Over the last five days I’ve had the opportunity to hear some great lectures. Last week, at Moravian Theological Seminary in Bethlehem, PA, I heard
Brian McLaren speak for three hours on the “emerging” church. This week, at
Princeton Theological Seminary's Forum on Youth Ministry I’ve had the privilege of hearing one of North America’s most widely read theologians
Douglas John Hall, emeritus
Professor of Christian Theology at
McGill University, Montreal, Canada. I’ve also heard
Harold J. Recinos, who grew up literally homeless on the streets of New York City but is now a
Professor of Church and Society at
Southern Methodist University’s
Perkins School of Theology (as well as an Ordained elder Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference of the
United Methodist Church). What struck me about each of these lectures was despite each of their diverse perspectives and topics, when they spoke on the future of Christianity each of them were hitting upon much of the same themes.
While McLaren has primarily been known for beginning the conversation about the “emerging” church (as one seminary student put it the other day, he’s “the grandfather-figure of the emerging church movement”), much of his time lately has been spent trying to give “shape” and give “definition” to that movement. To gain insight into this, he has traveled extensively world wide—including to Africa. In doing so McLaren not only has gotten a sense of what’s happening in the “emerging” church but also in the Christian Church or catholic church. (I’ve been putting “emerging” in quotes because most leaders of the “emerging” church are not happy with that title, more on that later.) What McLaren has found is that “emerging” church has appealed to those “on the fringes” of the mainline Churches or with those who are discontented with the wrappings of traditional Christianity. “Fringe” is a term McLaren uses to describe those in the “emerging” church. What appeals to those on the fringe is what McLaren and others emphasize as the “Ancient-Future” connection. In short, it’s Christianity without the baggage, Christianity without the conquest, Christianity without Christendom.
When McLaren analyses the rest of the world he finds hope for the future of Christianity. Between liberal Europe with all its bleakness and the conservative Global south with its rise to prominence McLaren sees the “emerging” church as the common ground. This is one of the reasons why he doesn’t like the term “emerging.” “It’s not ‘emerging’ from anything,” he says “it’s converging. It’s a moving away from the extremes toward the center.” McLaren used to call this a “generous orthodoxy,” now he simply calls it a “convergence.” What McLaren implies by this is that if the “emerging” church can successfully navigate the terrain between the “conservative” and “liberal” religious philosophies, it can reverse the decline seen in mainline congregations by turning Christianity back into a religious movement. It’s a conversation, a dialogue,
a convergence without collision.
Not only does Douglas John Hall agree on this point, he agrees on others as well. Hall agrees that Christianity has a future. In the first of Hall’s two lectures, he outlined the rise of Christendom, how it differed from ancient Christianity, and the factors that have gone into the slow deconstruction of Christendom. Hall attests that in order to successfully define or “shape” the future of Christianity (as McLaren is trying to do) Christians must be faithful to the original vision of the movement and rethink or unlearn what the Western World (i.e. American culture, an offspring of Christendom), has taught them. This sounds remarkably similar to the “emerging” church’s “Ancient-Future” connection. Furthermore, Hall claimed that Christianity is left to chart its course in the “gray area” left in the wake of the simultaneous rise of Christendom, which spawned the modern day Church, and the deconstruction of Christendom, which began in the Enlightenment and continues to this day. To me, this was reminiscent of McLaren’s comment about the Church successfully navigating the terrain between the “conservative” and “liberal” religious philosophies, albeit in somewhat different verbiage.
Harold J. Recinos’s take is from a slightly different angle, which is not surprisingly, considering his background. An anthropologist, Recinos looks at the future through the eyes of the outcast. While Recinos agrees that the church has a future he argues that the future will lie in shaping and defining the culture, not the church. Where? The media? Technology? Consumerism? No. On the margins of society: the fringe. Because Jesus came from Nazareth, in Galilee, thought to be a worthless place, God affirmed the marginalized in our midst. God chose to identify with those whom society calls outcasts. According to Recinos, the future of Christianity lies in the barrio. The barrio can refer to the geographical "turf" claimed by a Latino gang, but in Venezuela, the name is commonly given to slums in the outer rims of big cities.
What does this mean for mainline denominations? Everything and nothing. If we are true to what Jesus has called us to, we will risk everything for the Gospel. To Recinos this means stepping outside normal boundaries of institutional turf and into the gang turf of marginalized society. Pardon me, here, but, no duh! To our institutions that we have held up as sacred this may mean loosing everything. But, ultimately, it won’t matter for this is what Jesus called us to do in the first place.
In all seriousness, it seems clear that both the “insiders” and the “outsiders” are either being pushed out or fleeing toward the fringes of their respective cultures. And that’s significant. Because that’s the only place where they would ever meet—not at the center, but at the fringes of their respective circles. That’s where two circles come together, at the fringe. It’s also called the
verge.
It’s the place where something happens.
joe harvey at 8:00 PM
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