The Great Emergence
This post is written by Rev. Carol Howard Merritt, the author of Tribal Church and a member of the Presbymergent Coordinating Group. It is cross-posted from her blog, Tribal Church.
I recently read The Great Emergence. It is an important piece in the conversation and there’s a lot to talk about in it. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s an easy read, and it’s friendly for lay people. Phyllis Tickle places the emerging church in the context of gritty history, and her writing style shines when she reminisces. The way that she details the women’s movement, for instance, is charming.
Tickle has a refreshing perspective, and much different than most Episcopalians that I’ve met. As an example, she highlights John Wimber and the Vineyard Church has an important moment in church history, while I’m often hard-pressed to find a mainliner who knows what that is.
At the heart of Tickle’s analysis, there is the question of power. And in particular, she points out the threat to sola scriptura. In the Reformation, “scripture alone” (along with the five other sola’s) became the source of authority became the passionate cry for so many who wanted to critique the Roman Catholic Church.
And now, in the midst of postmodern upheaval, with the evolution of literary criticism, we are beginning to realize how one cannot rely on the words of Scripture alone. There has to be someone reading, there has to be someone interpreting. And since we are all different, with a multiplicity of passions and histories, when we sit down with the Scriptures, we cannot divorce ourselves from the process.
We bring ourselves into it. We have on that page, not only the words, but also the context of the author. And the choices of the translators. Add to that, we have our own our educational background, our personal history, our historical context, our motivations. The page gets very crowded. And so, we realize that a plain reading is not possible. When there is a text, there is disagreement. And sola scriptura breaks down.
So, where is the power now?
It is in Scripture and in the community, the conversation, the network.
I appreciate the way that Tickle broadens the conversation, explaining the upheaval not only from the conservative corner of the church (which we most often hear about), but also pointing out what is happening with Social Justice Christians (Mainline denominations like PCUSA), Liturgicals (Episcopalians, Lutherans, and Roman Catholics), Renewalists (Charismatics, Pentacostals), and Conservatives (Evangelicals).
There are a couple of places that I have some disagreement, maybe in what was left out more than what was there. Although Tickle brought up the women’s movement and much of her conversation hinged on Diana Butler Bass’ important idea of sacred re-traditioning, I was hoping that she would write more about women.
All of the amazing and fresh work that is happening in theology, where women’s voices are being heard and taught. They have been earth shattering and courageous as they have take on texts of terror and demanded that their perspective be heard in our academies, with all of their particularities. What women have been doing in our pulpits for the past fifty years, surely that has shaken the foundations of Christendom. Feminist critiques, whether they be from Julia Kristeva or Rita Nakashima Brock, have had a highly significant impact on our faith in the midst of postmodernity.
Unfortunately, The Great Emergence does not reflect the great diversity of gender or ethnicities that are causing shifts in American religion. It is an account of players who are almost exclusively white males. This is not a new critique of the emerging church, and certainly not a new one from me. I was just hoping that Tickle would bring a much-needed corrective to the conversation.
There are other points of discussion that I could bring up. For instance, we could talk about technology, crowd-sourcing, and whether is it truly egalitarian (Albert-Laszlo Barabasi’s convincing me otherwise).
There also seems to be a sense, from Tickle’s analysis of the gathering center, that there are pure emergents, and others who are more on the edges (she nods to the metaphor of rose petals).
I would tend to disagree with this. It seems to me that we are all emerging from something, but Tickle seems to be saying that those who are emerging from evangelicalism are somehow more central to what is happening in the whole Christianity.
Am I understanding this correctly? And if I am, if evangelical emergence is at the heart, then that could explain the movement’s propensity for glossing over important women’s voices.
I’ll close with a question. In the pages, Tickle says that the hyphen-mergents (presbymergents, Angli-mergents, Metho-mergents, Luther-mergents) will need to decide, “Which are we, and where do we belong?”
This aside is probably the one place where I disagree with Tickle the most. I am a postmodern Presbyterian. I may not fit into a chart very easily, I may not fit into my own denomination very easily. But I do not feel any pressure to make a decision one way or the other about who I am or where I belong.
So, what do you think?
Comment by Mark on 3 October 2008:
I’ve not yet read the book, but this post gives me a lot to chew on. I’ll be honest and say I don’t feel safe answering your final question in a public fashion. I don’t sense the kind of support in my presbytery and in the denom as a whole to take that risk. I’ve been slapped down too many times. Sorry to say that, but I’m being honest.
Comment by Carol Howard Merritt on 4 October 2008:
Good point. Being so far away from the ordination process, it never occurred to me that one might feel hesitant to answer.
Comment by Mark on 4 October 2008:
Carol, the sad thing is that I’m an ordained MWS with over 13 years experience.
Comment by Carol Howard Merritt on 5 October 2008:
Whoa! Really? I guess I should be thankful that our Presbytery is so open to all things emergent.
Comment by Mark on 5 October 2008:
It’s not that my presbytery or congregation are opposed to emergent ideas, per se. It’s that there is great suspicion of anything that is not “traditional”. It was a similar environment in the last presbytery I served, and in most of the congregations I’ve served. I commented that, “I’ve been slapped down too many times” to answer your closing question. That was for ministry innovations I attempted before I knew anything about emergence. To be sure, there are pockets of support for diversity in my presbytery, but I’m not serving in one of them. The last time I did was my seminary internship a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Then the Empire struck back….
Comment by Steve Hayner on 5 October 2008:
Tickle has made a great contribution to the conversation, but many of her comments about John Wimber (particularly the “factual” comments) are not accurate. This is a part of the book that could have used a lot more fact checking.
Comment by Drew Ludwig on 6 October 2008:
Right now I am both (Presbyterian and Emergent), but I don’t have too much hope for Presbyterians lasting too long, because I am more and more convinced that Presbyterians don’t get it.
It works best for me to be both, for now, but the future will be post-denominational.
Comment by Troy Bronsink on 8 October 2008:
Carol: I like the notion of a post-modern presbyterian but I think thats a bit like saying a post-modern modernist. Unfortunately so much that is “formally Presbyterian” requires modern work, making it nearly imposible to be post-that. And yet presbyterianism, in so far as it is reformed, seeks to be pre-formational, pre-final, unfinished. I think we might fit with Tickel’s proposed “hypens” in this sense. And I think we then do have to ask the question, as p/re-formers, whether we are defined by the past or by what is to come?
I love the scripture sung by the Benedictines at the end of the gloria, “The God who was, and is, and is to come, at the end of the age.”
I read a great article today on the roll of gen-xers in the culture war between “knowledge management” and “social media.” I think that presbymergent might be a truly gen-x thing, and that the future of presbyterianism might be re-formed in a social media, millennial way. I play with that a bit in my post http://churchasart.com/blog/2008/10/09/gen-x-culture-wars-and-the-hyphenated-movements/
perhaps we could flesh more of this out over time?
Comment by Bob Pearson on 17 October 2008:
I may be adding this too late, but The major idea in the book that just glared out to me was the question of where we place the source of authority. Sola Scriputura was the foundation of the protestant church for nearly 400 years. The question she raises is what is the source of authority in the new emergence that we are in and moving toward? She does not give an answer, and your positing that it is in both scripture and the community just seems to be a transition point, and not the “final” answer for this emergence.
This question of authority seems to come up in many emerging conversations. I am more on the “liberal” side and talking with others in the more “conservative” side nearly always comes down to a question of Biblical interpretation, but the real question seems to be authority.
I want to posit that the new source of Authority is somehow to be in the Spirit of God as discerned by faithful people in a community that is practicing living in the kingdom 24/7. We must use the ancient practices as Brian McLaren says in his new book to tune our selves and our communities to the will and voice of God through the Spirit in nearly real time, and not rely on past interpretations or future possibilities. We must learn to live in the Spirit 24/7. This is hard. This is totally countercultural. This is post modern. This is very frightening. But it seems to be where we are being called to be.
So lets draw the courage and the energy rom the Spirit of God to live, love, and be as God created us to be and not as we have created our selves to be for he last 10,000 years. Time to grow up as real humans living out the image of God we are.
Comment by Carol Howard Merritt on 21 October 2008:
Drew, Troy and Bob,
There’s so much in this conversation that I want to explore further, and I’m finding it difficult to cram it all into a blog comment. But there often seems to be some basic assumptions that we seem to work under, that I would love to pull apart and look at more.
I guess the main one is this: evangelicalism is more postmodern than denominationalism.
It seems that many of the strong, even foundational, beliefs of evangelicalism make no sense in postmodernity (i.e., biblical literalism). And the cultural assumptions about women, sexuality, politics, or manipulative conversion tactics are utterly archaic.
Of course, these are things that evangelical emergents are working to deconstruct.
However, we know that we are all emerging from somewhere. As a woman who is emerging from evangelicalism and denominationalism, I think we sell our denominations short.
Yes, our denominational structures were built in a time and place that is far removed from our current realities. Yes, they will certainly need to be formed anew in a postmodern world.
But, we cannot deny the things that we have. Our commitment to educational inquiry and vital questioning. We have allowed and encouraged the Holy Spirit to move through women (and often it has taken the structure to ensure that women had a voice). We have had a commitment to reading all the voices in the text. We have a love for poetry, liturgy, and prayer. And we have a far-reaching commitment to social justice. Even in our heart-wrenching discussions over LGBT ordination, we have had a commitment to wrestle with what our church will look like in our context and culture.
We are in a post-denominational world. No doubt about it. Our mainlines moved to the sidelines long ago. Yet, God’s still moving through us and among us. And, there are many things that men and women who are emerging from evangelicalism are going to have to work long and hard to overcome in order to catch up with postmodernity.
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