the church and postmodern culture: conversation

Tony Jones on The Church in the Present Tense

Tony Jones is an ecclesiologist. He blogs and serves as the theologian in residence at Solomon's Porch in Minneapolis. His second book on the ECM drops in August, 2011: The Church Is Flat: The Relational Ecclesiology of the Emerging Church Movement.

 

It turns out that David Fitch is disappointed with the Emergent/ing/ence Church Movement (ECM). Well, he'd better get in line. It seems that all sorts of people are disappointed in us -- in the last week, I've read accounts on Facebook and blogs of evangelicals, liberals, mainliners, and GLBT persons who are disappointed with the ECM. Imagine my surprise, via Facebook, to discover that we had disappointed the bisexual and transgendered people of thew world.

No doubt, a lot of people have put a lot of hopes in the EMC, hopes that we were bound to disappoint. More interesting to me than how we've disappointed people, however, is what has led so many people, Dave and the authors of Church in the Present Tense among them, to be so disappointed with the modern church that they'd like to overhaul the entire thing.

So, it's like this: a bunch of us got together about a decade ago and said, "This patient is sick, really sick. Let's see if we can't help her get better." So we did our level best.

Turns out, other physicians and metaphysicians (see what I did there?) also care about this patient, so they started chiming in with their diagnoses. It's like we were doing our own little surgery on the church and suddenly, there were a bunch of other surgeons in the gallery, shouting directions at us.

"More radical reformation," said Dr. Fitch. "She needs to be more radically anti-imperialistic."

"No," countered Dr. Jamie Smith, "Put some Milbank in that IV bag and give her a radical orthodoxy drip."

"You've strayed too far from evangelical hermeneutics," said Dr. McKnight. "Just give her some blue parakeet pills."

"You're all wrong," shouted Dr. Corcoran, "These guys don't even believe that the patient is real; they think this is a game. What they need is a dose of reality."

I could go on, but I think you get my point. The very openness to conversation that has been engendered by the ECM is also our downfall. We've take a pastiche approach to church and theology -- we take a little bit from here and a little bit from there. The benefit of that is a great deal more freedom than many leaders in the church feel. The other side of that coin, however, is that we inevitably disappoint anyone who comes from a particular camp, because we're never really enough of anything.

Church in the Present Tense, in my reading, is along these lines. Each author takes the ECM gently to task, asking us to be more of something. Funny thing is, they don't agree on what we should be more of, and neither does Dave, who's interaction with this book precedes mine.

I happen to love this aspect of the ECM. I think that the pastiche model really works, thus I read each of the chapters in this book with keen interest, both challenged by them and wishing I could take each author to the theological woodshed.

I do wish that CitPT had done two things: 1) presented the diversity of the ECM more boldly (a book with four white, male authors just doesn't wash), and 2) dealt with the very pastiche model that I mention above. Do the authors reject that aspect of the ECM, or are they happy that their tradition gets a hearing therein?

Church and Pomo series available in Logos software

The entirety of the "Church and Postmodern Culture" book series (to date) is now available electronically through Logos Bible Software.  This creates a searchable version of all the books which could aid research and study.  FYI.

David Fitch on The Church in the Present Tense

What has Become of the Emerging Church? The Problem of the Never Ending Tolerant Conversation

By David Fitch

The emerging church frustrates me. Perhaps this is my problem because I am expecting it be something it was never intended to be. Nonetheless, the emerging church frustrates me because, over the past ten years, it asked so many important questions, fermented so many good conversations, yet seems to have produced so little on the ground, i.e. churches, activist work for God’s mission in Christ Jesus.  Good friends (in Emergent land) tell me to look at all the emerging church has done to promote a conversation that stirs people for action in their already respective places of ministry and social justice. I, a grouchy Neo-Anabaptist, argue that all we’ve done is stir the pot, and then blended in with existing structures.

I want to see communities of Christ birthed (we don’t have to call them churches if your stomach can’t handle that) where true justice can be planted and infest neighborhoods. I want to see places of resistance called into being where individuals together can witness against the consumerist and pornographic excesses of American culture gone badly. Forgive me for sounding like an anarchist but this is what I think matters.  

Perhaps the emerging church is supposed to be a conversation and that’s it. Nonetheless, I think it is fair to ask what has become of the emerging church and why? Ten years ago, it was defined by the organizing force of Emergent Village, a website and organization that ran conferences and local cohort groups. Today, it appears to be one all-inclusive massive conversation. I KNOW A LOT OF GOOD HAS COME FROM THIS PLACE BUT I WANT MORE (sorry for shouting).  So, again, I think it is fair to ask why more has not come from the Emergent that looked so promising 10 years ago.

This is where I think Kevin Corcoran’s new edited volume Church in the Present Tense: A Candid Look at What’s Emerging might be helpful at getting us at some of these issues. For I think there is something internal to the theo/philosophical logic of the emerging church in the States that almost by design forces all participants into a form of what I’ll call the “Never Ending Tolerant Conversation.” Don’t get me wrong (again); I see value in these conversations. Nonetheless, the logic of these conversations is to be parasitic off existing entities, existing structures, churches, political organizations, as opposed to shaping a political reality (in Christ) unto itself to live under these convictions. This theme is essential to us Neo-Anabaptists who worry about being absorbed into the exiting Symbolic Order.

At the outset, Corcoran offers a summary and assessment of the major theological trajectories in the emerging church of the past ten years. Corcoran describes an emerging church that is defined by its alternative worship, a chastened epistemology, orthopraxy versus orthodoxy and a soteriology aimed more at the present. He labels Community, Transformation, Worship and Social Engagement as dominant emerging themes. The book then provides engaging essays on all these topics. The essays are not simply “mantras.” They critique and engage the issues. The four writers of the essays offer the full range of perspective. Scot McKnight is an American evangelical Biblical scholar who has been in the middle of the conversation (he tells the story). Pete Rollins is a continental-type philosopher from Ireland who has been in the center of the movement in the US.  Jason Clark a Vineyard pastor from UK and of course Kevin Corcoran is a philosophy professor from Calvin College in Grand Rapids. All have been involved in the emerging church world for a long time from different perspectives. They write on all of the above issues including Scripture, the Atonement, Narrative and Philosophical Realism, the Kingdom, Liturgy, Transformative Art, Apophatic Language and Worship.  In one way or another, these essays, I suggest, reveal some angle on the nature of the Emerging church’s mode of being: “the never ending tolerant conversation.”

For instance, when Kevin Corcoran asks the question in his essay “Who’s Afraid of Philosophical Realism?” he describes the mode of story, narrative, deconstruction and conversation most often found within the emerging church.  I still think the groundwork on this laid ten years ago by Brian McLaren and others was singularly important. Yet Corcoran poses the need for something more, some “philosophical  realism,” that provides the means for some concrete social engagement (for Corcoran this means addressing the public square. For me it’s on the ground social engagements by live Christian communities in neighborhoods). To me Corcoran is pointing to the weakness of the emerging church: it is a certain epistemological humility that leads to never-ending questioning, deconstructing? For sure, there is an important posture that the emerging church has called us into epistemologically. But if there is not sufficient grounding in the ongoing work in the progress of traditions (where we work out together in history what we must do to be faithful), will it not lead to another “never ending tolerant conversation?” Just asking? Eh?

Peter Rollins writes a few essays in this book as well. To me, he offers another angle from which to view this same issue in the emerging church.  In one of his chapters, he extols the virtue of emerging church worship spaces. Here the emerging church offers a way of concretely enacting the “kenotic moment within the liturgical hour, forming a space where people are invited to suspend their interpretations of the world.”(26) It’s a great essay describing the application of Rollins apophatism to the practices of worship. It is proto-type Rollins. But again, I ask, with all “hermeneutical humility,” is this not more deconstruction that leaves us with little resolution on the ground for participating in God’s actual redemptive work in ongoing history? How do I discern this work in the world if I am always deconstructing liturgical meaning instead of being initiated as a participant in it? Deconstructed of history and hermeneutical resolution, can the people of God ever engage the world concretely as participants in God’s inbreaking Kingdom? (I address this issue in depth on Rollins in my recent book The End of Evangelicalism?).  Rollins, with his great inventiveness, brings us into a space of humility and chastened epistemology with respect to God. This is much needed in my opinion especially among my evangelical brothers and sisters. But does not Rollins also illustrate the same weakness (indeed it is Derrida’s weakness also according to Zizek and Badiou): that the emerging church often fails to provide the resources to move past conversation into the practice of everyday Christian life? Am I too strong here? What do you think? 

Jason Clark provides somewhat of an answer to these questions. He writes an excellent essay on the ills of consumer church entitled “Consumer Liturgies and Their Corrosive Effects on Christian identity.” Clark is a true practitioner.  He calls for a revival of ecclesiology. We must recover, he says (quoting Simon Chan), “the notion that ecclesiology, the nature of the church itself, is “an intrinsic part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not an administrative arrangement for the sake of the Gospel of securing practical results.”(57). The question for me remains: has the emerging church provided the basis for such a church?

To be sure, Scot McKnight provides two essays in the book that provide significant directions for the emerging church on the nature of the atonement and the doctrine of Scripture. McKnight’s helpful contributions on these topics are well known. I recommend his books The Blue Parakeet and The Community of the Atonement. Nonetheless, is not McKnight really “on the outs” with the emerging church people? He has famously been critical of Brian McLaren’s New Kind of Christianity in Christianity Today and elsewhere. Is this little spat not a sign as well that people who push for doctrinal determinacy are at odds with emerging Christianity? Just asking? 

In the end, Church in the Present Tense is a great primer on some of the major issues of emerging church. It’s a helpful presentation and critique. It reflects, in almost genius fashion, what has been accomplished in the Emerging church the last ten years and, then again, reflects on what has not been accomplished in the Emerging church the last ten years. What really interests me about the book however is the revealing of the bigger question, the elephant in the room of the emergent church: can the emerging church be anything more than a “never-ending tolerant conversation?” Can it lead to anything on the ground? I contend we need a new political coalescence of communities of mission in the neighborhoods that have the wherewithal to live in Christ together for God’s mission in the world? The question for all readers of this book should be then, will the emerging church lead us to something on the ground. Will the worship experiments, performative liturgies? cultural engagements in “the way of Jesus” and cohorts which converse,  get us to something on the ground? I worry that the Emergent Conversation is too deconstructive, too tolerant in the American homogenizing way, to do that? Am I right? I hope not. I love the people, I love the curiosity, and I love the justice that is emerging church.

 

Coming Soon: Church in the Present Tense

Church in the Present Tense: A Candid Look at What's Emerging is a uniquely collaborative book in which several sympathetic scholars (in theology, biblical studies, and philosophy) take stock of the "emerging" conversation to date, with a consistent focus on issues of hermeneutics, epistemology, and worship.  The collaborators and co-authors will be familiar to many involved in these conversations: Scot McKnight, Peter Rollins, and Jason Clark, all corralled by my colleague and fellow philosopher Kevin Corcoran who spearheaded the project. 

To get a feel for the book, here's the Table of Contents:

Introduction: The Emerging Church--Kevin Corcoran

Part 1: Philosophy
1. Who's Afraid of Philosophical Realism? Taking Emerging Christianity to Task--Kevin Corcoran
2. The Worldly Theology of Emerging Christianity--Peter Rollins

Part 2: Theology
3. Consumer Liturgies and Their Corrosive Effects on Christian Identity--Jason Clark
4. Thy Kingdom Come (on Earth): An Emerging Eschatology--Kevin Corcoran

Part 3: Worship
5. The Renewal of Liturgy in the Emerging Church--Jason Clark
6. Transformance Art: Reconfiguring the Social Self--Peter Rollins

Part 4: Bible and Doctrine
7. Scripture in the Emerging Movement--Scot McKnight
8. Atonement and Gospel--Scot McKnight

In addition, the book comes with a DVD that features both videos of alternative worship in the UK and USA, as well as interviews with key figures, including Brian McClaren and Archbishop Rowan Williams (!). 

Here at churchandpomo we're going to host some conversation about this book.  Next week, David Fitch will post a critical review/engagement with the book; the following week we'll feature a reply from Tony Jones.  And of course your comments are welcome all along the way.  We'll hope to conclude with some response from Kevin Corcoran and/or other authors of the book. 

Join the conversation next week, and invite your friends. 

Being Relevant: Confronting the latest sacred

 

by Rachel K. Ward

The spectacle presents itself as a vast inaccessible reality that can never be questioned. Its sole message is: “What appears is good; what is good appears.” Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, 1968

Relevance is the exact opposite of countercultural, the unintended consequences are significant. Gabe Lyons, The Next Christians, 2010

In the contemporary moment, the expectations of daily life appear multiplied, with more to keep up with than ever before. And because of instantaneous communication, there is also an increasing awareness of the latest ideas. The growing interconnection creates pressure that we prioritize what is in the news and what looks fashionable, in order to be "relevant." The definition is “closely connected or appropriate to the matter at hand,” with appropriateness being highly subjective. (dictionary.com) The great valor of the cultural intelligencia is being in the know, with shame falling on whatever is obviously irrelevant. 

The problem lies in thinking that being relevant is best. Media is the primary source of legitimization – what appears is made good. If media frames something as bad, it is still in the realm of appearances and only given the appearance of a trial, or more so of a false exorcism for an eventual unqualified sanctification alongside the media good. We can think of any number of scandals with notorious fame, that by falling in the media spotlight gain eventual acceptance. So whether media celebrates or crucifies, it certifies something as relevant, and thus more significant than whatever is not in the news.

Some could suggest that media’s sanctifying power has weakened. While in the past, media was the voice of a god to the masses, now we have many media outlets for many points of view and that is the postmodern crisis of meaning. Pluralistic, interactive media however, has not reduced media’s ability to make relevant, but simply increased its territory, making more things accepted. The media pre-approves topics, using the public sphere to normalize issues long before they are legally passed. But more than popularize, media gives things a momentary, iconic status to seem untouchable and unrejectable. Yet, unlike the conventional understanding of sacred as worthy of eternal veneration, the contemporary, secular sacred is admired for its lush ripeness alone. 

The fascination for the new was also common to ancient Greece, where “all the Athenians and foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas. “ (Acts 17:21) While it is not known if “relevance” as a concept was debated, there was discussion of the strength of ideas. Today, after decades of political correctness, almost nothing can be de-valued, except what is marginalized by media. Media relevancy is the litmus test of value, save for the Christians. The great laugh on Real Time with Bill Maher is that Christians are irrelevant, blind to the latest accepted truths. Mahr righteously admits his liberal position, implying he represents the informed elite and its valid anti-Christian attitude. The uninformed, American-car driving Christian is his fail-safe closing joke.

Despite criticisms of being disconnected, many Christian churches now open their doors to relevant speakers or support relevant causes. Christian authors produce relevant texts, and Christian websites like this one look relevant. But what the masses seek is not satisfied by Facebook, or by churches that only resemble it. The shared consciousness, which is applauded as the global village, is a mere shadow of what’s possible. 

Postmodernity is neither the enemy of handmaiden for Christianity, as pluralism has been ever present. While vanity and illusion take form in the latest sacred, media’s ultimately all-inclusive scope exposes the fault lines of its value system, and leaves only desire for more. We live on demand for the next best thing. We move easily on to the next one, because the last one, the current one, and even the next one are already overdetmined as temporary. This analysis cannot discredit the milieu in which relevance is upheld as a value, in part because this text appears through media, but more so because media is not to blame. Even nature has temporary forms, but valuing futility is an interest of men who exploit media. And while media can be used to correct how we are misinformed, reality is the place for genuine transformation.

The culture industry will continue to flaunt its authority over men, discerning the most recent thing worthy of our attention, but the challenge to Christians is as it has always been, “communicating something authentic and true through their lives that gives pause to those who encounter them,” writes Gabe Lyons. He also quotes an ancient letter to Diognetus about early Christians: “They busy themselves on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven. They obey established laws, but in their own lives they go far beyond what the laws require.” These are reminders that amid relevancy, we can raise the bar. Whatever it is that is deemed the latest sacred, is not the ultimate sacred. While we can be content in what we are given today, we should find a righteous discontent with the esteem for what is only relevant. This is not a mandate to never be relevant, but that amid the tyranny of urgent updates on life we should remember, “only one thing is needed.” (Luke 10:42) Keeping our gaze on what is eternally relevant to the living God, shines the greatest light on what is most relevant to all of us, anytime. It is not the news, but under it; not fashion, but the creator; not technology, but the giver of renewal. So rather than critique contemporary life, we can restore our focus on the eternal values that survive it. 

Image: Jan Gossaert’s Adam and Eve in Paradise, 1525, adapted as a MacBook skin by artist Michael Xuereb