Why the Emerging Church Movement Failed

Part 4, Theology That Got a Little Too Weird

Beyond deconstruction, one of the other reasons the emerging church movement failed, in my estimation, was that the emerging church conversation eventually gravitated, after it became very online, toward unconventional theological perspectives that impaired wider acceptance, especially among evangelical churches. 

At the time, these theological perspectives were exciting and mind-blowing for many people. Seismic, even. But the ideas tended to be esoteric and theory-heavy, appealing mainly to theological nerds with graduate degrees. At the time, the epithet "theobro" was leveled at this online demographic, though this tag could be leveled at the "young, restless and reformed" crew as much as at the emerging church crowd. A "theobro" was generally a white guy with a graduate degree who liked to argue about theology on social media. From the mid-2000s on, as the emerging church began showing up in online spaces, there were a lot of theobros debating online. I count myself among this group, given how much I enjoyed arguing about theology after I had launched my own blog.

Let me give two examples of unconventional theological positions that were debated back then, positions which, I think, got in the way of the movement taking root in more churches. These were Girardian views of the atonement and process theology.

To start, the atonement was debated a lot during the emerging church conversation, especially after blogging came on the scene. I've described these online conflicts as "the atonement wars." The doctrine under the gun was penal substitutionary atonement. The emerging church made penal substitutionary atonement famous. Or, rather, infamous. The emerging church made penal substitutionary atonement "a thing."

There were two related concerns. First, there was the whole "sinners in the hands of an angry God" framing of atonement, the wrath of God needing to be "satisfied." Second, there was the notion that God required blood--the actual killing of a human being--to be "satisfied." This matrix of ideas proved so troublesome, problematic, and toxic to the deconstructing evangelicals in the emerging church that they began searching for what are called "non-violent" views of the atonement, where the violence we see in the crucifixion of Jesus isn't due to the actions of God. Two views rose to prominence at the time, Christus Victor and René Girard's scapegoat theory. Christus Victor blamed Satan for the death of Jesus. René Girard's scapegoat theory blamed human beings.

You might not have heard of René Girard. Like the emerging church, Girard's name has slipped from view. And I think the reason for that is that Girard's view of the atonement became the regulating theory of the atonement for many within the emerging church movement. Consequently, when the emerging church vanished so did Girard's scapegoat theory. They rose and fell together.

In retrospect, it is not hard to see why. For many within the emerging church, Girard's view of the atonement was a life-altering, Copernican revolution. The impact of Girard's ideas was so transformative a zealous, cult-like intensity swirled around him and his ideas. Among the true-believers, Girard had cracked the code. Here was the Master Idea that revealed all knowledge. Girard's theory was the theological Rosetta Stone that unlocked the secret meanings of the Bible, and especially the death of Jesus.

And yet, herein lurked a problem.

Let me say that I'm a huge fan of René Girard. I was an early adopter. In the first years of this blog I did a series on Mark Heim's book Saved from Sacrifice, still one of the best introductions to a Girardian reading of the Bible. I loved, and still love, James Alison's Girardian books, like Raising Abel. I used Girard in my first book, Unclean, and, as a consequence, got invited to speak at Girardian conferences. 

And yet, in trying to share these ideas with my own church, I quickly bumped into a problem. You have to do a lot of explaining to get the ideas across. And I do mean a lot of explaining. Girard's ideas are very theory-heavy. Personally, I think Girard is worth the trip, but most people don't like being told that they need to listen to a vey long and speculative theological lecture before they can "really understand" the crucifixion of Jesus. Plus, it strikes people as wildly implausible that, for almost 2,000 years, the church fundamentally misunderstood the death of Jesus until some French dude cracked the code in the 1970s. 

Here's my point. When Girard's scapegoat theory became a dominant, if not the dominant, view of the atonement among the emerging church crowd, the movement stubbed its theological toe, limiting its ability to communicate the gospel to normal, everyday folk. No one wants to be told that you need to learn about "memetic desire" to properly understand Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. 

Process theology is another example of some of theology that began to influence the emerging church conversation.

For example, if you know Tripp Fuller and his popular podcast Homebrewed Christianity, the podcast that hosted so much of the emerging church conversation once blogging and podcasting became a thing, you also know that Tripp is a proponent of process theology, and that the podcasts, titles, and events associated with Homebrewed Christianity promote process theology. 

As I briefly mentioned in Part 1, many within the emerging church were dealing with issues of theodicy. The problem of evil was the most acute theological problem to solve, the trigger of so much deconstruction. Consequently, many were attracted to open, relational, and process perspectives concerning God's "omnipotence." By rethinking God's "power," responsibility for the pain and suffering of the world could be shifted away from God. This shift lessens the theological burden of "the problem of evil" that weighed, and still weighs, so heavily upon so many.

Open, relational, and process perspectives are rich and fascinating theological resources--I love them--especially in conversations about theodicy. For many, these perspectives are literally faith-saving, the only way they can view God's power and remain a Christian. So, in my estimation, good work is being done here. And yet, we encounter a problem similar to the one we observed with Girardian scapegoat theology. Open, relational, and process perspectives are also theory-heavy. The metaphysical fireworks can be exciting, but they get in the way of broad appeal. Plus, there's the nagging issue of heresy. 

Listen, I think people have got to do what they got to do, theologically speaking, to hang on to faith. And if reaching for some heterodox ideas keeps you in the orbit of Jesus Christ, well, there are worse fates in life. As a psychologist, I think theology has as much to do with coping as with creedal orthodoxy. Sometimes you have to rearrange your mental furniture to make sense of the world, and over-policing these re-configurations in the name of "correct doctrine" often betrays a pastoral cluelessness. Plus, God isn't going to send anyone to hell for having a few squirrelly ideas. 

Also, many of the open, relational and process thinkers insist that their views are creedally orthodox, and work to demonstrate this. But this effort only goes to make my point: If your views are always fighting skirmishes to beat back the charge of heresy, your view isn't going to become mainstream. Too much theological headwind. 

There were other theological trends within the emerging church movement we could also highlight. We could talk, for example, about social trinitarianism and the influence of Jürgen Moltmann, or the popularity of non-dualistic thinking from people like Richard Rohr. (For example, we could do an autopsy of how Michael Gunger took the very popular and emergent-adjacent podcast The Liturgists down the non-dualistic, spiritual-not-religious path.) But our examples of Girardian atonement theory and process theology suffice to make the point. One of the reasons, albeit likely a small one, the emerging church movement failed, in my estimation, was due to the unconventional and esoteric theology that came to influence the movement. From the mid-2000s on, a lot of the foment and energy of the emerging church conversation involved sharing, propagating, and debating these theological ideas online. And while that conversation snapped, crackled and popped among a certain demographic, these debates were very niche and never really had a chance of winning over large numbers of regular folk in the pews, especially normal evangelical folks. 

Simply put, the emerging church failed because much of theology that came to dominate the conversation got a little too weird. 

As a series reminder, do check out the Emerged podcast hosted by Tony Jones and Tripp Fuller, their oral history of the emerging church movement (webpage here, Apple podcast here, and Spotify here).