Why the Emerging Church Movement Failed

Part 1, What Was the Emerging Church?

I've been following the Emerged podcast hosted by Tony Jones and Tripp Fuller (webpage here, Apple podcast here, and Spotify here). For those who lived through the years of the emerging church movement (mid-1990s to around 2010 or so) the podcast is a very enjoyable and nostalgic listen. 

For those who remember, witnessed, or participated in (directly or tangentially) the emerging church movement, those were heady, exciting days, which coincided with the golden age of blogging and the dawn of Twitter. Everyday, it seemed, something was going on in the ferment of the emerging church conversation. And yet, today none of my students have heard of the emerging church. They've never read Blue Like Jazz or Velvet Elvis. They've never heard of Brian McLaren, Rachel Held Evans, or Phyllis Tickle. Here's how the Emerged podcast sets up their oral history:

For a decade at the beginning of the 21st century, a small group of pastors, missionaries, and theologians set out to change the church. They were mostly GenXers, mostly men, mostly white, mostly evangelical. They planted churches and wrote books and ran conferences. They were quoted in the New York Times and Time Magazine, and they landed on the cover of Christianity Today and the Christian Century.

And then, almost as quickly as it appeared, the emerging church movement disappeared.

What was the emerging church? And where did it go?

If you have no idea what the emerging church movement is or was, you might want to peruse the Emerged podcast website where they have a helpful timeline along with representative books. And, obviously, listen to the podcast itself. But here I will share a few a few impressionistic descriptions to try to catch everyone up.

As I viewed it, the emerging church was a reform movement within evangelicalism that had epistemic, liturgical, and aesthetic aspects. 

Epistemically, the emerging church was an attempt to engage with post-modernism. An early example of this was Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christian, published in 2001. With the demise of meta-narratives, many GenXers were struggling with the positivistic faith claims of their evangelical heritage. Some wanted to embrace science while still holding onto the Bible (see Rachel Held Evans' first memoir Evolving in Monkey Town, retitled as Faith Unraveled). 

Many were also struggling with doctrinal positions held by many evangelical churches. Doctrines such as penal substitutionary atonement, double predestination, eternal conscious torment, and gender complementarianism were debated everyday online. (Debates about LGTBQ folks would emerge later.) Many also wanted to connect their faith to social justice issues and started exploring things like liberation theology. A lot of people were struggling with theodicy and were looking at things like open theism or process theology. But one of the biggest issues, given the influence of post-modernism, was how to deal with doubt in the faith journey. If certainty, via an infallible and inerrant meta-narrative, was denied us, could we hold our convictions as Christians with more openness and epistemic humility? Could doubt actually be a good thing, a epistemic virtue, in the lives of Christians? 

In short, while my students haven't heard of the emerging church, they have heard of "deconstruction." And in many ways, the emerging church, given its engagement with post-modernity, put "deconstruction" on the map. In this regard, the epistemic influence of the emerging church remains very much with us. 

Liturgically, many in the emerging church movement experienced a thinness in evangelical worship and spiritual formation. Sensing the richness available within the liturgical traditions, the emerging church started reaching for liturgy, the liturgical calendar, and spiritual practices. At the time, people called this "smells and bells." Evangelicals started celebrating Advent and Lent. They lit candles and hung icons. They embraced contemplative prayer and walked labyrinths. As with "deconstruction," we can still see here the continuing influence of the emerging church. If you're an evangelical and you celebrate Ash Wednesday or practice contemplative prayer, much of that is due to the emerging church blending evangelicalism with liturgical traditions.

Lastly, there was an aesthetic component. Wanting to look and sound more "relevant" and "authentic," in contrast with their Boomer parents, GenX pastors started wearing skinny jeans and sporting tattoos. Pews were replaced with couches. Churches started adopting a coffee shop vibe. Drinking alcohol, historically taboo in evangelical spaces, became de rigueur. Talking theology over beers was very emerging church.

And, once again, we can see the influence of the emerging church movement here. While pastors wearing skinny jeans became a joke, pastors do now dress much more informally. Many churches still embrace a coffee-shop aesthetic and vibe. Drinking alcohol is much more accepted. 

This tour of the emerging church movement is very selective and isn't intended to be comprehensive. But I've highlighted what I took to be the epistemic, liturgical and aesthetic aspects of the emerging church movement to show how, even if, like my students, you've never heard of the movement you've likely witnessed or experienced some of its impact and legacy. Not to say all these developments were wholly due to the emerging church, but the movement definitely contributed to these trends.

Still, that brings us to our second question. Where did the emerging church movement go? Why did the emerging church disappear so quickly? 

In the coming posts I'll share my thoughts about why the emerging church movement failed.