Emergent & Me

A good friend recently commended a blog written by an exponent of the "emergent church" movement. I am most grateful for such help, and I am intrigued by the number of people who point me in the direction of emergent after listening to me rant. What intrigues me about this is that I have no involvement with nor leanings toward an "emergent church".

My exposure to emergent has been highly limited due mostly to the denominational affiliation of my seminary. Emergent is not really big here, but a few students like to affix that label to themselves. I prefer other labels, but that is another blog.

While I am not hostile to emergent, (Why should I be? I am a pacifist) I am skeptical of the movement. First, the name "emergent" seems to imply the birth of something new and previously unseen in church history. This sounds more like a "re-Enlightenment" model than anything that claims to be raised from the ashes of post-modernity. As if now, after deconstruction and the Holocaust, we know the secret and have the tools to get this thing right. I doubt it. Having a conversation is one thing, but expecting this conversation to culminate in the unification of all viewpoints is not a good idea. While I have not read of all of Brian Mclaren's book, the subtitle was enough to make me walk away.

And second, I am not totally dissatisfied with emerged churches. (Get it, emerged?!?) Two milennia of Christian expression and thought has produced a wide enough variety that I expect everyone could find one to belong to. If you are unhappy, do some homework and find a confession that fits your best insights. If emergent is just a contemporary attempt to find a perfect church, then it is going to be sorely disappointed in a few years. If it is, as I expect to be correct, a backlash against the GOP-leaning evangelical conservative establishment, then it is well-intentioned but unnecessary. Alternatives have always existed, in many forms. From Quakers and Mennonites to Anglicans and even Catholicism, there is much going on that could appeal to the disenfranchised socially-minded Christian.

So I am not planning on dropping out and planting a new church full of emergent-minded people here in the ruins of Christendom. I would much rather cast my lot in with an existing tradition, dealing with all the ugliness and nastiness that 2,000 years can accrue, than pretend I can keep from spoiling something pristine and unblemished by perpetually moving "toward" something that I do not intend to name.

This will have to do for now. Besides, I could never be in the emergent movement. I still use Windows. Maybe if I had a Mac I would see things a different way...