The Conversations of Our Times: Part two
The Emergent Conversations
(If you haven’t read the previous post you might want to do so for clarification) Although no one person speaks for the Emergents, so far the primary mover and shaker of this movement is clearly Brian McLaren. His book, A Generous Orthodoxy, is a basic primer for Emergents. But recently Tony Jones, the National Coordinator of Emergent Village has become one of the most helpful voices for those trying to understand Emergents. His book, The New Christians, is the best explanation of Emergents to date (although I don’t think the title helps the conversation.)
If you have followed my writings the past year you know I have voiced some concerns about the direction the Emergent movement is going, especially in the writings of Brian. However, The New Christians has addressed many of my concerns to the point that I’m not quite as uncomfortable with their inquiries into the meaning of Scripture. I recommend anyone read Appendix B “A Response to our Critics.” It is worth the price of the book. Jones clearly states that Emergents believe that no one comes to God except through Jesus. That should put many questions to rest and cause angst to others, but it settles my primary concern.
Emergents are hard to describe http://www.emergentvillage.com/. The National Park world (prior to 1980s) was an “either/or” world. You either did it our way or there was the highway. The Jungle (today’s world) is what I refer to as a “Both/and” world. Emergents practice a “both/and” approach to issues which makes it very hard to pin them down. They prefer shades of gray, albeit deep shades of gray, to something that is clearly definitive.
The best way to describe this movement is to start with their basic message: Emergents believe that it is no longer possible to hold on to the tenets and practices of modern day Christianity for two reasons; they are flawed and they don’t relate to today’s world. The postmodern world requires a new view of faith and new kind of Christian- a postmodern faith and a postmodern Christian.
The Emergent movement is all about entering into conversations about what it means to be a Christian in a postmodern world. The conversations focus around a yet to be determined theology and new way of life. The more conversations the closer they might come to truth. However, to them truth is more beauty more than fact. Truth is messy and beautiful but never objective or eternally certain. Emergents will speak with passion and urgency but never with certainty. To them there is no certainty, only what one believes today, at this moment, in this locale. In addition, they seem to leave open the option of their theology evolving beyond what we know as Scripture as well as a total reinterpretation of that Scripture. The good thing about Emergents is they are a gentle people actively and graciously seeking dialogue with divergent forms of thought.
The Key issue I have with the Emergent movement is this – Is the message of the Gospel actual reality and eternally true, or is it nothing more than a construct of our own language within the community of faith at this particular time in history in this particular place with this particular community? The emerging movement says we can never really know the reality of the Gospel apart from our communal language- that is our talk within the community constructs the gospel- which brings us very close to relativism. When accused of being relativistic in their thought they respond by saying everything is relative. Emergents remind me more of philosophers than theologians.
The Emergents want to change the theological dialogue so that it can have better conversation with the theology of the marketplace. They are rethinking how theology changes in culture, a very dangerous approach to ministry. I don’t feel as if we have to adopt a postmodern faith in order to reach the postmodern world. That’s far too much compromise. We also don’t have to adopt a postmodern faith in order to address the issues raised by these emerging leaders.
However, I do agree with them that we must adopt new methods of reaching the new world. Like we’ve heard many times- we must be in the world but not of the world. I agree with the authors that we can’t come on to postmoderns like gangbusters with an elitist attitude as if we have THE truth. I agree with them that the four spiritual laws no longer work. I agree with them that if we lead from the big story we are dead in the water. I agree with them (and with Viola) that the distinction between clergy and laity is not biblical and shouldn’t exist. I agree with them that the new world sees everything in shades of gray. But I do not agree that Christians must feel they have to be two steps removed from the reality of the Gospel in order to reach this new world. In fact, I think it is just the opposite. The clearer a leader is about the reality of gospel and the direction of their calling the more likely that person is to lead a growing and thriving community of faith.
I still don’t feel the Emergent movement is going to be the primary shaper of the new Christian world. I think it will be a part of it, but only a small part. Look at most of the emerging churches-they are small and you seldom hear about them. That’s because they believe and live as if small is better than big. They don’t even believe in planting churches in order to reach more people, nor do they believe in doing things to get people to come to their church. They plant churches only to save themselves, whatever that means.
So here’s my question for the Emergents. In a world where so many people are searching for spiritual guidance from so many venues, can you offer to take the position that Christians have to become like them in order to offer the direction they are seeking? Isn’t the Gospel always counter to the culture? Do you really believe broken people are going to be satisfied with never being eternally certain about anything? Do you really think people can have a personal relationship with Jesus when they know all that relationship consists of is the construct of their communal language? Do you really believe that people will believe that words brought Jesus back from the dead? Do you really believe you can reach the bulk of the population when you take the conversation as deep as you do? Or are you really only concerned with appealing to philosophers?
The Emergent movement is providing a marvelous conversation for all of us. They have revealed the naked truth- the emperor has no clothes. The established Christian church is basically dead and in need of A Second Resurrection. For that we can be grateful and enjoy the conversation to a point. It should continue to be a fun ride for those who are secure enough to question their own understanding of reality.
For an ongoing conversation on Emergents between Bill Easum and Tony Jones and others click here
Next week the Incarnational Conversations.
Bill Easum
www.easumbandy.com
August 26th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Several years ago when I was visiting an Emergent congregation (though before the name Emergent took center stage), the leaders commented to me that their main constituency was “burned out baptists.” While the Emergent folks I’ve spoken with over the years are Jesus oriented people, their public persona and “Emergentness” does seem to be tied to a reaction against a constricted Evangelical background/upbringing.
Most the non-Christians out there lack a desire or don’t get the need to Emerge from traditional Evangelicalism. As one who has tried to be an evangelical United Methodist, many of my responses to the movement have gone one of two directions: (1) Maybe you could learn from the Wesleyan tradition, and (2) How can I distinguish your theological trajectory from that which took United Methodism to where it is now (which to me, is an unhappy place)?
August 27th, 2008 at 8:19 am
My main issue with the Emergents has less to do with their theology … talk to three emergent practitioners and you’ll get at least four theological strands out of the conversation … and more to do with the whole direction the leadership has taken. I believe the Emergent movement started well. They were willing to abandon as much of Modernity’s trappings and traditions as they could in order to experiment with different models, forms, organizational structures, etc. The Emergents gave us excellent terms like Incarnational Church (which I believe is much more orthodox than you give credit for, Bill) and Organic Church. They helped the more traditional church take a look at practices, both ancient, pre-Reformation, and Reformation era.
Here’s where I take issue. Like most organizations, the Emergent movement has left it’s first love. It was once a movement of the grass roots reaching real people. Today the movement is one of verbiage and verbosity. It’s moved from the supremely practical to the ivory towers of accademia and scholarly rhetoric.
Do we need accademecians? Absolutely. But the biggest bang we need to be hearing from the Emergent group is about how to effectively introduce Jesus Christ to the pre-Christian or post-Christian or post modern or whatever moniker you want to use this week.
Bill Tenny-Brittian
Senior Consultant
Easum, Bandy & Tenny-Brittian
Blog
August 27th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Bill T. thats why I say they remind me more of philosophers than pastors or theologians. They seem to be applealing more to the head crowd than the average person
August 27th, 2008 at 8:38 am
My good friend and partner, http://www.billtennybrittian.com/, is correct about the Emergents. However, I dont remember mentioning the Incarnational folks, yet. I will do that next week.
August 30th, 2008 at 8:28 am
The reflection on the Incarnation as being not particularly orthodox was in your part one continuum where you label them just to right of the Emergent group whom you place on the far left.
I look forward to your next post that will perhaps flesh this out just a bit more.
Bill Tenny-Brittian
Senior Consultant
Easum, Bandy & Tenny-Brittian
Blog
August 30th, 2008 at 9:01 am
Bill T-B is so correct. I meant to write “traditional Christianity” instead of “Orthadox Christianity.”
September 1st, 2008 at 8:37 am
Every Emergent church I have been to has collectively more graduate students or college students with graduate school goals than the general population. I believe the emergent movement is missional, however, to a far select group of people, the, for lack of a better word, the intelligensia, of our day. Also, for what it is worth, the questions I hear being asked at emergent churches are far more engaging than the sermons at success model churches. It is like comparing to Bill Hybels to Dorothy Soelle. I will take Soelle anyday of the week over Hybels.
September 1st, 2008 at 8:42 am
One of my comments on the Emergents and one of my partner, Bill Tenny-Brittian is the same as yours- they are appealing to a small section of the general population. Which is fine; it just means that Emergent will remain a nitch among many other conversations. That’s one of the reasons I dont understand all of the hype around these conversations.
September 1st, 2008 at 10:39 am
I’m enjoying this series. A part of what makes it hard for me to hear is when someone whose world view was shaped at the apex of modernism critiques Christian responses to the post-modern world without acknowledging that their modern world view is not any more “biblical” than the Emergent or Incarnational or any other response. I don’t hear that in your critique.
Until I can acknowledge that my modern world view has captured my reading of the Scripture and have begun to disentangle from that, it will be hard for me to have a credible critique of this next emerging paradigm.
For 10 years I’ve worked in inner city Houston with a generation of folks who largely represent three generations of unchurched people (neither their parents or grandparents ever went to church). Doing so has changed me deeply and raised more questions than answers about my own world view that until a few years ago I would have called “The Truth.” Now I realize that I have a view. As my view is changing, I continue to hold it with conviction - but with a lot more humility.
September 1st, 2008 at 10:50 am
Im glad you are enjoying the conversation. And you’re so right- none of us can be sure about much in these changing times. Perhaps I should have taken more time to stress the facts of my humanity.
But you do need to know that I have acknowledged the fact that my life has been lived primarily in modernity. But I have prefeced the impact of Modernity on my life by reminding people I did not grow up in Christianity. So even though I was born into the National Park (See the first in the series) my teen age years were not shaped by the Christian form of Modernity.
Much of my ministry has been a passionate and negative critique of Christianity, trying to offer a way out of its slavery to corporate America and Descarte and all of the things that have sidetracked most of American Christianity prior to the 1990s.
I began trying to disengage from Modernity in the 1990s with the publication of Dancing With Dinosaurs. And one of the reasons for these conversations is my continued acknowledgement that everything must change (sorry Brian) execpt my relationship with Jesus.
thanks for reminding me I can come off somewhat less humble than I should.
September 1st, 2008 at 1:01 pm
[…] first post can be found here. It is interesting to read a clear and concise perspective from someone who sees himself outside […]
September 1st, 2008 at 1:30 pm
In case you couldnt follow Missio Dei here is his blog. it is well worth reading.
http://jonathanbrink.com/2008/09/01/a-response-to-bill-easum-part-1/
September 1st, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Jonathan,
Im responding to your response to this quote of mine
“They don’t even believe in planting churches in order to reach more people, nor do they believe in doing things to get people to come to their church. They plant churches only to save themselves, whatever that means.””
This is almost a direct quote from Tonys new book The New Christians. Just wanted you to know that. bill
September 1st, 2008 at 7:56 pm
The reality, post-modern or modern, is that the Church and the Gospel are all-ways contextual. Jesus is The Eternal Word, not the unchanging word. The Gospel has been a local phenomenon since the authors of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John raised up their messages for their own particular youthful Christian communities.
I continue to be amazed by the volume of Evangelical rhetoric that emerges in the Emergent movement. Is the message of the Gospel a call to “save” people for the hereafter or is it a dynamic message to convert the world through acts of faith so that Christians can offer the message of God’s Domain into the world here and now, based upon current experience and hermeneutics.
The whole argumentation of relativism is based upon the precept that the Gospel has stood the test of time in a concretized fashion. That notion has not been true since Christianity’s earliest roots and it continues not to be true today.
September 2nd, 2008 at 10:58 am
well, I think the Gospel is about two things: Bringing the Kingdom to this world and saving individuals to both live that kingdom life and to prepare them for eternity.
September 2nd, 2008 at 4:16 pm
As someone who continues to move within emergent circles, but not exclusively, and who equally values the missional conversation, I like to quote Grenz (who sounds a lot like Newbigin here).. “Therefore, we agree that in this world we will witness the struggle among conflicting narratives and interpretations of reality. But we add that although all interpretations are in some sense invalid, they cannot all be equally invalid. We believe that conflicting interpretations can be evaluated according to a criterion that in some sense transcends them all. Because we believe that “the word became flesh” in Jesus Christ, we are convinced that this criterion is the story of God’s action in Jesus of Nazareth.” To me this echoes John Franke’s “hermeneutic of finitude” while not being afraid to “name names.”
September 2nd, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Sorry, the source of the above quote is “A Primer on Postmodernism.” And btw, the emergent conversation is very diverse and I what I hear above sounds mostly like a caricature.
“It is surely a fact of inexhaustible significance that what our Lord left behind Him was not a book, nor a creed, nor a system of thought, nor a rule of life, but a visible community. He committed the entire work of salvation to that community. It was not that a community gathered round an idea, so that the idea was primary and the community secondary. It was that a community called together by the deliberate choice of the Lord Himself, and re-created in Him, gradually sought - and is seeking - to make explicit who He is and what He has done. The actual community is primary; the understanding of what it is comes second.” Lesslie Newbigin, The Household of God, 20.
September 2nd, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Len, ive tried hard not to caricature Emergents. I have taken my thoughts from their writings and they themselves have said Ive been fair. And i agree with you that the converation is very diverse. However, The New Christians does try to summarize what Emergents stand for. Have you had a chance to read it.
September 3rd, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Bill, you mentioned why the hype around the emergent conversation. I think it is not necessarily hype rather it is just that the niche, and I agree niche, is very computer savvy and high functioning in organizing gatherings, booking big speakers, etc. I don’t wish to be classist but as the population is highly motivated academically and follows through on its goals, it does the same with what it’s “niche” which makes it look really big, which it may not actually be.
September 5th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Your initial post above has been cross-posted on the Emergent Village website (http://www.emergentvillage.com/weblog/blogologue-part-1-bill-easum) and there are a number of comments for you there. I posted there myself (although I was intending to post here and forgot which site I was on!) so here’s an excerpt I’d like to share with you.
You ask; “Is the message of the Gospel actual reality and eternally true, or is it nothing more than a construct of our own language…?” I think it’s both. The Gospel is an actual reality that is eternally true – and – our ability to understand it and communicate it is always an imperfect, conditioned, contextual approximation. It’s an approximation, because both thinking and speaking rely on language, which is a “jar of clay” in which, thankfully, the treasure can actually be found. Put another Pauline way, not only do we see through a glass dimly, but we also think and speak through smeary lenses as well. But we *do* see because there really is Someone there on the other side of the glass: namely, Jesus. I think that accounts for how you were able to find in Tony’s book that many leading Emergent voices, including McLaren, gladly affirm that “yes, we believe that Jesus is the crucified and risen Savior of the cosmos and no one comes to the Father except through Jesus.”
(A related issue is that “truth” and “knowing” in the Bible are more about relationships than facts in the first place. Jesus shatters the modern category of Truth when he says “I am the truth” for example. If anyone is interested, I’ve written more about that here: http://feralpastor.blogspot.com/2007/09/talking-about-truth-with-evangelicals.html.)
You also ask the missional question: how is this conversation supposed to reach beyond the philosophers? I believe that the Emergent conversation is very relevant to the faith of believers in general, but it does need to “trickle down” a bit for that to show. It’s like what I’ve encountered in science, where there are theorists who come up with ideas and experimentalists who then test them out, but eventually it comes to the people doing applied science to make something useful out of it. Sometimes that takes a while, and often it’s difficult to foresee the practical applications.
One application I am seeing is this: idol smashing. In my tradition, we appreciate Luther’s definition of a god as whatever you fear, love, and/or trust above anything else. It seems common to me for believers to make idols out of their theologies, their own understanding, and the belief in a set of facts called Absolute Truth. These intellectual idols are loved and trusted above all and generate visceral fear when they are threatened. The postmodern critique has the power to dethrone these idols. (It actually undermines them by removing our absolute confidence in language, which is the foundation of all theologies and knowledge. Sort of a “trickle up” attack from below.)
That does cause some people tremendous distress, but it’s so important because it forces us to remember that the object of our faith is not a set of beliefs but Jesus himself, and the content of our faith is not confidence in those facts but rather trust and confidence in Jesus as savior. So, if we all take out theologies off the throne and down a notch it makes it clearer that we do share the same faith (trust and confidence) in Jesus. That can help believers treat each other more like one body rather than rival factions, which would be great for our public witness in the world.
September 6th, 2008 at 9:04 am
Tim, I just posted on Emergent Village and responded to you and the others who have commented. I appreciate this conversation because I want to understand the movement