Postmodernism and Emerging Christianity Part 3

In this third part I juxtapose the two articles on Emerging church in the April issue of “Christianity” with one final article that appears in the same issue. This article tells a story that has now become an almost dated cliché in EPC circles: That of the solid bible based traditional evangelical church which undergoes a “charismatic” revival/renewal….. except that it doesn’t actually have a revival at all, but rather a sudden membership turn over – non-charismatics out, charismatics in. Or at least that’s the admission of the article where it claims that the church concerned (which is in America) only retained around 25% of its original “conservative” membership.

The story is a classic: a restless pastor or group within the church, bored with what otherwise appears to be a successful if rather dry, stuffy and stolid church is looking for “more”. After the aforementioned congregational replacement the church is labeled “charismatic” and with the new temperamental cross section a new speak enters the church. We hear of healings, prophecies and even angelic visitations. The new members think in gnosto-dualist terms and the philosophy of the church becomes a de facto dualist philosophy which emphasizes the differences between the spiritual and physical worlds. It adopts a power vs. word paradigm of spiritual life, which is ironic given that so much of church life is now explained and reinterpreted by the “new speak”. The leadership is apt to become authoritarian, despising accountability for the simple reason that in the face of a catastrophic loss of support the leadership can no longer function with a consensus. The 75% majority of Church members who don’t go for the new speak have to be ditched. The new speak provides a ready explanation (or spin) for this situation; hemorrhaging membership is clearly down to fear and spirit quenching. The previous work of the church is evaluated negatively as at best “lacking in power” and at worse not being “in the Spirit”. Finally, the leaders of the latest blessing try to make inroads into the UK which they see as a plum ripe for the plucking. To this end these prophets of blessing may get a recommendation from some well known EPC figure in the UK.

I’m the very last person that should be labeled as “anti-charismatic” – I have no quarrel with those who believe they have had a sublime Christian epiphany which they may call, rightly or wrongly “Baptism of the Spirit”. But unfortunately the charismatic is often conflated with the gnostic, and my argument is with the elitism, dualism and fideism of the latter. Christian gnosticism thrives on those bored with their lives and who are looking for a “shake up” or the next big thing. They can make little sense of stark cosmic realities and by way of escape and compensation need a constant supply of rumors about the miraculous. These rumors do the rounds uncritically and their authenticity is utterly impossible to disentangle from spiritual spin, gullibility logic, spiritual bullying and authoritarianism. The lauded renewals are less revivals than a case of replacing a congregation with those who are sympathetic and/or susceptible to the new interpreting spin.

Significantly such moves make little headway amongst many traditional Christians who are, needless to say, regarded as Spirit quenchers. The failure of such “moves of power” to work other than by the self selection of a minority not only challenges the authenticity of such “moves” but, moreover, the very authenticity of Christianity itself. For if Christianity in the absence of one these vaunted “renewals” is regarded as just so much powerless marking of time, then that entails that a very large percentage of Christian work is lacking in spiritual vitality. This is a short step away from conjecturing that perhaps Christianity as whole is vacuous.

The final twist to this story brings me back to the theme of postmodernism in the church. Other authoritarian gnostic groups (like say Potter’s House) may well rubbish the latest revival because it has not happened amongst them and they, of course, regard themselves as being where it is at. Thus gnostic Christian groups form an inconsistent mass of believing partisans. No attempt is made to resolve the contradictions amongst them and such mutually inconsistent groupings may be regarded as being in the power of God simply because their conviction, vehemency, and spin are taken as self authenticating. If this insensitivity to inconsistency isn’t postmodern enough consider also the fact that April’s edition of Christianity magazine makes no attempt to resolve the apparent incommensurability between Emerging church and the revivalist churches, two Christian groupings who seem to be working with very different paradigms, spiritual weltanschauungs and agendas. Moreover, many “Emergers” in their search for Christian authenticity seem to be reacting against the hype and spin of the revivalists. But revivalist churches are apt to take the view that unless a church undergoes a gnostic revival, spiritual life is at best a preparatory period prior to full conversion or else a powerless marking of time. Thus, as far as the revivalists are concerned all the angst and hard thinking of the Emerging church is effectively down time between renewals. This is a serious charge and yet Christianity magazine doesn’t attempt to resolve the issue – it leaves the two community weltanschauungs as incommensurables. This, above all, is a very postmodern reaction – not postmodern in the soft sense of a humbled epistemology, but in the absolute sense that life doesn’t make sense, so don’t bother with any grand explanations that attempt to give it sense.

Postmodernism and Emerging Christianity. Part 2

In the April edition of “Christianity” magazine there is an interview with Brian McLaren who, the article says, is in the vanguard of the emerging church scene. This scene, the article says, is “rejecting the religious culture wars between conservatives and liberals [and] want[s] to explore a third alternative theological movement that seeks to rediscover and express authentic Christianity in culturally relevant ways”. The operative word here is “authentic”; that speaks volumes about what emerging church Christians perceive themselves to be reacting against and in this connection one must recall that they are largely “refugees” from EPC Christianity. For example, McLaren says “I have a deep heritage as an evangelical in the Charismatic movement”. Whether the “Emergers” are right or wrong, it would seem that EPC Christianity has an issue of authenticity to address - Why is EPC coming over as lacking authenticity?

In the interview McLaren says many things that strike a chord with me. For example:

McLaren: “....I’m not doing that because I doubt what the Bible says, it’s because I doubt what we say the Bible says”

Comment: Those Christians who automatically equate their interpretations with Biblical truth have a bad habit. Some can’t even see that the Bible needs interpreting at all and so conflate their views with the very word of God. I first came across this kind of thinking amongst Jehovah’s witnesses.

McLaren: “When you raise questions religious people can be amazingly vicious..”

Comment: Vicious? If religious people think their views to be the very word of God then in their perception they have good reason to be vicious: “If you are not with us you are against us, and if you are against us you are against God and if you are against God you deserve damnation”. Not only that: Questions can threaten a play pen epistemology; the world beyond the play pen is thought to be at best not worthy of attention and at worst an evil not to be engaged except with righteous anger.

McLaren: “..I grew up in a somewhat fundamentalist sect. They were ready to say you weren’t a Christian if you disagreed on a very, very fine point of eschatology.”

Comment: Such sects have no choice but to give one account of doctrinal fine tuning not shared by other Christians: namely, that they are yet another very, very small “Christian remnant” splinter group who regard all other splinter groups as either badly spiritually substandard or bound for hell.

McLaren: "There’s a history of intense schism in lots of sectors of the church and I’ve seen it at close range. If we want to get better at this, the first suggestion I have would be to go learn church history… Somehow, getting the bigger historical perspective helps us to stop taking ourselves so seriously”

Comment: Well said Brian. Study history? Many Christians are not mentally set up to do any study at all, especially extracurricular study. Study may be regarded as irrelevant to the spiritual life, or mere “head knowledge”, or even “worldly knowledge” contrary to fideist sentiments. And so they cut themselves off from learning and remain in their epistemological play pens. If they do see themselves in perspective it might just look as though they aren’t, after all, the “new thing” that they thought themselves to be, and that in reality they are just another splinter group in the grand sweep of Christian history. Such perspectives would challenge their exalted view of themselves and their pride in feeling to be where it’s at. They don’t really want to know that “It’s happened before”.

I haven’t read any of McLaren’s books, but from the interview alone I at least get a good first impression of Brian McLaren.

Postmodernism and Emerging Christianity. Part 1

The April edition of “Christianity” magazine has article on Emerging church (Another article contains an interview with Brian McLaren de-facto leader of the emerging movement, which I’ll look at in Part 2)

The article is by American emerging church theologian Scot McKnight. He lists five themes that characterize the emerging movement

1. Prophetic Language: Provocative use of hyperbole and exaggeration in order to provoke an engagement with an issue. McKnight claims this usage has Biblical authority.

Comment: Yes. Common language is an informal system that is a product of the fuzzy logic of that reactive and highly motivated association machine we call the human mind. It is clear then, that language is not merely a tool for couching formal propositional systems and/or a medium for the transmission and passive imbibing of information. Language is a cognitive toolbox that doesn’t just contain tools for measuring, recording, and transmission, but also for prompting motivated reactions.

2. Postmodern: McKnight says “Postmodernity cannot be reduced to the denial of truth. Indeed, it is the collapse of inherited metanarratives (overarching explanations of life) like those of science and Marxism. Why have they collapsed? Because of the impossibility of getting outside their assumptions”

Comment: Yes. The aficionados of certain metanaratives may effectively impose a cognitive hegemony by either failing to recognize or consciously opposing “meta-metanarratives”; they feel ill at ease if their metanarrative is scrutinized by a higher level meta-metanarrative and will either ignore it (mostly) or if they are of stenner stuff will try to annex it into their own narrative.

3. Praxis-Oriented: In search for authenticity of worship and fellowship, emerging churches have tried to move away from the pulpit centred churches of the traditional evangelicals and the huge worship platforms of the charismatic personality cults. In their experimental search for new expressive forms of worship emerging Christians have started raiding the past for its liturgical, meditative and ritualistic worship elements.

Comment: I’m not a bells and smells man myself but this emerging reaction is a healthy challenge to the implicit and unconscious assumptions of traditional EPC Christians (EPC = evangelical, Pentecostal, Charismatic) who need to start seeing their movement in an historical perspective.

4. Post-evangelical: McKnight says: “The emerging movement is a protest against much of evangelicalism as currently practiced… the church must always be reforming itself”. But “The vast majority of emerging Christians are evangelical theologically”. “God didn’t reveal a systematic theology but a storied narrative…” “..the emerging church loves ideas and theology. It just doesn’t have an airtight system or statement of faith”

Comment: McKnight has taken the words right out of my mouth. But I would like to add that in my limited experience a large number of emerging church Christians are disillusioned charismatics.

5. Political: McKnight says: “In the US they [Emerging Christians] are Democrats. And that spells “post” for conservative-evangelical-politics-as-usual”. “I lean left in politics” “…centralizing government for social justice is what I think government should do”.

Comment: Yes, that can’t be bad (if he is talking about accountable central government.) But McKnight warns against the adoption of the social gospel at the expense of the spiritual gospel.

Final Comments: On balance I don’t find McKnight’s views untoward. McKnight says “What attracts me is [emerging church’s] soft postmodernism (or critical realism)” Yes. Although the anti-foundationalism of extreme postmodernism leads to a confused relativism, soft postmodernism acknowledges that the logic of life is far more fuzzy and problematic than many a toy-town theorist allows. Soft-postmodernism is self humbling and that can’t be bad.

Summing up McKnight says “All in all it is unlikely that the emerging movement will disappear anytime soon. If I were a prophet, I’d say that it will influence most of evangelicalism in its chastened epistemology (if it hasn’t already)…” I would like to think that McKnight is right about the influence toward a chastened epistemology, but frankly I haven’t seen much sign of this amongst unself-critical EPC Christians; the latter are still by and large living in spiritual cloud cuckoo land. Like many an atheist materialist they seldom venture beyond the bars of their epistemological play pens and ignore large chunks of challenging experience and narrative. And not only that; sometimes their cultures explicitly prohibit an engagement with the outside world.