I think it gets tricky to evaluate success and failure of a movement. By definition, a movement is a choice of a group of people to, well, move. And unless one's destination is capable of infinite approach, at some point, motion will by definition need to stop. Did the Western expansion of the United States "fail" because people didn't drive their Conestoga wagons into the sea?
In my professional discipline of software development, there was a period of ascendency called the "Agile movement". Many people who were involved consider it to have failed. The conferences it spawned have largely died down. The books written are generally not must-reads in the 2020s. The term Agile itself has been so co-opted by panacea-selling consultants that most people consider it a bad sign if it shows up on a planning slide. And yet, when I tell my coworkers, many of whom are now younger than the first Agile blog posts, what software development was like before Agile, they don't believe me. The wackier ideas of the movement have taken up refuge in the fringes. But the ideas that held real solutions to real problems have become so embedded in "how we do things" that there's no longer a need for a special label, or special teachers to show us how it's done.
In the Pietist Option, there's a great turn of phrase: "Pietism has disappeared not because it failed, but because it succeeded."
It may still be possible that the correct answer is that the emerging church failed, that it wasn't a new pietism. But I think so far this series undercounts the number of people who found community and calibration around the books and blogs of some of these people, both online and in person. This allowed us a third option; when both our church and the world told us our only options were an angry Christ obsessed with power or hedonist dissolution, finding journey companions made it just a little safer to dare to think that one could keep following Jesus while leaving James Dobson behind.
Most of those people, I suspect, have not left their current churches to found successful new ones. For one thing, churches need money, and money tends to like the status quo. But to say "if the movement succeeded, it would have looked like this" shuts down the curiosity to ask "what good things happened, and which opportunities were missed?"
Instrumental for me was the writing of Michael Spencer, the so-called "Internet Monk," who died in 2010. His work described a "post-evangelical" outlook. Your writing has also been a more stable place than Rollins (I read Insurrection a few times, but I couldn't follow his eventual trajectory). Specifically your work with the circumplex model of faith and your writing on George Macdonald. You wrote something once that has stuck with me for years about how post-everything christians need to be courageous enough to say something substantive. That has been a kind of "north star" for my ideological development.
Michael's work at the Internet Monk was absolutely instrumental in my journey. His death was such a loss. I was honoured to have a few guest posts featured at IM in the years following his death, when Chaplain Mike was running it.
I think the emerging church established the idea of deconstruction (largely around Penal-sub, and LGBTQ engagement). It established the ability to doubt the meta-narratives of the church that had been unquestioned for centuries. A divide was created when evangelical churches said, this is the line we won't cross. At that point, the process just went underground. We're now realizing it never died. Nones are now the largest category.
Deconstruction from some leads to nothing. I never found leaving everything as a valuable option because I could see that Jesus wanted to create the Way, which everyone wanted. How do I love? That permeated the early emergent conversations and became the catalyst for most conversations.
Isn’t the Emergent Church just one type of the great apostasy that the Bible warns the faithful about that will precede the coming ultimate antichrist? Deconstructing the apostolic teachings is a good way to welcome in heresy and damnation, isn’t it?
I would say, rather, that asking of the Holy Spirit the sort of questions of the emergent church or the deconstructionists can be a powerful step of faith. Letting go of imagined doctrinal certainly and standing in the groundlessness of doubt, one accepts the Spirit as one's ground. Deeper truths that we cannot express the Spirit can open to us "with groanings too deep for words."
Majik, I can't speak for any of the Emergent leaders and their eschatology, but I imagine they would say that the "apostolic teachings" are completely devoid of the idea that the writings in Revelation and some in Matthew are directed to Americans 2000 years later. Most likely they would say that the biblical warnings were directed to the people of that time as a warning and an encouragement. Pre-trib/Pre-mill teachings emerged in the 1800's under Darby. If you insist on holding such a view, as many still do, you might want to be more open to deconstruction rather than an enemy against it. Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda.
Andrew, I'm passably familiar with the Preterist view of the prophesies in Daniel, Ezekiel, Matthew and The Revelation, as well as the Dispensationalism of John Nelson Darby, and I don't know that I've stated that I'm "against" anything just yet. I was just asking a question, albeit a sharply pointed one, I'll admit. But I do think that it's fascinating that the Zionist Jews were gathered from all over the entire world into a new nation of Israel in some of our own lifetimes, as well that I heard on National Public Radio (NPR) about 7 years a proponent of an increasingly popular public movement in Israel to build a new Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and an Arab Israeli on that same program of "All Things Considered" who leads a minority opposition group in Israel who told NPR that it's no longer a matter of IF the Jews build their Temple, it's just a matter of WHEN. Whatever your individual view of eschatology, THAT's a development worth keeping an eye on!
One of the key "apostolic teachings," I think, is that "Jesus IS Lord!" Only true believers in Jesus Christ ever proclaim THAT, even if it cost those proclaimers their lives. If someone "deconstructs" that statement to say that "Jesus is one of many lords" or "Maybe Jesus is Lord" or "Jesus ain't Lord," I'd call that person a heretic to Biblical Christianity. Wouldn't you?
I think it gets tricky to evaluate success and failure of a movement. By definition, a movement is a choice of a group of people to, well, move. And unless one's destination is capable of infinite approach, at some point, motion will by definition need to stop. Did the Western expansion of the United States "fail" because people didn't drive their Conestoga wagons into the sea?
In my professional discipline of software development, there was a period of ascendency called the "Agile movement". Many people who were involved consider it to have failed. The conferences it spawned have largely died down. The books written are generally not must-reads in the 2020s. The term Agile itself has been so co-opted by panacea-selling consultants that most people consider it a bad sign if it shows up on a planning slide. And yet, when I tell my coworkers, many of whom are now younger than the first Agile blog posts, what software development was like before Agile, they don't believe me. The wackier ideas of the movement have taken up refuge in the fringes. But the ideas that held real solutions to real problems have become so embedded in "how we do things" that there's no longer a need for a special label, or special teachers to show us how it's done.
In the Pietist Option, there's a great turn of phrase: "Pietism has disappeared not because it failed, but because it succeeded."
It may still be possible that the correct answer is that the emerging church failed, that it wasn't a new pietism. But I think so far this series undercounts the number of people who found community and calibration around the books and blogs of some of these people, both online and in person. This allowed us a third option; when both our church and the world told us our only options were an angry Christ obsessed with power or hedonist dissolution, finding journey companions made it just a little safer to dare to think that one could keep following Jesus while leaving James Dobson behind.
Most of those people, I suspect, have not left their current churches to found successful new ones. For one thing, churches need money, and money tends to like the status quo. But to say "if the movement succeeded, it would have looked like this" shuts down the curiosity to ask "what good things happened, and which opportunities were missed?"
Instrumental for me was the writing of Michael Spencer, the so-called "Internet Monk," who died in 2010. His work described a "post-evangelical" outlook. Your writing has also been a more stable place than Rollins (I read Insurrection a few times, but I couldn't follow his eventual trajectory). Specifically your work with the circumplex model of faith and your writing on George Macdonald. You wrote something once that has stuck with me for years about how post-everything christians need to be courageous enough to say something substantive. That has been a kind of "north star" for my ideological development.
Michael's work at the Internet Monk was absolutely instrumental in my journey. His death was such a loss. I was honoured to have a few guest posts featured at IM in the years following his death, when Chaplain Mike was running it.
I think the emerging church established the idea of deconstruction (largely around Penal-sub, and LGBTQ engagement). It established the ability to doubt the meta-narratives of the church that had been unquestioned for centuries. A divide was created when evangelical churches said, this is the line we won't cross. At that point, the process just went underground. We're now realizing it never died. Nones are now the largest category.
Deconstruction from some leads to nothing. I never found leaving everything as a valuable option because I could see that Jesus wanted to create the Way, which everyone wanted. How do I love? That permeated the early emergent conversations and became the catalyst for most conversations.
I’m not speaking in a gender way. I do think there is a thing called spiritual dysphoria. Confusion.
Isn’t the Emergent Church just one type of the great apostasy that the Bible warns the faithful about that will precede the coming ultimate antichrist? Deconstructing the apostolic teachings is a good way to welcome in heresy and damnation, isn’t it?
I would say, rather, that asking of the Holy Spirit the sort of questions of the emergent church or the deconstructionists can be a powerful step of faith. Letting go of imagined doctrinal certainly and standing in the groundlessness of doubt, one accepts the Spirit as one's ground. Deeper truths that we cannot express the Spirit can open to us "with groanings too deep for words."
Furthermore, until I can acknowledge and sit with my own doubts in expectant worship, I cannot really be receptive to the openings of the Spirit.
I doubt. Therefore, I am . . . or maybe not!
PS: I love your photography, Mike!
Thanks.
Majik, I can't speak for any of the Emergent leaders and their eschatology, but I imagine they would say that the "apostolic teachings" are completely devoid of the idea that the writings in Revelation and some in Matthew are directed to Americans 2000 years later. Most likely they would say that the biblical warnings were directed to the people of that time as a warning and an encouragement. Pre-trib/Pre-mill teachings emerged in the 1800's under Darby. If you insist on holding such a view, as many still do, you might want to be more open to deconstruction rather than an enemy against it. Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda.
Andrew, I'm passably familiar with the Preterist view of the prophesies in Daniel, Ezekiel, Matthew and The Revelation, as well as the Dispensationalism of John Nelson Darby, and I don't know that I've stated that I'm "against" anything just yet. I was just asking a question, albeit a sharply pointed one, I'll admit. But I do think that it's fascinating that the Zionist Jews were gathered from all over the entire world into a new nation of Israel in some of our own lifetimes, as well that I heard on National Public Radio (NPR) about 7 years a proponent of an increasingly popular public movement in Israel to build a new Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and an Arab Israeli on that same program of "All Things Considered" who leads a minority opposition group in Israel who told NPR that it's no longer a matter of IF the Jews build their Temple, it's just a matter of WHEN. Whatever your individual view of eschatology, THAT's a development worth keeping an eye on!
One of the key "apostolic teachings," I think, is that "Jesus IS Lord!" Only true believers in Jesus Christ ever proclaim THAT, even if it cost those proclaimers their lives. If someone "deconstructs" that statement to say that "Jesus is one of many lords" or "Maybe Jesus is Lord" or "Jesus ain't Lord," I'd call that person a heretic to Biblical Christianity. Wouldn't you?