Do You Have to Be Angry to be Emergent?

Do you have to be angry to be emergent? My most basic concerns about the emerging church conversation are really not theological. That is to say, while there are theological issues I would like to pursue in that conversation that is not significantly different from the ongoing theological conversation of the church in any time. What adds a problematic dimension to this conversation is the tone that seems to be characteristically present.

Let me acknowledge at the outset that any general consideration of the emerging church is an impossible task. The very nature of the conversation defies easy categorization. Proposals range from radical to incremental reform. So, any generalization can be easily critiqued. Nevertheless, it seems to me that there are some patterns that are, at the least, recurring.

My objection is to the posture or attitude from which emerging conversations often begin. A recent book published by the Church of the Nazarene for teens begins with the statement "I don't want to be ‘Christian' anymore." In other words, the legacy of the practicing church has so compromised the label that the writer is ready to reject it. Something radically different, something that is fundamentally discontinuous with the church as we have known it, must be found. That is where real Christianity can be experienced.

You don't have to read very far in emerging conversations before you begin to hear stories recounting the failure of the church to be an adequate expression of the life of the Christ. Experiences of blatant hypocrisy, moral failure, cultural captivity, and destructive legalism connect with personal narratives of disillusionment, burnout and woundedness. These experiences seem to provide the energy and intensity behind the emerging counterproposals.

I get that. I haven't always been an institutional authority figure. My father was forced out of the ministry when I was sixteen years old. I watched the effect that the church had on my family. Many years later most of my family remains estranged from the Church of the Nazarene. I've had my own experiences of ministerial burnout and disappointment since then. You don't need to persuade me that the story of the church includes dysfunction and brokenness that often falls far short of the life of the Kingdom.

My point is that while those experiences are part of the church's story they are not the whole story. When we view the church predominantly through that lens we are myopic. We confuse part for the whole. We reduce the church to caricature.

Unfortunately this seems often to be the dominant vision of emerging church advocates. Brian McLaren uses this as a routine structure of argument. The church is presented in caricature in order to highlight the enlightened alternative. I find this both seriously inadequate as argument and disingenuous.

So, let me identify several ways that this kind of reductionism fails to adequately serve the pursuit of the Kingdom.

First of all, it fails to recognize the nature of the church as a "mixed body" which is, nonetheless, a means of grace and the body of Christ.  The church has always been - and will always be (as we experience it here) - a field of wheat and tares. We may sadly regret it. We should energetically try to change it. But we cannot escape it. If emergent reformers hope to escape the mixed nature of the church by their various proposal let me announce their inevitable disappointment. You can worship on couches, light candles, walk labyrinths, and dismantle institutional structures. But you will discover that the problem of the mixed character of the community follows you there.

This is not to say that we shouldn't challenge the failings of the church, working to bring it into closer conformity with the life and values of the Kingdom. Rather it is to acknowledge that all Christians (emergent and otherwise) live in a mixed body. And that this does not invalidate their practice of faith. Karl Barth makes the point this way

We should be inhuman where God is human, we should be ashamed of Jesus Christ Himself, were we willing to be ashamed for the church. What Jesus Christ is for God and for us, on earth and in time, He is as Lord of this community, as King of this people, as Head of this body and all of its members. He is all these with and in this inconspicuous, painfully divided, and otherwise very questionable Christendom....The Church is not too mean a thing for Him but, for better or worse, sufficiently precious and worthy in His       eyes to be entrusted with His witnessing and thus His affairs in the world - yes, even Himself." (The Humanity of God, 64)

Second, it fails to recognize the inevitable presence of culture in the life of the church. Culture, too, reflects a mixture of positive expressions of diversity and the distorting effects of sin. In the emerging church conversation the affirmation of non-Anglo and non-American cultures is foundational. On the other hand, Anglo or American culture seems to be uniformly considered as (only) a sinful distortion - to be repented and abandoned. But it hardly seems credible to contend that African-American culture, for instance, should be uncritically celebrated but Anglo-American culture should be thoroughly cleansed. The cultural captivity of the church must be resisted and challenged. But cultural location is also a part of who we are and it will inevitably influence how we see and experience life. The energetic, sometimes visceral, rejection of some expressions of American culture fails to recognize the inevitability of cultural location for the emerging church - which will also be recognizable in both positive and corrupt ways.

Third, it limits the scope of grace. Grace is readily extended to the outcast, marginalized and culturally unacceptable - as it should be. The call for a gospel of grace rather than proclamation of law is a welcome corrective to some patterns of the church. But the life of grace should describe a way of living, a posture from which one addresses the world. In other words, it is determined by God's shaping of my disposition to others, not my selective assessment of the worth of others or their eligibility for grace. This is a 360 degree grace. That means that Barack Obama, televangelists, military personnel, and institutional church leaders are also recipients of grace. If not, it means that we are following the old patterns of giving grace where it is deserved (as we see it) rather than simply extending grace, whether it is deserved or not. Selective grace overlooks our universal status (emergents, too) as unworthy recipients of unmerited grace. Condemnation or derision of persons who we deem unworthy of grace is, itself, a kind of gracelessness. "One is a brother to another only through Jesus Christ...Not what a man is in himself, his spirituality and piety, constitutes the basis of our community. What determines our brotherhood is what  that man is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us." (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 25)

Lastly, it becomes, in effect, a denial of community. This is ironic given the emphatic attention given to community in the emerging conversation. But it risks being a kind of selective community. We want to create, validate, or withdraw to community that "gets it right." Impatient with the flaws and shortcomings of the dominant church culture emergents incline to schism for the sake of principle. Brushing the dust from their feet they abandon the hopelessly apostate expressions of the church. And in so doing they practice a schismatic faith where unity, or at least ecclesial fellowship, is determined on the basis of selective characteristics which serve to identify the "true" church. To break fellowship, particularly on the basis of fundamental rejection of the validity of a particular expressed practice of the faith, is a form of selective schismatic ecclesiology. (For the sake of the church, this divides the church.) Which is, finally, to fail to understand what it means to be the church. Richard Neuhaus reminds us, "The Church in all its forms and manifestations is profoundly inauthentic; it is made authentic only by the judgment of a gracious God. And each person within this community is a center of mystery deserving our respect - no, our reverence." (Freedom for Ministry, 9)

Let me clearly affirm that, in my view, many of the critiques by the emerging church are true. We fall sadly short of realizing the life of the Kingdom of God. We are excessively captured by our culture. We fail to embody the grace of the Kingdom. The church stands in present, and perpetual, need of reformation and renewal. I welcome the renewing impulses of the emerging church. I invite the critical questions. But I reject the posture that invalidates and rejects the life of the church as we find it. A renewing movement that begins with repudiation and abandonment for the sake of creating the pure ideal will inevitably end with its own experience of repudiation and abandonment. We will not arrive at the reality of the Kingdom until we make the journey together.