The Emergent Church...
I've been hearing a bit about the "Emergent" (or Emerging) Church "conversation" lately (proponents refuse to call it a movement). So this morning, I read through an article in Christianity today and through a few Emergent Church websites.
To be completely honest, I'm a bit underwhelmed by what I saw.
The first difficulty I have is that no one can exactly define what the Emergent Church is outside of general statements about bringing ancient worship practices into a post-modern context. From what I can see the Emergent Church is reticent to outline its exact beliefs. However, there do seem to be certain key things which make up the movement (oops...I called it a movement). First of all, there seems to be a strong emphasis upon dialoging with a broad range of Christian traditions. This in and of itself is not necessarily bad, but requires greater discernment than most followers of the movement seem to have (granted, most proponents will deny the charge of relativism, but there do seem to be tendencies in this direction). Second, there appears to be great emphasis upon leaving "modern" philosophical categories behind to embrace the joy of post-modern "mystery" over rationalistic discourse. The result is a strong desire for the mystical and sacred (i.e. especially using art, music, etc. to create a contemplative atmosphere). There is some truth here, but I wonder how much most followers of the Emergent church actually know about "modern" and "post-modern" philosophy. For example, Modern philosophy has definitely had its problems (the foremost being its love affair with "objectivity"), but thinkers like Immanuel Kant have made us aware of the influence of our personal assumptions in our understanding of reality (n.b. I am not endorsing Kant). Another thing that bothers me about all this is the the rigid classification of ideas into "modern" and "post-modern" something which, as one Wheaton College professor noted, is decidely (and ironically) "modern." The truth is that it is very difficult to historically draw lines between pre-modern, modern, and post-modern ideas. The all are quite interconnected on the ground-motive (i.e. driving force assumption, etc.) level.
Returning to the Emergent Church's fascination with the mystical and sacred, I have to admit that my Neo-Calvinist spine tingles when thinking about it. Much of what the Emergent Church promotes is nothing more than a dressed up, post-modern version of Roman Catholic mysticism. This is especially evident in the push for "contemplative prayer" and the Lectio Divina. Now, am I saying that everything espoused here is bad? No. I have great respect for certain members in the Roman Catholic mystical tradition (e.g. Michael Molinios, St. John of the Cross, Augustine, etc.). My frustration is that the emergent church wants to emphasize the very things about the mystical tradition which I would want to shed. Namely, the promotion of the division between sacred and secular (which is nothing more than a Christianized version of Platonism). The resulting divide anticipates a split between two versions of Christians, those who partake of the sacred and those who are simply secular (i.e. in a non-sacred sense). I don't think that the Emergent Church dialogue is to this point yet, but I predict that it will eventually end up here (as its forebearers in Roman Catholicism did--e.g. the monastic movement). A second thing which fits in with this division is the Emergent Church's desire to experience God. The very way it articulates this sounds like Thomas Aquinas' chain of being theory, where the individual through meditation, etc. experiences the Being of God (I believe it was St. John of the Cross who talked about 10 steps to divine union with God. Bernard of Clairvaux had a similar view.).
All of this follows the pattern of demoting "boring" Christianity (i.e. all of those people who don't have the "experience of God"), to a "sub-spiritual" level.
To me, as I look it over, the Emergent Church seems to be simply a remix of monastic mysticism, and the Praise & Worship movement. No doubt proponents will suggest that I have missed the point, and if I have please let me know. I just can't buy it all, the Old and New Testaments propound a very "boring," earthy Christianity which knows nothing of Hellenistic mysticism.
To be completely honest, I'm a bit underwhelmed by what I saw.
The first difficulty I have is that no one can exactly define what the Emergent Church is outside of general statements about bringing ancient worship practices into a post-modern context. From what I can see the Emergent Church is reticent to outline its exact beliefs. However, there do seem to be certain key things which make up the movement (oops...I called it a movement). First of all, there seems to be a strong emphasis upon dialoging with a broad range of Christian traditions. This in and of itself is not necessarily bad, but requires greater discernment than most followers of the movement seem to have (granted, most proponents will deny the charge of relativism, but there do seem to be tendencies in this direction). Second, there appears to be great emphasis upon leaving "modern" philosophical categories behind to embrace the joy of post-modern "mystery" over rationalistic discourse. The result is a strong desire for the mystical and sacred (i.e. especially using art, music, etc. to create a contemplative atmosphere). There is some truth here, but I wonder how much most followers of the Emergent church actually know about "modern" and "post-modern" philosophy. For example, Modern philosophy has definitely had its problems (the foremost being its love affair with "objectivity"), but thinkers like Immanuel Kant have made us aware of the influence of our personal assumptions in our understanding of reality (n.b. I am not endorsing Kant). Another thing that bothers me about all this is the the rigid classification of ideas into "modern" and "post-modern" something which, as one Wheaton College professor noted, is decidely (and ironically) "modern." The truth is that it is very difficult to historically draw lines between pre-modern, modern, and post-modern ideas. The all are quite interconnected on the ground-motive (i.e. driving force assumption, etc.) level.
Returning to the Emergent Church's fascination with the mystical and sacred, I have to admit that my Neo-Calvinist spine tingles when thinking about it. Much of what the Emergent Church promotes is nothing more than a dressed up, post-modern version of Roman Catholic mysticism. This is especially evident in the push for "contemplative prayer" and the Lectio Divina. Now, am I saying that everything espoused here is bad? No. I have great respect for certain members in the Roman Catholic mystical tradition (e.g. Michael Molinios, St. John of the Cross, Augustine, etc.). My frustration is that the emergent church wants to emphasize the very things about the mystical tradition which I would want to shed. Namely, the promotion of the division between sacred and secular (which is nothing more than a Christianized version of Platonism). The resulting divide anticipates a split between two versions of Christians, those who partake of the sacred and those who are simply secular (i.e. in a non-sacred sense). I don't think that the Emergent Church dialogue is to this point yet, but I predict that it will eventually end up here (as its forebearers in Roman Catholicism did--e.g. the monastic movement). A second thing which fits in with this division is the Emergent Church's desire to experience God. The very way it articulates this sounds like Thomas Aquinas' chain of being theory, where the individual through meditation, etc. experiences the Being of God (I believe it was St. John of the Cross who talked about 10 steps to divine union with God. Bernard of Clairvaux had a similar view.).
All of this follows the pattern of demoting "boring" Christianity (i.e. all of those people who don't have the "experience of God"), to a "sub-spiritual" level.
To me, as I look it over, the Emergent Church seems to be simply a remix of monastic mysticism, and the Praise & Worship movement. No doubt proponents will suggest that I have missed the point, and if I have please let me know. I just can't buy it all, the Old and New Testaments propound a very "boring," earthy Christianity which knows nothing of Hellenistic mysticism.
posted by Nevada @ 2:04 PM
2 Comments:
At 8:29 AM,
John Mahan said…
If it is true that they are reaching back to Catholic Mystics, I am curious why they don't also reach back to Hebrew tradtions. My cousins went to a Messianic Synogogue for a while. From my limited experience with this, there were songs, dances, instruments from the Hebrew tradition, only they recognize that Jesus is the come Messiah. I think it has an even greater appeal of "old," but without the mystical feel. There is a greater sense of "Jesus has fulfilled."
Cool, blogger has a word verification now to avoid blog comment spam.
At 9:51 AM,
Nevada said…
John,
Good question. I would be much more comfortable with that. Once again, the difficult thing about the Emergent church is that there is no real consensus even among adherents....From what I can see, everyone sort of does their own thing.
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