There is a movement in The Church right now that is gaining momentum. It is alternately called "Emergence" or "The Emerging Church." One problem with the title to this post is that The Emerging Church is hard to define. One observer likened it to trying to nail Jello to a wall. In poking around YouTube I found a description of four (4) senses of Emerging that varied widely.
Now I confess that I have not read Dr. Tickle's (with a last name like mine I never make fun of anyone else's last name) book, "Emergence." But I had the opportunity to view an in-depth interview and discussion around her book on DVD. So I am working with the definition that she provided over the span of this extensive DVD series. She is not the only one who has "written the book" on Emergence, but she is certainly one of the key players. I will also mention Brian McLaren.
Dr. Tickle sets out an impressive history of The Christian Church. She has discovered and shared that there is an upheaval that takes place in The Christian Church once every 500 years (pretty much like clockwork). In this upheaval, traditional understandings of authority are questioned, and rejected, and then over a few hundred years, new authorities are established. As you can imagine, things are pretty "tense" during the time when one authority source is swept aside and and another has not yet taken its place. She posits that we are currently in that time. The authority of Scripture as "inerrent" and "infallible" has been swept aside, and no other authority has as yet risen to prominence. She describes this upheaval as "a rummage sale" or "yard sale" in which some things are sold off while others are retained.
Now I have no reason to doubt her assessment historically, or sociologically. This seems to me to be a fair description of postmodernism in which we find ourselves. (I will not take the time to reflect on whether we are now in post-postmodernism.) The question, of course, centers on what gets "sold off" - discarded.
The first and most obvious is the authority of Scripture. This is definitional to the current time since that is the "outgoing" authority. So the first reason I am not emergent is that I reject the need, the propriety, to assume away the authority of Scripture as "the norm of ... faith and life." (Oh yea, there's that pesky oath again that Lutheran pastors all take to become pastors.) To be sure, emergent pastors say that they honor and apply The Bible. But every post, every article, every video, from Emergence I have seen or read has the qualifier implied "except the parts that we now know better than and make no sense to us."
What else is set aside? Substitutionary atonement "has to go." Earlier in my discussion of substitutionary atonement I quoted Dr. Tickle in her DVD presentation of her book stating that the concept of atonement does not appear in The New Testament. This is nonsense. Also "down the drain" is an actual hell. In a documentary, Brian McLaren, one of the "fathers" of the movement stated that substitutionary atonement is unconscionable and must be rejected, along with a literal hell.
A recent article in The Alban Institute e-newsletter posited that if we would just stop talking about "the exclusivity and universality of the Christ event" (Jesus is The Way and The Truth and The Life and The only way to God) we would get way more young adults in our churches. It's not popular. It's not nice. It's not open-minded and tolerant. (But what if it's true?)
As I mentioned above, there may be many levels of emergence. Emerging Worship as a way of giving glory to God I am all for. Remember Leonard Sweet, "I will put The Living Water into any container from which people will drink. The Living Water never changes; containers change all the time." I am all for ways of worshiping that are engaging to people and connect them to God. But our understanding of the God we worship has boundaries. We are not free to simply accept any opinion regaring who God is. (Interestingly, in the documentary I viewed Leonard Sweet was thrown into the Emerging Church movement, when he wrote personally and directly to me that he believes The Emerging Church movement is a mistake, a turning away from The Church Christ has called us to be. It's complex and confusing.)
An example. Quite a few years ago now I was talking to a young adult friend in Latvia about the challenges of staying committed to Christ through college. When he exited the train a few stops before me, a woman came up and said that she had overheard our conversation and asked if I would read something and tell her what I thought. I agreed and read the passage she indicated in her book. She asked what I thought and I told her I thought it was nonsense. She was taken aback by this, of course, and asked, Why. I said that the passage was all about The Temple and the worship in the temple. There was no discussion of God at all. The Temple is useless apart from The God of the Temple. God is the focus of worship, not the temple. She was Bahai, and as a Bahai was not at all concerned about the God of the temple, but the worship in the temple itself. Bahai can worship whatever god they want in the temple. But we are the Church of Jesus Christ (not Later Day Saints). We do not have that "luxurgy." God has revealed Godself through Jesus Christ, God the Son, and in and through The Holy Bible, by God the Holy Spirit.
When it comes to The Emerging Church, the things I am prepared to "sell off" at "the rummage sale" are so few when it comes to God and salvation, that the sale becomes a waste of time and energy.
I am not emergent.
No comments:
Post a Comment