The emergence of the First (Kinda) New (Sorta) Pan-Protestant Church of the Changing Matrix

Phyllis Tickle, author of God Talk in America, is interviewed by Terry Mattingly and announces that we are standing on the cusp of the "Great Emergence":

Tickle is ready to call this the "Great Emergence," with a tip of her hat to the edgy flocks in the postmodern "emerging church movement."

"Emerging or emergent Christianity is the new form of Christianity that will serve the whole of the Great Emergence in the same way that Protestantism served the Great Reformation," she said, in a speech that mixed doses of academic content with the wit of a proud Episcopalian from the deeply Southern culture of Western Tennessee.

Nifty. Do tell us more.

This kind of revolution, said Tickle, doesn't mean "any one of those forms of earlier Christianity ever ceases to be. It simply means that every time we have one of these great upheavals ... whatever was the dominant form of Christianity loses its pride of place and gives way to something new. What's giving way, right now, is Protestantism as you and I have always known it."

I guess that explains why Catholicism has been withering away since the 1500s (to what?—about a billion or so now?), while Protestantism has been...well, yes, giving way. To what?

The truly "emerging churches" are the ones that are opening their doors at the heart of this changing matrix, she said. Their leaders are determined not to be sucked into what they call "inherited church" life and the institutional ties that bind. They are willing to shed dogma and rethink doctrine, in an attempt to tell the Christian story in a new way.

Which, for some strange reason, brings to mind an article—"Dogma Is Not A Dirty Word"—I wrote for This Rock a few years ago, in which I quoted the wonderful Dorothy Sayers:

Dorothy Sayers, an Anglican, surveying the weak-kneed brand of Christianity spreading throughout her denomination during the 1930s and ‘40s, wrote:

"Christ, in his divine innocence, said to the woman of Samaria, ‘Ye worship ye know not what’––being apparently under the impression that it might be desirable, on the whole, to know what one was worshiping. He thus showed himself sadly out of touch with the twentieth-century mind, for the cry today is: ‘Away with the tendentious complexities of dogma––let us have the simple spirit of worship; just worship, no matter of what!’ The only drawback to this demand for a generalized and undirected worship is the practical difficulty of arousing any sort of enthusiasm for the worship of nothing in particular" (Creed or Chaos? 19).

Sayer’s point is still dead-on at the close of the twentieth century. Many mainline Protestant denominations have abandoned the ancient creeds of the Church and have turned into pleasant––and dying––social clubs.

Thus, several decades ago Sayers was criticizing, in essence if not in exact flavor and style, the dogma-lite, super-hip Christianity that Tickle is so, uh, tickled about:

"These emergent folks are enthusiastically steering toward the middle and embracing the whole post-denominational world," said Tickle. "We could end up with something like a new form of Pan-Protestantism. ... It's all kind of exciting and scary at the same time, but we can take some comfort in knowing that Christianity has been through this before."

Exciting? Scary? I must confess that this "changing matrix" of "Pan-Protestantism" sounds unbearably dull and tired. Dorothy, what do you think?

"Let us, in heaven’s name, drag out the divine drama from under the dreadful accumulation of slipshod thinking and trashy sentiment heaped upon it, and set it on an open stage to startle the world into some sort of vigorous reaction. If the pious are the first to be shocked, so much the worse for the pious––others will enter the kingdom of heaven before them. If all men are offended because of Christ, let them be offended; but where is the sense of their being offended at something that is not Christ and is nothing like him? We do him singularly little honor by watering down till it could not offend a fly. Surely it is not the business of the Church to adapt Christ to men, but to adapt men to Christ" (Creed or Chaos? 24–25).

Comments

[Jackson]

Yesterday I decided to see for myself what one of these "emergent churches" - Saddleback Church - was like. I didn't think I could be shocked. I was. The operation is utterly diabolical and therefore tragic.
I could say much more about what I saw and heard, but I'll only report that of seven speakers, two were homosexual activists (one of them being a founder of ACTUP). The crowd didn't seem to mind. I don't understand how this particular church is considered conservative. What I saw was complete anarchy.

[Ed Peters]

Jackson, you've BBEN to Saddleback? God bless you.

[pilgrim kate]

Is Saddleback church considered one of the 'emergent' churches? I thought it was one of the original
'megachurches' which haven't usually been seen as part of the admittedly amorphous 'emergent' movement.

[Jackson]

Yes Ed, I've been meaning to go and see for myself for some time now, so that if I argue with people and they say, "Have you even been there??" I can now say yes. It was utterly appalling and depressing, much more than expected. I went to both the rock concert service and the hula dance service, as described here:

http://www.saddlebackfamily.com/home/todaystory.asp?id=5700

Kate, I think Saddleback is considered one of these "emergent" or "emerging" churches because of its rejection of tradition, gospel of self-actualization, prosperity, virtual wholesale rejection of theology, etc. etc. Search around on youtube for material on "the emergent church." Most of it is critique by Protestants, but you'll get the point. I've been looking for a Catholic take on this diabolical nonsense, but I can't find anything.

[Jackson]

I might give a few more random observations.

As I pulled in I saw several Disneyland-type trams roving around the parking lots. Most symbolic.

A man came on stage and told the story of how hard it was to come out as a homosexual. He's now a pastor (having studied at the Moody Bible Institute) in a church affiliated with the Saddleback "Purpose-driven" network. The point of the story was, of course, self-acceptance. Its climax was this:

"I finally realized that I have a heavenly father that loves and accepts me just the way I am."

Then Rick Warren took the stage and commanded:

"Turn to someone and say, 'Only you can be you.'"

As I said before, yet another speaker was a founder of ACTUP.

Another Warren quote:

"God doesn't want you to be anybody else but you."

During a slide presentation, Pastor Rick displayed and spoke of this slide:

"My purpose is to
-Worship!
-Belong!
-Grow!
-Serve!
-Bring & Go!"

That's exactly as written.

Another Pastor Rick gem:

"Every time you worry, this means God is not at the center of your life."

I couldn't help thinking: "Then Mary really blew it at Cana."

Is your taste for the cafe environment? Then during the service you can sit at the Cafe Terrace and eat pastries and drink coffee while watching the circus on multiple t.v. screens.

Everywhere you walk on the huge "campus" (this is what they call it, words such as "church," "cross," and "sin" being studiously avoided), you hear the service. Speakers are everywhere. T.V. screens are everywhere.

Everything is fragmented, tailored to individual tastes, entirely consumerized. Theological content is virtually nil. Theirs is a Christ who demands little more than that you be comfortable and tapped into your "purpose" at all times. The mixture of lies and truth is - like the fragmentation - utterly diabolical. E.g., Warren spoke of the importance of character. Yes, Rick, we know character formation is crucial, but how can it be built without any consciousness of sin?

Some more things I wrote on my notepad (I posed as a journalist to avoid having to say things like, "Only you can be you."):

-"It would be very easy to feel superior, above this.
And it would be easy to dismiss it as just a farce. In fact it's an unmitigated tragedy! - and I've escaped it only by the grace of God."

This last part is definitely true. I spent much of my youth in Lake Forest, Saddleback's location.

-"THIS is the wide road. Total conformity to the world."

-"2 Tim. 4:3-4"

See for yourself if you ever get the chance. I guarantee it'll be more shocking than you imagine.

[Susan]

So basically these "emerging" churches are churches that refuse to hold fast to any sort of rules based in tradition(or the Bible). In other words, they just conform to fit what the people "want" or "feel like" at the moment.

[Jackson]

That was my impression, Susan. Totally consumerized.