Who knew?
The creators of the National Council of Churches’ 2006 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches have decided that the two hot trends at the beginning of the 21st century are blogging and the “Emerging Church” and that one of the places that postmodern, hip, emerging church leaders do that dialogue thing they do is at GetReligion (honest).
I don’t think we need to define what a “blog” is for those who visit this site, but it is interesting to see how editors at Church Executive define that vague (yet very news-media-friendly) term “Emerging Church”:
The Emergent Church is defined by Yearbook Editor, the Rev. Dr. Eileen W. Lindner, as a “conversation” (some would say movement) birthed in 20th century Protestantism and “characterized by a robust, energetic and growing online and hardcopy literature” that attempts to shape responses to contemporary culture.
Common attributes of the EC, Lindner believes, are an emulation of the person and ministry of Jesus, a fondness for anecdotes and stories as means of discovering truth, a focus on mission, and a stress on the centrality of worship, even in experimental forms. … Emergent Church has become so popular among evangelicals that an EC track appears on the agenda of the National Pastors Conference sponsored by Zondervan and InterVarsity.
If you want to compare that with the Wikipedia materials on this movement (or anti-movement), then click here.
The NCC yearbook listed 25 blogs and websites as being crucial to the Emerging Church era and its emphasis on communicating ideas — old and new — and probing the roots of Christian worship (on the way to creating highly individualistic new forms that are ultimately very modern and “free church”). Here’s that link again to see the emerging blog list — check it out.
I have been writing about some of these trends for a long time, back to the days when people referred to “post-contemporary worship.” Here is a chunk of an interview I did in 1999 with one thoughtful observer of these trends, the Rev. Daniel Harrell at Park Street Church in Boston:
If the Baby Boomers shunned churches that they thought were pompous and boring, then their pierced, tattooed and media-numbed children appear ready to shun churches that feel fake and frivolous. The key, according to Harrell, is that worship services must feel real. Services are judged to be authentic when they feel authentic. …
“(People) are borrowing things from all of these traditions, often without realizing that some of these symbols and rites may even clash with each other,” he said. “It’s easy to be cynical about this, but they really are searching for something. They are borrowing other people’s images and rites and experiences, as part of their own search for something that feels authentic. They are trying to step into the experiences of others.”
So who is the closet emerging-church mole at GetReligion?
It goes without saying that Eastern Orthodoxy is about as premodern as one can get. The Divine Ms. M is a very traditional Lutheran and young master Daniel Pulliam is an old-fashioned Presbyterian. Ah, but does his church sanctuary have giant video screens that can show icons as well as Matrix clips?
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Comments (8) |
April 3, 2006, at 5:13 pm
the thing these people never clue into is that the “real feel” and authenticity aura isn’t the consequence of some magical innovative method of liturgical experimentation even if it’s salted with charismatic personalities and people who are really “into” the groove. They actually think they can be “authentic” by doing more or less sophisiticated versions of the church equivalent of hanging a shileleagh on your wall because you are “Irish.” Kind of an “Everday Use” type of situation, if you know that well-anthologized Alice Walker story. Authenticity is the one thing you can’t expect if you slice, dice, cut and paste “traditions” that other people have developed over centuries out of continuity and commitment to particular places, languages, and institutions. The Church of England is possibly the only solid historical exception, although it took 100 years of concerted effort to force a consensus that nevertheless fell apart and has never really stopped unravelling.
April 3, 2006, at 5:30 pm
The list of so-called “emergent church practicioner” blogs (in the opinion of the National Council of Churches 2006 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches) is hilarious. Of course there are many fine and well-known sites in there. But to accept the list as characteristic of the “emergent conversation,” one almost needs to define “emergent” as meaning “able to use a blog.”
April 3, 2006, at 5:54 pm
Part of the confusion is that liberal theologians like Marcus Borg and John Shelby Spong are using the term “emerging paradigm” to describe their theology. “Emergent” is usually used by postmoderns who are within the evangelical world. This leads to situations like the one I saw in January, when I went to a conference featuring Marcus Borg and Walter Brueggemann. In attendance were several twenty-something “emergents” who came expecting to hear something along the lines of Brian McLaren or Donald Miller, and they were genuinely upset at how liberal (both theologically and politically) Borg and Brueggemann were. [Both speakers couldn’t resist making repeated comparisons between Pharoah, Caesar, and George W. Bush.]
To further muddy the waters, writers in the two camps are now endorsing each others’ books. Walter Brueggemann has a blurb at the front of Brian McLaren’s new book, “The Secret Message of Jesus,” and McLaren has a blurb on the dustjacket of “The Last Week,” the latest from Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan.
I was surprised to see my own Blog of the Grateful Bear listed recently on the blogroll of an “emergent” blogger. As a gay Sufi Episcopalian, I am hardly orthodox.
)
April 3, 2006, at 8:38 pm
Amy Welborn being on the list is, IMO, funnier than GetReligion. The girl is CATHOLIC, for heaven’s sake.
What is it with journalists who feel compelled to say things like:
If the Baby Boomers shunned churches that they thought were pompous and boring…
Now, of course, not all boomers shunned churches, pompous or otherwise. The Kool Kids did, I suppose, and they are the demographic that counts; yet there was a thing called the “Jesus Movement” back then that got a certain amount of press. I think 80,000 kids were at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. It’s not Woodstock (which we all know defined the 60s generation), but that’s a lot of kids. Everything I read about the Emerging Church reminds me of my own experiences in the “Jesus Movement” back in the day. Kids will almost always like sitting around in blue jeans and talking about things that seem new and radical.
I sound cynical, but it’s only about the marketing and hype, not the faith of these people. If it were not for those experiences 30 years ago, I suspect I would not be a Christian today. Kids like and need the challenge of a demanding faith. Too often, for whatever reason, they can’t find a way to live that in their parent’s tradition and they need this sort of experience. It’s not at all unlikely they will eventually find their way into the Catholic Church, Orthodoxy, Evangelical congregations, or even mainline/oldline Protestant groups. A lot of us did.
Oh, and while I have the cynical mode on, let me take this opportunity to note that the million kids who go to World Youth Days with the pope (now popes) aren’t chopped liver. They are a significant factor in religion today; but I suppose the “emerging church” is just too hip, slick, and cool for religion reporters to pass over.
April 4, 2006, at 1:40 am
Though he rejects “labels,” McLaren is not really averse to “liberal” theologians and has a lot in common with them.
April 4, 2006, at 11:58 pm
[…] The “Emerging Church” is a term for trendy Christian churches and various online Christian activities. Get Religion reports on a Christian publication’s list of 25 blogs that play a role in the Emerging Church (yes, GR is on the list). For a better listing of the sites with hot links, try Chuck Currie’s post on the same story (yes, Chuck Currie’s blog is on the list, too). What’s funny is at least five or six of the blogs aren’t even active anymore; some are entirely defunct. […]
April 6, 2006, at 4:08 pm
[…] Quite a few familiar and excellent blogs on that list, along with several ones I’d not seen before. A few of the blogs that made the list are expressing bemusement at the “emerging church” label (see Get Religion’s post on the subject), but such details aside, it seems a decent list of Christian blogs. […]
April 8, 2006, at 9:05 pm
[…] GET RELIGION is “emergingâ€? …. (getreligion) […]