Thoughts on the Emerging Church
Just the other night, some friends and I were discussing the “emerging church” and what it means. Also, Pontifications has written an article on the “Emerging Movement” I found interesting.
The Emerging Church is an evangelical movement that is trying to bring the church into the postmodern era. It is in many ways a reaction against 1970s and 1980s evangelicalism, which accommodated to secular culture so readily. It is marked by less emphasis on reason, more emphasis on actions, and an appreciation for mystery. I used to identify with the movement. I have compiled a few thoughts on the matter. I recognize that the emerging church is a broad movement that cannot be easily pinned down simply by my experiences with it, or those the Pontificator highlights. However, I still want to offer some basic thoughts. I became interested in the emerging church movement while moving out of my evangelical protestant phase. I saw the weaknesses of classical evangelicalism, yet modernist liberalism wasn’t the answer for me either. Both shared similar rationalistic assumptions. The emerging church movement showed me that Christianity need not be hyper-rationalistic and individualistic. I came to this conclusion with the help of the Church Fathers and Catholic and Orthodox writers, but it was nice to see evangelicals getting in on it as well.
I started by reading works by Robert Webber and Brian McLaren, who identify with the emerging church. As an Episcopalian and former classical evangelical, I enjoyed a lot of what I read, mainly because the emerging movement rejects a purely mechanistic way of looking at religion, thus (in theory) rejecting the assumptions behind protestant liberalism and protestant fundamentalism. Plus, emerging folks tend to appreciate catholic worship, and are open to exploring the Catholic and Orthodox churches. In fact a fundamentalist article online calls the emerging movement “dangerous” because it has led so many into the Catholic Church (I am used as an example in the article). The Emerging movement also encourages dialog with other cultures and faiths, something new to evangelicals, but not to Catholics post-Vatican II. So I consider the movement to have many positive feature.
However, I do not identify with the movement any longer and see its many weaknesses. At the end of the day, the “emerging church” movement is just another evangelical fad, even though it is often billed otherwise. It’s “hip” to be emerging in evangelical circles these days, and some emergent types come across as arrogant because they are “in-style.” Yes, the emerging church is a reaction to the evangelical obsession with being “hip” in the 80s and 90s, but their goal is still to be hip and relevant, just in a postmodern way.
The movement (like other evangelical fads) takes a cafeteria approach, and even though emerging folks may like icons and candles (as pictured), and speak highly of tradition and ritual, they still ultimately believe and do what they feel like, submitting solely to their personal magisteria, making them eerily similar to the mainline modernists they disdain. Plus, the fascination with things Catholic is trendy now, but when it is not cool anymore, will it be discarded? I suspect that in 5-10 years emerging worship will look as outdated as any other evangelical fad, as a future generation of evangelicals pokes fun at the hokey “emergent church” of the turn of the 21st century.
My real “break” with identifying with the movement came when I read two of the newer books by McLaren and Webber. Webber essentially says that having the main worship service on Wednesday (to accommodate those who can’t get up on Sunday) is just fine, despite apostolic tradition saying otherwise (not to mention losing the resurrection day connection). He encourages a cafeteria approach to worship and theology, suggesting that infant baptism may not be a good postmodern practice (although some churches may still choose to baptize infants, if it is in their tradition to do so). While Webber tries to be Catholic to some degree, McLaren makes no such claims. In his book The Story We Find Ourselves in: The Further Adventures of a New Kind of Christian, one of the characters gets rebaptized after being baptized as an infant, because she wasn’t conscious of her first baptism. After reading these suggestions (not to mention other troubling things in these books), I knew that the emerging church may have a fascination with old forms, but the substance is still “believe-what-you-want” evangelical protestantism. Emergent Christians are fully willing to embrace secular postmodern thought just as the earlier evangelical generation so readily embraced modernist secular thought. Being cool and relevant still trumps 2,000 years of tradition.
I will grant that many in the movement truly are evangelicals moving closer to the Catholic faith (and away from 19th century fundamentalism and hyper-rationalism), and the emerging movement is the way they are getting there. So in that way I am glad that the emerging authors have helped others and me toward the Catholic Church. Also, I think the movement is showing evangelicals that tradition, rituals, mystery, and dialog are beneficial things. The real problem is that the emerging movement is in the evangelical protestant tradition, and therefore things like mystery, ritual, and tradition are reduced to fads (and optional fads at that). Yes it is good that evangelicals have moved beyond the fundamentalism of the early 20th century and the sappy accommodation to culture of the late 20th century, but replacing two protestant movements with another movement kind of misses the point, no matter how close the new movement is to the Catholic Tradition.
The point of emerging is to eventually become emerged. Being emerging for too long is like being stuck in the birth canal when you can just leave and enter the real world. In the end, better to be emerged than emerging.
December 13th, 2005 at 11:06 am
Amen, Amen! I too am saddened by this, but far better for the open-minded “Emergent” who is willing to listen to the Voice of the Spirit among the Fathers, ancient and modern, than for the hostile EV who is actively opposed to the Spirit’s presence and work among the people of God, and beyond - the latter will diminish and kind of wither as a result. Catholics and Orthodox (like myself) should at least strive not to give them occasion for this, as I’m sure we often do.
December 13th, 2005 at 11:15 am
Gregory,
I hope all is well with you! I hope you are having a blessed holiday season (not trying to be PC…just recognizing that for Catholics and Orthodox, there are multiple holidays this month).
You should consider setting up a blog.
December 14th, 2005 at 6:35 am
David,
thank you for your article that I thoroughly enjoyed reading. I feel your approach is one that shows respect and does not have such a scorny and aggressive undertone like sadly many others. In your article you desribe some traits how it is like to be ‘emergent’. You mention emergent people tend to believe what they feel like, and feels ‘cool’. I agree that this might be a danger. However, you also mention part of the tension of being emergent. Unlike hardcore evangelicals, emergent christians are open to consider different christian traditions to learn from them. Also accept differnt christian traditions. As a result, the very christian traditions that ‘emergents’ would accept, are turning around to them and warn other people of their influences. EV warn their folks because ‘emergents’ might be too close to catholics; catholics and othodox call them ‘very dangerous’ also, like in recent posts I read, not granting them even the status of being ‘christian’. So to be ‘emergent’ is not necessarily just an easy or cool thing to be. I understand it is a desire of a human and a christian to be ’safe’. to be ‘accepted’. To have someone that tells you exactly what you should believe and confirm that this is the truth. Evangelicals do that, catholics do that JW do that; … . Fundamental members of all of the above mentioned congregations would say that you can’t talk with ‘emergents’ about truth since they have a different understanding of what ‘truth’ is. But this might be because ‘emergent christians’ realize that all those who claim they know exactly what truth is and that thruth is something to have come to know for sure have all different ‘truths’ they hold on to.
Another important reason I feel the emergent church is facilitating is a platform where you can actually ask questions and have doubts. Fundamentalists from all churches have doubnts, too, but most people don’t try more than once to voice them. Just write in an evangelical, othodox or catholic blog some of your doubts you might have and things you might struggle about in your faith with God and see what happens. Maybe it would be very good and helpful to realize for some churches that many of their folks that attend their chruches actually have questions and allow them to ask questions. I have surprisingly many friends myself who are catholic and evangelical that have a very hard time to voice their questions in their churches. They will attend for a while and then retreat from congregations unsatisfied.
Maybe this is something you can take from your emergent chuch experience into your catholic parish that people are allowed to ask questions and have doubts without being condemned?
December 14th, 2005 at 6:46 am
Matthias,
Thanks for your comments. I do believe the emerging movement has many positive traits. In fact, in terms of being evangelical (if I still were), emerging would easily be the way to go. This is why I wanted to emphasize the many positive things about the movement.
Even though I no longer consider myself emerging (for the reasons listed above), I still retain many emerging characteristics mainly because I am postmodern. I do bring a postmodern perspective to my Catholic faith, and am always emphasizing the importance of embodied apologetics, etc, and I am thankful I learned about some of these things from emergent authors. I agree with what you say, especially the doubt bit, and I wish many of us would be less harsh with those who have honest questions.
I understand too that emerging folks are often bashed by other evangelicals. I know this to be the case from personal experience. However, I also know that in emerging circles there can be (not always of course) a certain smugness that comes with being emergent. Again, thanks for your comments and God bless.
December 14th, 2005 at 10:18 am
David -
As usual, a very lucid set of thoughts. We started what might be termed an emergent service at my parish. I never felt comfortable with it, and it never had a broad appeal. A lot could have been done to make it better.
However, what I felt like we were ultimately doing was reinforcing cafeteria Christianity. You like icons, great! You hate icons, that is great too! It was like walking into a trendy boutique in the Highlands, where the attraction was to vintage or retro wares. Sadly, it fell into the trap that Marva Dawn describes, in which God ceases to be both object and subject of worship. The songs described the way we “felt” about worship or God, but rarely if ever were God-directed. When it all came down, the service was about US, not about GOD.
Now I admit that there are other places that do emergent worship and do it well, and I have attended emergent worship at a number of places, and always find it lacking any true grounding.
December 14th, 2005 at 10:52 am
Robb,
I am glad you can offer the perspective of attending an emergent service. I have yet to attend one that is *purposefully* emergent. However, the ones I have heard described I had mixed opinions about.
Marva Dawn is an excellent author. Her books are great, and I think should be required reading in seminaries.
January 18th, 2006 at 7:56 pm
Greetings! I appreciated your thoughts on emerging. I’m also a former evangelical (methodist reared, Calvinistically adopted, then…poof! gone) turned Roman Catholic, who still struggles, daily it seems, with identifying with Catholic thought (esp. ecclesiastical hierarchy…).
I’m a little more optimistic about Emerging than you, but I certainly can understand what you’re saying.
Anyway, glad you’ve set this sit up. I look forward to reading more.