each previous generation as society changes and evolves.
So authority in the Emergent mind can be expressed in what is called “Network Theory” [p.152]. The Church, capital C, “is not really a ‘thing’ or entity so much as it is a network in exactly the same way that the Internet or the World Wide Web… are not ‘things’ or entities” [ibid]. This concept is called “Crowd Sourcing”: “The end result of this understanding of dynamic structure is the realization that no one of the member parts or connecting networks has the whole or entire ‘truth’ of anything, either as such and/or when independent of the others. Each is only a single working piece of what is evolving and is sustainable so long as the interconnectivity of the whole remains intact” [ibid].
What I gather from all of this is that the Emergent Church plans to remain ‘in process’ in an undefined, perhaps disorganized and organic way. As such, they will evolve naturally and as a community together so long as they remain connected to the whole (must there be a center?), and as they evolve their use of the scriptures will also evolve and their interpretation of it will change in light of each evolutionary leap (if the current social/ecclesial evolutionary leap is the acceptance of homosexual relations, will the next one be an embrace of polygamy?).
But then the question arises; if they must be connected to a whole in order for this concept of authority to work, what then – if anything – is the center or glue that binds them all together? Being that the Emergent Church still (at least currently) call themselves “a Church” and refer to themselves as “Christians”, it seems to me as I read both about the Emergent Church and from their own writings, that the name ‘Jesus’ is tossed around like happy hour at the bar. This is one theme that can’t be missed in the writings of Emergent Christians; from Dagitt (his recent book: A Christianity Worth Believing In; yet he rejects fundamental Christian doctrines), Tony Campolo (with his uncanny allegiance to the red letters in the bible), Brian McLaren (when one reads Brian’s material one can sense the tension between his desire to hold on to many orthodox things and his inclination to move beyond them) and Tony Jones. The latter is surveyed by D.A. Carson in his book, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church. In it Carson shows how Jones writes to the audience of the seeker-sensitive churches against their anthropocentric way of doing church, and he exhorts them to move toward a more christocentric style of worship [p.36 ff.]; it’s not about ‘feeling’ good, it’s about WWJD, it’s about feeding the poor, making the planet green and things like that.
But now we have to ask ourselves, what exactly did Jesus say and do? In a recent radio interview with WMUZ personality Bob Dutko [I believe it was aired sometime between Nov. 27th and Dec. 2nd, 2008], Doug Pagitt opposed Bob every time he (Bob) re-worded what Jesus said. For example; (this is not an actual example from the program, but a fictitious example of the dialogue that took place), if Bob said, “Jesus said that he is the only way to the Father”, Doug would argue, ‘no Jesus did not say that’; and Bob would be forced to look up the passage and quote it verbatim before Doug would be satisfied. In other words, unless you use the exact words right down to syllabification and accents without ever saying it any other way, it is not what Jesus said. Yet this brings into question all translations of the bible which, according by Pagitt’s standard, is not really what Jesus said either since Jesus didn’t speak English. This in turn calls into question the Greek Manuscripts which we have and by which we translate from, since most scholars believe that Jesus probably spoke predominately in Aramaic, even though the Gospels, some twenty years later, were written in Greek. This in turn concludes that we do not have the “verbatim words of Jesus” and cannot be sure what he said and did.
And so now we have a movement that is built around ‘a Jesus’, an idea of Jesus, an image or icon that can be lifted up like Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. Someone who gave his life as a sacrificial example to be followed; let us copy this example so that the human race may prevail. And so the Jesus of classical Christianity, the Son of God who died (and rose again!) to take away the sins of the world and to make things right has been reduced to a relativistic post-modern idea or icon to be followed as a good example.
So I feel compelled at this point to ask the most terrifying question of all; are Emergents even Christian? What I mean is whether or not they call themselves that, should they be recognized as a part of the Body of Christ, or have they traveled outside the bounds of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ in the fullest and most articulate sense of the phrase? I believe the question itself is a fair one, but it may be impossible at this point to give an accurate answer without over generalizing in terms of salvation; something I am not prepared to do.
Surely there are many and maybe even most within the Emergent movement who are Christians, but I am equally sure that there are some within the movement who hold fast to the name Jesus, yet they have abandoned the tenants of the faith. Wayne Grudem writes; “To say ‘false teaching harms the church’ is perhaps just to state the obvious, but in a day marked by much pluralism and subjectivism it bears repeating. The very existence of the epistles in the New Testament testifies to the importance that the apostles placed on sound doctrine! In the epistles, sound doctrine is taught again and again, and error is implicitly or explicitly corrected. This is the case in every New Testament epistle” [Beyond the Bounds, p.134]. Yet many in the Emergent Church today are singing a different tune, one that exchanges “dogma” and “doctrine” and “correct thinking” for right action, helping people, going good things, and turning the earth green. Yet I ask; can we not have both, did not Jesus teach both orthodoxy and orthopraxy, believe right and feed the poor? But the Emergent alliance with subjectivism, relativism, and political correctness negates such a possibility. We cannot have a “Jesus is the only way” and a “Buddha may be the way also” at the same time.
In one respect I wonder what kind of future the Emergent Church has. Will it fizz out over the text twenty years into a bunch of forgotten rebels from the dawn of the century much the way the Jesus People movement of the 60’s and 70’s no longer exists? Will they retain a lasting effect but ultimately be absorbed into the wider Christian world as the seeker-sensitive churches of the 70’s and 80’s (I owe these thoughts to Carson, p.53)? Or will they snowball ahead into the next Protestant reformation that will change the landscape of Christianity forever (as Phyllis Tickles has suggested)?
I cannot answer these questions, what I can say – from one who was on the brink of joining the ranks of the Emergent and House Church movements, and is climbing back, while maintaining a post-conservative approach to the faith – is that we within the Traditional framework of the faith have a lot to make up for. The sooner we realize this, the better. As a young guy who was raised in the same generation of the Emergents, I was drawn like a moth to the flame as to what they wrote. I was tired and bored of the traditions that seemed to have lost their authenticity; it seemed everything about “church” had lost it’s authenticity from power hungry pastors with serious control issues to “clicks” and “cool clubs” that leave the not-so-cool guy and the not-so-talented guy on the outs. From standard “how-to” evangelism classes which sound more like a sales pitch then sincere missional work, to internal schisms that destroy lives and cause many to abandon the faith. The Emergent Church – frankly – sounds good. But without orthodoxy, without right thinking about what Jesus said, the absolutes he claimed and the teachings of those he commissioned, there can be no true Way, but only a form of the Way (by doing good things) but without its substance (denying its power – which is the true and absolute Gospel – cf. 1 Tim. 6:3; 2 Tim. 3:5; Romans 1:16). If orthopraxy does not meet orthodoxy there can be no Christianity. If good works does not meet right belief there can be no following of Jesus, what he did and taught!
Yet in this criticism of the Emergent movement, there is a crucial point for us to learn: “Movements [such as the Emergent Church] are diverse, complex and frequently (for better and for worse) called into being because the traditional churches are failing, or perceived to be failing, in some way” [Carson, p.54]. The very existence of the Emergent Church is a call for the rest of us to examine ourselves, not just individually, but corporately!
Pray for the Emergent Church, and pray for the rest of us also, as Jesus taught; “Our Father in heaven / Holy is your name / Your Kingdom come / Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.
Derek
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