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Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Dream on, worldmag

As someone who genuinely grappled with the Emerging Church (ECM) and, in doing so, found helpful stepping stones and a kind of refuge in books like A New Kind of Christian (Brian McLaren), I found this sweeping article from World to be pretty obnoxious.

"The theological lines have been drawn and are settled," writes Anthony Bradley, a theology professor at King's College in New York City. "We have all moved on. We know who fits into evangelicalism, post-liberalism, Anabaptism, Calvinism, and so on." The only reason to consider the ECM any longer, Bradley says, is as a "recent historical one" that has died.

Ultimately the ECM has not proved to be a tradition with which I can sufficiently identify (I'm still too much of a recovering modernist, I think, to be willing to term my fairly agnostic disposition a "new kind" of Christianity). But the questions ECMers have asked and are asking are the same kinds of questions I've been compelled to ask, especially concerning religious exclusivity (Jesus as the "only way"). And those questions are not even close to going away.

Of course Bradley and others who see the open-ended ECM as primarily negative are anxious to dismiss its spiritual impacts. And of course they will interpret the cited Rob Bell apology (that his church congregation has ended up "a big institution that wounded people in similar ways" to more typical Christian groups) as a sign of the movement's demise rather than evidence rather to the contrary. They won't want to consider that that kind of institutional self-reflection is distinctive and rare in Christianity. They'll just try to brush it off as a moment of yay-we-win.

5 comments:

Jason said...

But isn't everything in World pretty obnoxious, I ask?

Evie Hemphill said...

That's a very appropriate question/statement. On the other hand, I don't read it regularly anymore ... :-/

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this, Evie. The other night, camped out in front of the Supreme Court at midnight (you can read my account on FB), a World reporter dropped by to interview the Eastern students. When she said she was from World I groaned, and when she asked my name I almost replied, "Barbara Billingsley," as in Leave-It-To-Beaver mom, but didn't. She blithely said that "we" think the decision will be 8-1 in favor of the Christian Legal Society. I think the oral argument would have surprised her.
Kathy

Brooke Prokopchak said...

Funny how the essence of Christianity is change, that is, an intentional and continual redeeming and reconciling of all things to their Creator. Yet arguments such as this are clearly part of a violent effort to maintain the status quo of a religion, simply because there's sway to be had if things stay the same long enough.

Evie Hemphill said...

Well put, Brooke. Kathy, I've seen bits and pieces of your experience over the weekend and am excited to read more.

Thanks for these comments.