I Hate the Emerging Church
March 25, 2008 | 9:07 am
Last night I was catching up on my feed reader and came across a link to this humorous post called You Might Be Emerging If…
The post is quite funny, and to be honest it doesn’t bring up a contention with the Emergent movement within the church as much as people’s “need” to draw lines and create camps of Christian (and other) thought.
This is the portion that bothered me the most:
You use these words in a positive way:
Missional, Liquid/Aqua, Ancient-Future, Post ___________, Jesus, Community, Derrida, Liturgy, Global, Creed, Experience, Social Justice, Conversation, Spiritual, Ritual, Beauty, Art, Blog, Ooze, Journey, Discussion, Open, Random, Culture, Technology
You use these words in a negative way:
Foundationalism, Absolute Truth, Church Growth, D.A. Carson, Calvinism, Modernism, Fundamentalist, Bush, Seeker Sensitive, Preaching, Pulpit, Doctrine, Innerancy, Power, Enlightenment, Rationalism, Meta-narratives, Universal, Judgmental
As I look through this list of words I identify positively with a number of them on both lists, and this is what kills me. The Emergent and anti-Emergent movements like to cast a lot of these things as if they were mutually exclusive, and they (quite simply) are not. And to be honest, there are some that I’m not even sure what they mean… (Ancient-Future, Foundationalism or Ooze anyone?)
The list of ones that I use in a primarily positive way are:
Missional, Liquid, Jesus, Community, Global, Creed, Experience, Social Justice, Conversation, Spiritual, Ritual, Beauty, Art, Blog, Journey, Discussion, Open, Random, Culture, Technology, Absolute Truth, Church Growth, Calvinism, Modernism, Seeker Sensitive, Preaching, Doctrine, Inerrancy, Power, Enlightenment, Rationalism, Meta-narratives and Universal.
What I don’t understand are what it is about lists like this that make people feel that the things on them need to be mutually-exclusive. In my understanding of the world at-large there are constantly beliefs and truths that seem to be exclusive and irreconcilable, but they often are. While I probably fall into a category that some would call Fundamentalist, it doesn’t mean that I don’t value people’s stories, experiences and artistic and subjective expressions of faith that are personal. While I lean towards Calvinism, I am convinced that it does not have to be something that is off-putting to people struggling with personal meaning and direction as we all perceive life as being self-directed and therefore find a need for personal meaning to our actions and our beliefs.
We must strive more towards unity in the worship of Christ regardless of it’s expression. Where I will largely credit the Emergent Movement (I don’t really hate it) is that they seem to strive to understand others’ perspectives moreso than Christians who are Modernist, Calvinist and Fundamentalist… and that moves toward unity. Our unity needs to be in Christ, not our church or our doctrine, but Christ himself.
Charles Spurgeon, the Puritan Baptist Mega-Church pastor from the 19th century had it right when he said that we all have fellowship and communion in the sacrifice and body of Christ – that we are united (even when we don’t like it) by our common love and reverence for Jesus Christ.
Jayson,
You say you “hate” (are frustrated by?) the emerging church because “the Emergent and anti-Emergent movements like to cast a lot of these things as if they were mutually exclusive.” I have to confess that I find this really perplexing, because, in my experience, folks on the emerging/Emergent side of the discussion are usually the ones who are quite comfortable with the tension and interplay of theological ideas (Brian McLaren’s “Generous Orthodoxy” being perhaps the quintessential example of this). It’s folks on the fundamentalist side who are attempting to cast things in a black and white, in or out kind of way.
If/when emerging/Emergent folks respond with their own false dichotomies, I agree with you that this is not right. But it’s an understandable (if regrettable) reaction to the kinds of accusations and attacks being thrown at us.
We have unity (in a spiritual sense) through Christ. Now we need to put flesh on that and live into that spiritual reality through relationship with other Christians, and we do that through conversation and bridge-building. I see far more openness on the Emergent side to this relationship-building and friendship than there seems to be on the other side of the proverbial theological-ecclesiological aisle. Has your experience been different? I’d be interested to hear more. Thanks for posting this.
Shalom,
Steve K.
Steve, first off, thanks for the comment.
In reality the title is a little bit of a misnomer, I don’t hate the emergent church at all. What I hate is the false dichotomies that emerge (ha!) in the discussions that come from (honestly) both sides of the discussion. Perhaps I haven’t encountered “true” emergents but I have heard those who seem to identify strongly with the movement deride the traditional church pretty scathingly.
The primary issue that I have is the flag-planting, territorial, labeling, campy (putting people in camps, not B-movies) way that people cast the discussion (or debate). And, in my experience, it occurs equally from both sides. My point is that the issues are not at all mutually exclusive; you can be a Calvinist that values the artistic and existential expression of the faith and the subtle beauty that lies within while at the same time pointing to the Bible as the final rule of faith and practice. Some of the issues are when those of us who do lean more toward the traditional institutional side believe that those rules of practice do not allow for more fluid expressions of faith.
In the spirit of full-disclosure, I do need to say that the title of my post was an attempt at drawing attention to the post to bring about more discussion on the topic. Sneaky, perhaps; but it seems to be working.
Grace & Peace,
Jayson
Jayson, I like the post….I agree with you on pretty much everything. It doesn’t make sense to make these mutually exclusive terms to me either. As you’ve somewhat posted before, there are some great things that the emerging Church is doing and I agree with. I also don’t have problems with people like Brian McLaren raising the question of whether or not the virgin birth is true or other religions are equally valid, but to actually believe these things is a different story, and I’d be hard pressed to call this person a Christian.
I also believe that the Bible is quite clear on most topics (at least it is to me). I don’t want to cluster all emergents in one category (I really enjoy Mark Driscoll and believe he is doctrinally sound), but it is black and white in my eyes on most of these issues that emergents raise.
It’s not like the issues they raise are even “emerging”; they’ve been asked for centuries.
While I think you’re right about the black/white-ness of a lot of the issues, it seems that you might be misunderstanding what the emergent church is about (or maybe I am). It has seemed to me that they are mostly about taking a step back and reevaluating how we do church today. Sometimes it looks like questioning theology, but more often I’ve seen it take the shape of questioning the form that our churches and christian activities take when we’re acting them out.