An emerging source of frustration

Terry Mattingly of Get Religion has a post titled, "Define 'emerging,' give three examples," which looks at how the "emerging church" movement continues to avoid definition and vital questions:

Whatever the term means, it is supposed to be linked to a kind of post-evangelical embrace of the nuances of postmodern reality, in an attempt to fuse ancient mysteries with contemporary questions without the certainties of orthodoxy or something like that.

The key figure — in part since his church is so close to the D.C. Beltway — is the Rev. Brian McLaren, an author who has a stunning ability to write thousands and thousands of words without betraying anything specific about where he stands on centuries of Christian faith and doctrine and how they apply to modern issues. That’s where — for a premodern, Orthodox Christian guy like me — the frustrations begin. The last thing journalists need to be doing right now is tossing around another loaded, yet almost totally undefined, term. I mean, imagine trying to write an “emerging church” entry for the Associated Press Stylebook.

Mattingly refers to a recent interview in The Washington Post with McLaren, which contains the following:

Q: On the theology behind the emerging church, you reject the idea that there's an absolute truth. So what boundaries are there on theology that churches are teaching? Can any church just call itself an emerging church?

A: Obviously that's a challenge. The flip side of that question is look at the Catholic Church: For all of its orthodoxy, it could have bishops covering up for molesting priests. And evangelicals, for all their claims of orthodoxy, can be barbaric to gay people and can blindly support a rush to war in Iraq and can be, as we speak, fomenting for war with Iran. ... Obviously, I have a lot of critics and they often say, 'You're wanting to water down the Gospel to accommodate to post-modernity.' I say, 'No, I really don't want to do that. But what I do want to do is acknowledge first the ways we've already watered down the Gospel to accommodate modernity.' ... I think the naivete of some of those critics is that they're starting with a pure pristine understanding of the Gospel. It seems to me we're all in danger of screwing up.

That, then, is a taste of the "stunning ability" referred to by Mattingly. My basic impression of the "emerging church" movement is this: it is a reactionary movement within a reactionary movement (evangelicalism) that was formed within a reactionary movement (20th century conservative Protestantism) that was a subset of a reactionary movement ("classical" Protestantism). It will continue to frustrate many, even while it splinters, resplinters, divides, morphs, shifts, and otherwise emerges, submerges, re-emerges, and partially converges in numerous forms, all of which will lead to, uh, something. Mattingly, meanwhile, would like someone to ask McLaren three basic questions:

(1) Are the biblical accounts of the resurrection of Jesus accurate? Did this event really happen?

(2) Is salvation found through Jesus Christ, alone? Was Jesus being literal when he said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6)?

(3) Is sex outside of the Sacrament of Marriage a sin?

Answers to said questions will emerge. Someday. Maybe. In the meantime, here is a sample of what McLaren has to offer:

"I don't think we've got the gospel right yet. What does it mean to be 'saved'?.... I don't think the liberals have it right. But I don't think we have it right either. None of us has arrived at orthodoxy." –– Brian McLaren, quoted in "The Emergent Mystique", Christianity Today, November 2004

"Ask me if Christianity (my version of it, yours, the Pope's, whoever's) is orthodox, meaning true, and here's my honest answer: a little, but not yet. Assuming by Christianity you mean the Christian understanding of the world and God, Christian opinions on soul, text, and culture I'd have to say that we probably have a couple of things right, but a lot of things wrong, and even more spreads before us unseen and unimagined. But at least our eyes are open! To be a Christian in a generously orthodox way is not to claim to have the truth captured, stuffed, and mounted on the wall." –– Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), p. 293.

Hmmm...well...I think I'll have to go with Chesterton on this one:

This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic. The Church in its early days went fierce and fast with any warhorse; yet it is utterly unhistoric to say that she merely went mad along one idea, like a vulgar fanaticism. She swerved to left and right, so exactly as to avoid enormous obstacles. She left on one hand the huge bulk of Arianism, buttressed by all the worldly powers to make Christianity too worldly. The next instant she was swerving to avoid an orientalism, which would have made it too unworldly. The orthodox Church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable. It would have been easier to have accepted the earthly power of the Arians. It would have been easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century, to fall into the bottomless pit of predestination. It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own. It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob. To have fallen into any of those open traps of error and exaggeration which fashion after fashion and sect after sect set along the historic path of Christendom -- that would indeed have been simple. It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect.

•  Chesterton and the "Paradoxy" of Orthodoxy

Comments

[The Ida Express]

Forty years after the first publication of the encyclical on Human Life, the Catholic Church remains exactly the same--ignoring the rapid spread of AIDS in Africa, not facing the fact that some don't want children and not realizing by not allowing contraception they are promoting child abuse and negligent parents.

Most of the western world will just continue to ignore these teachings and "bans" like they have been for the past 4 decades, but who the Pope should be thinking of are the millions of people in poorer civilizations still looking up to the Church for guidance. There are many that truly believe they will be punished by God after using a condom, and so the spread of vicious STDs continues.

Banning artificial procreation is also ridiculous--the Catholic Church believes if a couple cannot have children naturally, they should not be married. Basically, they would rather have children brought into unloving families than into loving homes.

Even though some have finally warmed to the latest Pope, the need for a much younger, more liberal leader is becoming more apparent. To enforce teachings from the 1960s is simply ignorant to what is going on in today's world. Instead of helping his 'flock', Pope Benedict is destroying it. It is baffling that the Catholic Church still wonder why congregations all over the planet are shrinking. To pull off that technically up to date spectacle we saw in Yankee Stadium is not enough to bring people back, the Church also needs to bring the teachings into the new millennium. Read more from this article at www.theidaexpress.com

[crankycon]

Most of the western world will just continue to ignore these teachings and "bans" like they have been for the past 4 decades, but who the Pope should be thinking of are the millions of people in poorer civilizations still looking up to the Church for guidance. There are many that truly believe they will be punished by God after using a condom, and so the spread of vicious STDs continues.

So the Church has such an awesome hold on these people that they will do whatever it says, yet they ignore the Church on the issue of having sex outside of marriage. All the people who blame the Catholic Church for the spread of AIDS have a difficult time explaining this strange paradox.

[LJ]

"I want to know if the leaders of this movement believe that they are making a move toward ancient faith traditions or simply another attempt by modern people, or postmodern people, to create their own version of the faith that tries to get back to what they believe the early church was all about. This is a recurring theme in American religion for 200 years or so."

He has the answer right there. Of course, they want to return to a church without the authority of Kepha, without the Real Presence, etc. or, in other words, a church that never existed. That is why they are still searching, and squirming, and fragmenting and emerging, and re-emerging ...

Some six years ago I went on a search for the true Church, the one that Jesus founded. The last place I expected or wanted to end up was the Catholic Church. After about a year, when every path I took led back to Rome, I called off the search when I finally realized there was only one question left. Did I want to be Catholic or not a Christian at all? Or, put another way, did I want to submit to the authority of Jesus Christ and his Church, or not?
That final step required a conversion of heart experience, not an intellectual experience, but that is another story.

Bottom line, this always is, always was, and always will be about authority. We can twist ourselves into theological pretzels but it always comes back to authority, without which we can never know what is true.

[Wolf Paul]

My basic impression of the "emerging church" movement is this: it is a reactionary movement within a reactionary movement (evangelicalism) that was formed within a reactionary movement (20th century conservative Protestantism) that was a subset of a reactionary movement ("classical" Protestantism).

Of course, Tridentine Roman Catholicism is likewise a reactionary movement,
as is post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism, as is the "reform of the reform" ...

To claim otherwise (and to use "reactionary" as a put-down adjective) is about as intelligent as the insistance of fundamentalists (and some Evangelicals) that they follow the Bible unsullied by any human traditions or interpretations.

We cannot but react, both as individuals and as movements: to the preaching of the Gospel, to the challenges facing our faith, to the world around us, to the "Zeitgeist" of whatever age we find ourselves in.

The question is always HOW do we react, and I agree that much of the reaction we see from the "emergent" folks leaves a lot to be desired.

[Mark Brumley]

Obviously that's a challenge. The flip side of that question is look at the Catholic Church: For all of its orthodoxy, it could have bishops covering up for molesting priests.

What a foolish statement. When someone makes a statement such as the above, it is hard to take seriously anything else he says.

[Laura P.]

This "emerging church" stuff sounds like most postmodern philosophy: vague nonsensical fluff. Terms are not defined because to define terms would mean that the proponents would have to be held accountable for something. And we all know that to be held accountable is an infringement on freedom and inclusiveness! I like the quote from Chesterton. That does indeed describe the Church as it is and as it should be. For the Church to abandon the moral standards set forth by God the Father in the Old Testament and elaborated upon by Jesus in the New Testament simply to satisfy postmodern sensibilities is to become meaningless -- just another group with an opinion in a world with no absolutes.

To The Ida Express: You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but the views expressed in your post sound like the views of someone who has a huge misconception of what the church actually teaches about sexuality, contraception, fertility treatments, etc., as well as an erroneous understanding of the AIDS epidemic and the recent studies concerning condom use and AIDS. Recent studies show that countries like Uganda who promote abstinence, chastity and fidelity are seeing a huge drop in AIDS cases, while countries who jump on the condom bandwagon have AIDS rates still spiraling out of control.

The Church is very well aware of the fact that some people don't want children. The Church is all about promoting Christ's sacrificial love in all areas of life, including marriage and procreation. Studies have shown that contraception and abortion have done nothing to reduce child abuse; in fact child abuse has soared as contraception and abortion have become the norm in our culture.

I would respectfully challenge you to do a little research (perhaps starting with JPII's Theology of the Body) after praying for the Holy Spirit to help you have an open mind and heart to what the truth actually is.
God Bless.

[Carl Olson]

We cannot but react, both as individuals and as movements: to the preaching of the Gospel, to the challenges facing our faith, to the world around us, to the "Zeitgeist" of whatever age we find ourselves in.

Wolf Paul: Since I didn't qualify "reactionary", I can understand, to some degree, your comment. But I would distinguish between being "reactionary" and being "responsive." It's one thing to respond to the Gospel; it's quite another to react against authority or even an abuse of right authority. My point was that Protestantism, for all of the complexities of its genesis, was essentially a "protest," or reaction, against authority. As a Catholic, I believe that authority was and is legitimate; obviously, Protestants will disagree with that assessment. But as a former Fundamentalist and Evangelical Protestant (I entered the Catholic Church at the age of 28), I know first-hand how reactionary those movements are, especially in still reacting against Catholicism. Thankfully, in recent years there has been more of a response within certain Evangelical circles to Catholic teaching, which in turn has brought about some authentic, serious ecumenical work and dialogue.

Yes, the "emerging church" movement talks about responding to the challenges of the world. But I think, at its heart, it is rooted in a reaction against objective truth, clear doctrinal articulation, and authentic theological inquiry. Again and again McLaren defines (however vaguely) his beliefs against fundamentalism, Evangelicalism, Catholicism, etc., not so much by way of comparison, but as a way to say, "We aren't like them! And that's why we're right." Do some Catholics have that attitude? Sure, of course. But to the degree those Catholic react against Magisterial teaching and Church authority (as in the case, say, of the SSPX), they are treading on dangerous ground

[Rick]

Thanks for the Chesterton quote. The Emerging Church movement reminds me of Pope Benedict's distinction between orthopraxy and orthodoxy. Orthopraxy, what one does, must be rooted in orthodoxy or else the winds of relativism will be one’s guide.

[Augustine II]

McLaren's chic nonsense is no doubt yet another repackaging of ancient heresy, probably a mixture of several. Pelagius comes to mind, for instance.

[Wolf Paul]

Carl:

This Evangelical (a convert from nominal Catholicism, such as is prevalent in my home country of Austria) would argue that "authority" as such is legitimate, but that the Reformation was a protest, a reaction against abuses of authority. Did it overshoot its goal? Probably. So did Trent. So did virtually every movement in Church history which attempted to right some wrong. Welcome to human nature.

My point was, partly, that reaction (and I can see your point about distinguishing between response and reaction) is not a strictly Protestant phenomenon; it happens likewise in the RCC. Therefore using it in such characterizations is not very useful in the striving towards unity and reconciliation.

[Carl Olson]

This Evangelical (a convert from nominal Catholicism, such as is prevalent in my home country of Austria) would argue that "authority" as such is legitimate, but that the Reformation was a protest, a reaction against abuses of authority

And yet it not only protested against abuses (fair enough), it eventually denied the legitimacy of Church authority, which it then replaced with other authorities (Calvin, Luther, Zwingli), who in turn were renounced by later Protestants, and so forth and so on. Protesting abuse is one thing; renouncing proper authority is quite another.

Welcome to human nature.

Well, yes, since human nature is rebellious, as it is fallen and selfish and mortally wounded by sin. But I hope that isn't an excuse for rebelling against truth! In which case, "sincerity" becomes the criteria, not truth.

; it happens likewise in the RCC.

Which I acknowledged. My point still stands: when Catholics react improperly against Church teaching, they put themselves in a dangerous spot. For example, when Catholics denounce the Catholic Church and her moral authority because of the grave sins of a priest or bishop, they fail to distinguish between abuse and proper authority.

[padraighh]

This notion that we can not know the truth (about salvation) is simply a repackaging of the old gnostic heresies and like the gnostics of old, c.f. Augustine's references to the Manichean prophets in his 'Confession', it is best to be ambiguous about your beliefs. For these beliefs when exposed to light tend to look rather silly.

As far as IdaExpress goes, one will quickly see from her webpage the sort
of credetials she carries in the culture wars.

[Carl Olson]

It is "The Ida Express" who is stuck in the 1960s, not the Pope...

[Anglicanum]

Amen, Carl.

[Brian Schuettler]

Protesting abuse is one thing; renouncing proper authority is quite another.

You nailed it, Carl. It all comes down to obedience to the one true authority given by Jesus to His Church. Once that legitimate authority was rebelled against in disobedience then there has been ever since a never ending descent into the chaos of disunity and scandal to the world. One Saviour, One Truth, One Church.

[Brian Schuettler]

Protesting abuse is one thing; renouncing proper authority is quite another.

You nailed it, Carl. It all comes down to obedience to the one true authority given by Jesus to His Church. Once that legitimate authority was rebelled against in disobedience then there has been ever since a never ending descent into the chaos of disunity and scandal to the world. One Saviour, One Truth, One Church.

[joanne]

Wow! A treasure of a Chesterton quote, Carl! Thank you for posting it. I'm looking forward to reading the book.

[Paul]

Ida Express go to the FIRST THINGS web site , they have a great article ; AIDS and the Churches , getting the story straight.