Phyllis Tickle Leaves a Legacy that is Seen, Read, Heard, and Felt

Emergent Christianity had its sociological birth in the 1990s through to the early 2010s. It was a church movement seeking to ingest a renewing spirit of faith in God that was asking all church goers to re-examine their lives, their bibles, their faiths, in conjunction with what Christianity might mean to the church today as well as to the contemporary global society of tomorrow.

It sought to re-write all forms of doctrine, church history, and church endeavor through the lens of the Spirit of God at work in new-and-strange ways during this present age. And in many of its platforms and speeches the emergent church sought to bring enlightenment to the crisis of the traditional church struggling with its identity in the postmodern 21st century. A century committed to de-constructing (not necessarily destroying) all past works and secular foundations across all institutional lines of society (including the church) before re-constructing those examined institutions in light of its newer postmodern understanding.

Much of emergent (or emerging) Christianity has been helpful in causing greater Christendom to re-examine all that it was and had preceded itself. Lengthy articles have been written here at Relevancy22 as to what-and-how emergent Christianity has been helpful to yesteryear's church of the 19th and 20th century. Mostly, Emergent Christianity sought a new expression of the Christian faith against the fundamental and evangelical church's message of condemnation and judgment upon all things not itself. It stepped out away from the traditional church and said, "No, your Jesus is not my Jesus." It broke the canker absorbing the church's liturgies, podiums, and dogmas to bring the beauty, love, grace, and forgiveness of God through Jesus in new and refreshing ways. Especially to those people excluded from the more traditional church congregation grown use to meeting with each other along culturally defined lines.

As a result, blogs went up like this one here to examine what proper church doctrine could-and-should mean by examining church history, church dogmas and creeds, its leadership, movements, philosophies, and attitudes. Throughout all of this endeavor Emergent Christians were asking of their evangelical heritage to consider what it was saying and doing rather than allowing it to push back into the folds of anger, despair, and exclusion.

No, the story of Phyllis Tickle is not that of a historical scholar, a critical academic, nor that of a rigorous theologian. But yes, she wrote as one impassioned to re-speak by re-envisioning the message of God to a broken world excluded from the life of the Divine by a fundamental-evangelical culture too interested in protecting its dogmatic borders with religious folklore gained by a more recent evangelical tradition built upon the newer doctrines (1910s and 1980s forward) of biblical inerrancy, neo-Calvinism, rejection of higher criticism and science, rejection of society, exclusionism, and mystical/magical endeavor to mention a few.

With a vigor, humor, and strength of spirit, Phyllis, as an older Christian, asked the evangelical church to re-examine its orthodox faith by returning to an orthodoxy that could ring truer in the postmodern, post-Christian times of the 21st century than the older forms that the church was clinging too. To no longer be content in living with a classical form of itself inhabiting the older forms of Greek Hellenism, Medieval theology, Protestant scholasticism, Enlightenment thinking (fraught with all of its structural and reformed underpinnings), nor 1950s modernised visages of its secular self. No, Phyllis' spirit sought to re-express the Christian faith in a language that would be readily grasped by all - both within the church as well as outside of its hallowed, polished walls.

Phyllis was the pleasant side of a vanguard of Christians asking the evangelical church to examine itself and reconsider just where it was against its knee-jerk reactions to the political, societal jargons washing across its churchly bows sailing on a sea of change lively with tempest and storm. Phyllis spoke vigorously to the emerging church of the 21st century to not lose faith, despair of change, nor give up. But to welcome brokenness, despair, and change into the Christian faith that it might break it of all that was wrong with it; to allow God to change our faith to all that must be changed in it by giving up the idols of one's youth, dogmas, and churchly traditions for the outreaching Spirit of God instead.

Phyllis' message was in its way a hard message made harder by her disciples (as shown here in the picture below). Disciples who spoke with fervor and strove for change because they knew the gospel's truths to the lost and the perishing. Wishing no longer to hold God's Spirit back however difficult it would be on the more traditional church. It was a timely message that has now provoked today's contemporary church with better questions; a larger rubric to see its Christian faith; and an expanded view of the possible when met by the impossible.

In the end, to those Christian groups which resisted the change Emergent Christianity was asking of itself within postmodern society, Phyllis was a curiosity who was tolerated but not heeded. One who wished to usher the church of Jesus Christ into a new plane of spiritual awareness and understanding of itself in relationship to its missional gospel outreach to a post-Christianal society. To offer a new attitude of hope in Christ and not fear. An attitude that allowed emergent Christian usage of their gifts-and-talents in the presence-and-power of the Spirit of God who had brought each one of His despairing disciples out of the miry pit into a land of rejoicing.

True, the trolls of an older faith do even now live and speak destruction to the faith of Jesus Christ, his message of reconciliation, and peace with one another. Who use the sacred image of the cross as a place of war and discrimination rather than as an atoning place to bury the ugliness of mankind's divisive spirit of sin. These are the ones who would surprise and attack the brokenness of the church lying upon the burning ash heaps of an Emergent faith living on through the inhabitants of a postmodern, world-wide, global church. But each generation in its turn must give an account. Both old and young.

But to today's youth (and to those "youthful in spirit") this time is now to live the grace and forgiveness, mercy and peace, healing and balm, come to you through Jesus. Let His peace become yours, and by your presence within this world of woe, even as you offer up Jesus' message of reconciliation, redemption, renewal, rebirth, and transformation, as a burnt sacrifice pleasing to the Lord of all grace, mercy, hope, and forgiveness. Be at peace then and know that God lives on in the broken things of this world. He has not abandoned it but is even now enlivening its brokenness towards His ends. It is a Godly work. A work we, as the living church, may participate in, to the praise and glory of our Almighty God. Amen.

R.E. Slater

August 6, 2015

We have been so blessed to have Phyllis as our friend. The Cathedral, Memphis, TN, "Embracing Emergence Christianity: The Church's Next
Rummage Sale." Pictured: Brian McLaren (left), Phyllis Tickle (center), Nadia Bolz-Weber (top center), Tony Jones (kneeling), unknown (far right)

“Phyllis Tickle brings so many gifts to the table that it is sometimes hard to believe there is only

one heartbeat behind them all. She is a seer, a scholar, a spiritual guide, a literary and cultural

savant, a walking encyclopedia, and a mentor to more people than there are seconds in the day.

Above all, she is a faithful lover of God and all to whom that love relates her. Reading her is

second best to knowing her, but read her you must.”

- Barbara Brown Taylor

Website - http://www.phyllistickle.com/

List of Writings - http://www.phyllistickle.com/books/

Wikipedia

Phyllis Tickle (born March 12, 1934) is an American author and lecturer whose work focuses on spirituality and religion issues. After serving as a teacher, professor, and academic dean, Tickle entered the publishing industry, serving as the founding editor of the religion department at Publishers Weekly, before then becoming a popular writer. She is well known as a leading voice in the emergence church movement. She is perhaps best known for The Divine Hours series of books, published by Doubleday Press, and her book The Great Emergence- How Christianity Is Changing and Why. Tickle is a member of the Episcopal Church, where she is licensed as both a Lector and a Lay Eucharistic Minister. She has been widely quoted by many media outlets, including Newsweek, Time, Life, The New York Times, USA Today, CNN, C-SPAN, PBS, The History Channel, the BBC and VOA. It has been said that "Over the past generation, no one has written more deeply and spoken more widely about the contours of American faith and spirituality than Phyllis Tickle."

Religion Press Release Services

Literary Trust Established to Manage Estate of Phyllis Tickle, Author, Authority on Religion in America, and Founding Religion Editor of Publishers Weekly

July 27, 2015

The Farm in Lucy, Tennessee, July 24, 2015 —Tickle, Inc. announces the establishment of the Phyllis A. Tickle Literary Trust for the purpose of managing the literary estate and copyrights of Phyllis Tickle. Serving as Trustees are Joseph Durepos, Executive Editor of Loyola Press, Jon M. Sweeney, Editorial Director of Franciscan Media, and Samuel M. Tickle, Jr. of Millington, TN.

Phyllis Tickle announced in May that she has been diagnosed with inoperable stage four lung cancer.

Tickle was the founding editor of the Religion Department of Publishers Weekly, the international journal of the book industry. She is an authority on religion in America and has been a much sought after lecturer on the subject for two decades. In addition to poems, lectures, and numerous essays, articles, and interviews, she is the author of over three dozen books in religion and spirituality, most recently The Age of the Spirit; Emergence Christianity: What It Is, Where It Is Going, and Why It Matters; The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why; and The Words of Jesus: A Gospel of the Sayings of Our Lord. She is also the author of the notable and popular The Divine Hours series of manuals for observing fixed-hour prayer.

A collection of Tickle’s writings were added to the “Modern Spiritual Masters” series of Orbis Books in 2015 under the title Phyllis Tickle: Essential Spiritual Writings, selected with an introduction by Jon M. Sweeney. Sweeney is also now researching and writing a biography, Phyllis Tickle, to be published sometime in 2018.

The Phyllis A. Tickle Literary Trust may be contacted by writing: Tickle, Inc., 3522 Lucy Road South, Millington, TN 38053-7817 or rt.tickle.inc@gmail.com.

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A review of Phyllis Tickle's Emergence Christianity

Viola Larsen

January 7, 2013

Emergence Christianity: What It Is, Where It Is Going, and Why It Matters

By Phyllis Tickle, Baker Books, 237 pages

History, religious movements and ideas do not come in neat packages. As a young student going to a one room country school my understanding of the past was idealistic. That is because the text books I hoisted onto my lap, as I placed my feet on the oven door to read, were written from an ideal perspective. The authors used the ‘great men’ version of history writing. But no matter, my teacher, Bessie Stevens, tall and looming, with her gray hair in a bun, after morning devotions, read us Marxists stories of the new Russia, with a bit of historical flavor. 

Historiography, the study of historical theory or how history is written, is for the history major generally a required subject. And it breaks apart most idealism including conservative and Marxist histories.

There is the method of using ‘great men,’ mentioned above—which is great reading; there is the Annals school which has great documentation but is often boring. Try reading four-hundred pages of weather cycles, crop loss, deaths and births in the Mediterranean region. There is also cyclical history writing. That is the idea that history is made up of great cycles of events that often, in some way, repeat themselves. Phyllis Tickle in her book, Emergence Christianity: What It Is, Where It Is Going, and Why It Matters, is forced into a cycler mode because she sees church history, in the western world, moving in circles of renewal.

By this Tickle means that events begin to accumulate which change culture to the degree that eventually the church is forced to look again at such things as beliefs, worship, authority and structure—with an eye toward discarding some of its supposed baggage.

In both this book and Tickle’s last one, The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why, she points, among other events, to the Great Schism of the eleventh century, the Reformation and the “disestablishment of slavery” as cultural or social events that caused the church to begin remaking itself.

In this latest book Tickle spends some time pulling in what she sees as changing events including recent events which she believes are changing the Church. Next she looks at various groups that she now believes can be seen as members of the Emergence community. The middle section of the book is filled with photographs with explanation of various groups participating in Emergence activity. The latter part of the book deals more with what Emergence Christianity believes.

I want to look at two of Tickle’s assumptions: her inclination to subsume everything under Emergence Christianity, and the theology that Tickle believes is emerging from the movement.

In my review of Tickle’s earlier book, The Great Emergence, I pointed out that Tickle had attempted to tie a parochial movement of the United States and Great Britain to the global community by connecting it to such events as the Reformation and the Great Schism. In Emergence Christianity, Tickle seemingly corrects this by pulling in a wider girth of participants. In the earlier book on Emergence she failed to see other movements within the United States that were more apt to bring renewal and change. In Tickle’s new book she simply subsumes them under emergence by referring to them as “push backs.” In other words Tickle places all Christian movements under Emergence Christianity.

Calling it peri-Emergence times and pulling in the global community, Tickle uses Vatican II and its attending bishops who came from differing continents. She refers to Liberation theology and black theologian activist James Cone; she also mentions, in the same breath Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, their Catholic Worker and hospitality houses. (72-76)

The priest Gustavo Gutierrez, Leonardo Boff and Jon Sobrino along with Martyr Oscar Romero also become members of the peri-Emergence times. Then feminist and LGBT rights activists get added to the mix. While some of these historical figures certainly fit with a lot of Emergent ideas some are simply strains of Christianity as it has always been, living in poverty, caring for the poor and needy and suffering in the process. Tickle’s emphasis on Romero’s death and her placement of him in the mix of peri-Emergence means she fails to understand Romero’s self-identity. He once stated:

The Church will always have its word to say: conversion. Progress will not be completed even if we organize ideally the economy and the political and social orders of our people. It won’t be entire with that. That will be the basis, so that it can be completed by what the church pursues and proclaims: God adored by all, Christ acknowledged as only Savior, deep joy of spirit in being at peace with God and with our brothers and sisters.[1]

Certainly Vatican II, although offering some reforms, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin as well as Oscar Romero, given their theological foundations, would have nothing to do with the idea that they were peri-Emergence. They were all orthodox in their Christology and all pro-life in their worldview. One cannot simply gather up every Christian religious movement and person and claim them as spiritual ancestors. A gatherer of rags starts with rags, but when one gathers various materials, some shining in their reflection of light, others diminished by their inability to reflect, and suggest that they all belong to the same category—all are diminished.

In Tickle’s proclivity for gathering all Christian religious movements under her heading of Emergence Christianity she does recognize the rise of Calvinism in our own day. But failing to recognize them in their own right, Tickle identifies them as push backs against Emergence. Tickle, after writing of what Calvinism is, states:

None of this is new, of course, but neither is it revival. Rather, it is, as we have said, push-back. It is the application of one integrated body of orthodox, Latinized Christian teaching to Great Emergence circumstances. It is resistance to Great Emergence in many ways, while at the same time sharing Emergence’s etiology and essence. As such and because of its sheer size, it will be a participant in, or at the very least a potent influence upon the events and decisions that, during the coming decades, will determine the shape of Emergence Christianity in its full maturity. (189)

Tickle names Timothy Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City as one of the new Calvinist. One wonders if Keller would be surprised to find out that his identity is as a push-back to Emergence. (See note 6, 190)

Tickle attempts to explain somewhat the beliefs of those she sees directly involved in Emergent Christianity and Emerging Christianity. Yes, she does split Emergence Christianity into two movements. This is important information because it does change how one might view one group of Emergence Christianity as opposed to others. Tickle writes that there are emerging Christians and emergent Christians. Of the difference she writes:

Emergent Christianity/Village Church/Christians are aggressively all-inclusive and non-patriarchal. They are far more interested in the actuality of Scripture than its historicity or literal inerrancy. … By and large, Emerging Christianity, Church, Christians could not differ with these positions if they tried.[2] (142)

Tickle also points out that although several well known members of Emergence Christianity, Scot McKnight and Mark Driscoll, at first referred to themselves as emerging/emergent, they changed to simply emerging after Brian McLaren published his book, A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions that are Transforming the Faith. The point for me is that there are some who reside closer to orthodoxy than others. Tickle’s theological explanations often do not resemble orthodoxy. (143)

In explaining Emergence Christianity’s theological outlook, Tickle sometimes tends, toward a monarchial view of the Trinity, the persons are simply the actions of God during various ages. After referring to the Trinity as It and explaining many of the Trinity’s actions throughout the Bible, Tickle writes:

The Trinity comes now near to the promised realization of its intention. It comes, as It said it would. And What we saw and feared in the image of the Father, What we saw and embraced as Savior-Brother, we now know as Spirit and cling to as Advocate, even as It has said of Itself from the beginning. Now, without need of image or flesh, It comes, and we receive It as in the last of creation’s ages.(208)

One of the misunderstandings here is what is implied when one speaks of the Trinity. Trinity is always Father, Son and Holy Spirit, so one cannot refer to God as Trinity without including each person. In the same way the persons are not parts. They are each fully God. They are of the same essence. The Trinity is a mystery worth understanding—which is truly paradox.

At other times in her book it is fairly clear that Tickle understands the distinctions within the Godhead, as when she writes about perichoresis, but even here she refers to the distinctions as parts.[3] (172-73) The problem for Tickle is that she sees the ages divided into different manifestations of the Trinity which is itself an old heresy. And the emphasis in the heresy is always on the time of the Spirit which is always contemporary with whichever particular person or group is promoting the theology.[4]

As in The Great Emergence the authority of Scripture is also questioned in this book in several places. Tickle first of all suggests what is needed for authority—which in itself is scary, in another place she offers what she believes will be the authority. Her idea of what is needed is:

… Emergence Christianity, hopefully in conjunction with other communions within the faith, is free to discover and acknowledge an authority based on the paradigm of the kingdom of God on earth. At the same time, however, it must also discover and acknowledge an authority, if possible, that provides for Christians a peaceful cohabitation with the political or secular authority that frames the physical life … (193)

Tickle believes that Emergence Christianity has and does use both Scripture and story as a “code.” They will also use community, in prayer, as the “agency” for finding authority within the code of Scripture and story. Tickle asks “what shall animate the union of those two and make of them a sacred authority.” (206)

The final big doctrinal issue that is addressed by Tickle as it relates to Emergence Christianity is the atonement. She calls it the bitterest question. Tickle, like some before her, writes as though Scripture has nothing at all to say about the atonement. But this is also a misunderstanding. Atonement theories are theories about how the atonement works—not about whether the atonement is true or not. And all of the theories if understood properly work together.

But evidently Emergence Christians, alongside feminist theologians and progressives consider the death of the Son child abuse. Tickle writes:

For Emergence Christianity—and here there is more unanimity than in some other areas of belief—the concept of an omnipotent and omniscient God who could find no better solution than that to the problem of sin is a contradiction of the first order . Even more repugnant is the notion that, if penal substation as it is popularly and colloquially understood today is indeed the correct understanding of what happen at Calvary, then Christians are asked to accept as Father a God who killed his only Son. (197)

Tickle is quick to explain that those who believe in substitutionary atonement would reply that it is God who sacrifices himself. But she believes that most would not understand and perhaps the better way would be to follow the views of Greek Orthodoxy. But there is a bit of misunderstanding in all of this. While Orthodox theology is more concerned to align salvation with the incarnation and the Christian's union with God, and protestant Christianity is more concerned with atonement there are overlaps. And Orthodoxy would not say that Christ did not die for our sins, however they would, wrongly I believe, insist Christ was not a substitute for us.

But the more important position is the biblical text—which includes Jesus’ death for our sin as well as our union with Christ.

For while we were helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. … But God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, having been reconciled we shall be saved by his life. (Romans 5: 6, 8-11)

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. (Gal. 2:20)

Here and there Tickle’s information is interesting and some of it is new. The pictures in the middle of her book with written explanations about their meaning are helpful as is her annotated bibliography. But there is so much misinformation including a rigid, twisted view of church history, that Emergence Christianity is more problematic than helpful. Church history is sad yet good, bitter with sin, joyous with saints, bloody with martyrs, glad with charity and gloriously full of the work of the Trinity. And it’s foundations, essentials and faith will not change.

[1]Oscar Romero, The Violence of Love: The Words of Oscar Romero, trans., James R. Brockman, forward, Henri Nouwen, reprint, (London: Fount Paperbacks, Collins 1989). 10 Quote found at, “Liberation Theology and whippoorwills.”

[2] Tickle places all those involved in Village Church, www.emergentvillage.com as belonging to Emergent rather than emerging.

[3] Tickle states that the idea of perichoresis, the understanding of the communal relationship between the persons of the Trinity, belongs to the Greek Orthodox; perhaps it does but I first learned of this term from an excellent Reformed professor, James Torrance.

[4] See for instance, Phyllis Tickle: The Age of the Spirit

* * * * * * * * * *

Sorry, 'Emergence Christianity' Still Isn't the Reformation

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/november-web-only/sorry-emergence-christianity-still-isnt-reformation.html

Phyllis Tickle's investigation into the varieties of "emergence Christianity" is insufficiently skeptical about "this new thing that God is doing."

Stephen J. Nichols/ NOVEMBER 9, 2012

OUR RATING

BOOK TITLE

Emergence Christianity: What It Is, Where It Is Going, and Why It Matters

AUTHOR

Phyllis Tickle

PUBLISHER

Baker Books

RELEASE DATE

September 1, 2012

PAGES

240

PRICE

$8.98

Through a series of vignettes and a 32-page photographic essay, Phyllis Tickle, former and founding editor of the religion department at Publishers Weekly, takes readers on a journey through the world of what she calls "emergence Christianity." No stranger to this terrain, Tickle's Emergence Christianity: What It Is, Where It Is Going, and Why It Matters(Baker) is her fourth installment on "this new thing that God is doing," her own descriptive tag from the preface. Building on her previous books, such as The Great Emergence(2008), this book offers another interim field report.

I for one am grateful for Tickle's work. Getting a handle on the present is no small task, and when that present includes something as amorphous as the "emerging church" phenomenon, the difficulty only increases. As one endorsement of the book notes, Tickle has a way of seeing and making connections among varying pockets of emergence Christianity. She weaves these divergent stories into a larger, unified one. In other words, this book helps us see emergence Christianity. The photographic essay makes that description more than a metaphor.

Tickle's historical discussions of both the distant and more recent past significantly shape her sense of the present. She starts the book by noting that significant changes tend to come every five hundred or so years, including the coming of Christ in the first century, the era of the consolidation of the church under Gregory in the fifth and sixth centuries, the Great Schism of the 11th century, and the Reformation of the 16th century. From this historical trend, Tickle deduces that, here in the 2000s, we're poised for another such seismic change. She also offers readers a handy take on the more recent past, that of the last few decades and the emergence, if you will, of emergence Christianity. Those new to the party will appreciate her back-stories in chapters one through twelve.

In chapters thirteen to nineteen, Tickle takes us along on her travels to emergence outposts in both words and, as already noted, pictures. Her travels through these "fresh expressions" of Christianity cross geo-political boundaries (though the book mostly talks about the West and Latinized Christianity) and ecclesiastical boundaries, as Anglicans and Episcopalians, Catholics, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals, and more come into view. She even crosses the boundaries of concrete existence as she looks at cyber-world manifestations of emergence Christianity, such as 1PSL (First Presbyterian Church of Second Life), which congregates in the world of "virtual reality."

The final chapters offer an assessment of these trends and a bit of prophecy, as Tickle attempts to decipher where emergence Christianity may go. She raises two theological issues as her book draws to a close. First comes a problematic treatment of emergent attitudes toward atonement. She begins by declaring that "Christianity, in its early days, had no theory of atonement or of its mechanics." She then proceeds to note the remarkable unanimity of emergence Christianity in rejecting the view of substitutionary atonement, seen by her as the most recent of theories. She rejects this "repugnant" theory of "God as cosmic child abuser," and adds, "Substitutionary conversation in any form is in error." And Tickle makes all these pronouncements without ever referencing or discussing a single biblical text.

But she also rather acutely lands on the question of authority, a telltale issue for emergence Christianity now and to come. Tickle envisions authority, in the emergent world, as a union between the "primacy of Scripture" as an authoritative text and the "primacy of community, of the body together in prayer" as the instrument through which Scripture's authority gets worked out. What shall animate the union of Scripture and community? In posing this question, Tickle has identified an important question on the horizon.

Emergence Good, Traditional Bad?

Though Emergence Christianity deserves appreciation for helping make sense of the current horizon, the book does not stand above some objections. First, the book offers no real criticism of emergence Christianity. Though she admits to certain failures on the part of emergence leaders and undertakings, she pulls back from more full-throated criticism. Tickle has the opportunity to ask hard questions of emergence leaders, but she doesn't. She assumes their motives are pure and, as a general rule, accepts what they say and do at face value. Conversely, she has no problem decrying the traditional church, as with her treatment of tithing and reference to the "strong odor of institutional self-interest." Her take on the emergence approach to the subject of monetary giving? "Laudable indeed." Also, she has a rather surface-level take on the cyber versions of emergence: "Church in virtuality is to church in corporeality as banking in virtuality is to banking in corporeality." Just as "the banking gets done either way," church, apparently, can get done either way. But that's way too simplistic an analysis of both virtual reality and the doctrine of the church. In general, Tickle tends to accept, if not applaud, rather than question.

My point is not that the traditional church was or is pristine. Quite the opposite. Nefarious motives and practices, and even abuses, may be abundantly found. But what is gained by the stark contrast Tickle presents of emergence good, traditional bad? Does that approach truly assist emergence Christianity to become biblically faithful? Also, while it is one thing to say emergence is a new tributary in the kingdom of God, it is quite another to call emergence Christianity "this new thing God is doing." Much like any country claiming "chosen-nation" status will act according to its own predilections under the cover of its "divine mandate," so any church movement that assumes the blessing of God will lack the necessary traits of self-reflection and self-criticism. Emergence Christianity, like any and all forms, needs an assessment that asks hard questions.

This slides into my second criticism, that the present is simply too privileged. We are simply too close to emergence Christianity to compare it to the Reformation. (Not to mention: Comparisons of Brian McLaren to Martin Luther simply need to stop.) We have no way of seeing what its legacy may be, and we should refrain from giving it a status it might not deserve. It strikes one as a rather modern idea to think so highly of the present moment and one's own significance.

More substantially, the privileging of the present affects not only the way Tickle views emergence Christianity, but also the way she reads Scripture. This gets to the heart of the matter, the question of authority. Tickle articulates the consensus view of Scripture held by emergence Christianity when she describes Scripture as "received, during discernment, prayer, and teachings, into their own beingness." This goes back to her understanding of the question of authority—the twin factors being Scripture as the authoritative text, and community as the authoritative interpreter of Scripture.

Tickle is not calling for a union of equals; she wants to give Scripture a higher place than community. But isn't she risking the opposite outcome? After all, Scripture, on her account, does not stand over or above emergence groups; it is always within the community and subject to the community. How does that not lead to Scripture on our own terms?

Of course, the people of God do participate in Scripture. It is the Living Word, and we do—or at least we should—enter into it. But how do we enter in? How do we delineate that relationship? The church cannot afford a fuzzy answer to that question. Nor can it afford a wrong answer. I'm not being an extremist here or committing the slippery slope fallacy. I'm honestly asking: How does the emergence view of Scripture not lead us to accepting Scripture on our own terms?

Of course there will always be a difference between our interpretation or appropriation of—or more importantly, our obedience to—the text and the text itself. But to do away with any distinction, to always and only see the text as in conversation with the present, is problematic.

Tickle offers a helpful description of emergence Christianity, and in that task she succeeds rather nicely. But once her book moves beyond description, she misses some opportunities to raise important questions. No one likes hard questions, but where would we be without them?

Stephen J. Nichols is research professor of Christianity and culture at Lancaster Bible College and the author ofWelcome to the Story: Reading, Loving, and Living God's Word (Crossway).

Introducing Andy Crouch - Bio, Videos, Books

Andy Crouch

Andy Crouch - Bio

http://andy-crouch.com/

Andy is the author of Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power, published in October 2013. His book Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling won Christianity Today’s 2009 Book Award for Christianity and Culture and was named one of the best books of 2008 by Publishers Weekly, Relevant, Outreach and Leadership. In December 2012 he became executive editor of Christianity Today, where he is also executive producer of This Is Our City, a multi-year project featuring documentary video, reporting, and essays about Christians seeking the flourishing of their cities.

Andy serves on the governing boards of Fuller Theological Seminary and Equitas Group, a philanthropic organization focused on ending child exploitation in Haiti and Southeast Asia. He is also a senior fellow of theInternational Justice Mission’s IJM Institute. His writing has appeared in Time, The Wall Street Journal, and several editions of Best Christian Writing and Best Spiritual Writing. He lives with his family in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.

From 1998 to 2003, Andy was the editor-in-chief of re:generation quarterly, a magazine for an emerging generation of culturally creative Christians. For ten years he was a campus minister with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at Harvard University. He studied classics at Cornell University and received an M.Div. summa cum laude from Boston University School of Theology. A classically trained musician who draws on pop, folk, rock, jazz, and gospel, he has led musical worship for congregations of 5 to 20,000.

Should We Play God?

Andy Crouch discusses human flourishing and authority at UMich

Andy Crouch: Interview

Andy Crouch: Image Making Part 1

Playing God

2014 Outreach Magazine Resource of the Year ("Also Recommended," Leadership) ForeWord 2013 Book of the Year Award Finalist (Adult Nonfiction, Religion) Power corrupts—as we've seen time and time again. People too often abuse their power and play god in the lives of others. Shady politicians, corrupt executives and ego-filled media stars have made us suspicious of those who wield influence and authority. They too often breed injustice by participating in what the Bible calls idolatry. Yet power is also the means by which we bring life, create possibilities, offer hope and make human flourishing possible. This is "playing god" as it is meant to be. If we are to do God's work—fight injustice, bring peace, create beauty and allow the image of God to thrive in those around us—how are we to do these things if not by power? With his trademark clear-headed analysis, Andy Crouch unpacks the dynamics of power that either can make human flourishing possible or can destroy the image of God in people. While the effects of power are often very evident, he uncovers why power is frequently hidden. He considers not just its personal side but the important ways power develops and resides in institutions. Throughout Crouch offers fresh insights from key biblical passages, demonstrating how Scripture calls us to discipline our power. Wielding power need not distort us or others, but instead can be stewarded well. An essential book for all who would influence their world for the good.

Culture Making

2009 Christianity Today Book Award winner! Named one of Publishers Weekly's best books of 2008 (religion category) It is not enough to condemn culture. Nor is it sufficient merely to critique culture or to copy culture. Most of the time, we just consume culture. But the only way to change culture is to create culture. Andy Crouch unleashes a stirring manifesto calling Christians to be culture makers. For too long, Christians have had an insufficient view of culture and have waged misguided "culture wars." But we must reclaim the cultural mandate to be the creative cultivators that God designed us to be. Culture is what we make of the world, both in creating cultural artifacts as well as in making sense of the world around us. By making chairs and omelets, languages and laws, we participate in the good work of culture making. Crouch unpacks the complexities of how culture works and gives us tools for cultivating and creating culture. He navigates the dynamics of cultural change and probes the role and efficacy of our various cultural gestures and postures. Keen biblical exposition demonstrates that creating culture is central to the whole scriptural narrative, the ministry of Jesus and the call to the church. He guards against naive assumptions about "changing the world," but points us to hopeful examples from church history and contemporary society of how culture is made and shaped. Ultimately, our culture making is done in partnership with God's own making and transforming of culture. A model of his premise, this landmark book is sure to be a rallying cry for a new generation of culturally creative Christians. Discover your calling and join the culture makers.

Becoming and Being "Points of Light" -

Themes of Flourishing and Redemption in Broken Places

This is Our City

In Search of the Church in a Postmodern Age

"Nowhere in Scripture are we told to shun homosexual men and women in the work

place or to deny them our business because of their choice of sexual activity. Nowhere

in Scripture is homosexual practice the one sin that is more perverse than all

the others so we must flee from it at first chance." - Michael Bird

Introduction to Articles

I have nothing but respect for Brian Mclaren, Roger Olson, and Michael Bird, as each struggles to "re-contextualize Christian Orthodoxy" within a postmodern church age by critically re-examining its doctrines of the past 20th Century and what orthodox Christianity may mean for us today in the early stages of the 21st Century. It's globalization and social reforms. Its social medias and concentrate on "justice for all peoples." And what this may mean to a civilization or culture while balancing on the beam of cultural accommodation and biblical contextualization. As any gymnast will tell you, its no easy beam to walk.

To Mclaren's credit, he wishes to emphasize the love of Jesus into people's lives by re-expressing the value of the human touch to that of his own previous hardened bible culture that came off perhaps too cruel and judgmental to those it deemed unworthy of God and living in sin. His ministry has been to the homosexual man and woman who have been ostracized for their life choices and discriminated against for their unwillingness to bow to societal norms. When I first met Brian he had that comfortable feel of a very transparent pastor whose only wish was to speak God's love into our deepest needs and frailities of life. Obviously, his ministry to the homosexual community would disconcert any fundamentalist or conservative evangelic Christian who perceives that same community as under God's wrath and judgement. Which is exactly the polar opposite view to Brian's view of these men and women whom he sees as gifted quite differently from the mainstream of the populace.

Then along comes a questioning evangelical article by Christianity Today that wishes to blow Brian's ministry up and earmark it with the verve and dictum that too many of us have grown up with... that the homosexual man or woman is anathema to God and destined for hell. This kind of "unforgiving orthodoxy" is short-sighted to Brian's main message of God's love to all. Who wishes to prevent further ideological incursion into general Christian thinking (or Christian angst) which generally depicts Jesus' gospel ministry as exclusive to most everyone except to those whom the church "deems most worthy by God" as acceptable. Who  live lives that are not anathema to the church's stricter definitions of morality. Of course, Relevancy22 has reserved its greatest vitriol and distaste for those Christians who go about judging others as unworthy while turning a blind eye to their own lives of hypocrisy.

By recollection, I grew up in both a fundamental church, and later, a conservative evangelical church, where I saw God's love unreservedly expressed for all men and women. Without discrimination to any who came whilst making every effort to reach beyond itself to all who were unlike itself. So this leaves me with  the meandering hope that God's people can - and will - reach out with Jesus' love in a selfless, indiscriminating, and quite tolerant, fashion so that all may hear of God's love and not just those whom we think are most worthy to hear it. However, I also realize that the church has grown up these past several decades quite cynically as it has become more aware of people's lifestyles through popular and social medias, so that in corresponding fashion it has adjusted its rhetorics and dogmas accordingly. However imperfectly. However exasperatingly. Thus it is my wish here to express the view that God's love is for all men... not just some, and not just for those whom we think are worthy of God's saving grace through Jesus Christ. It is the most orthodox tenet that we can hold as Christ followers to love all men and women without discrimination. And to not hold back this ultimate expression of Christian fellowship because we deem a lifestyle that is different from our own as unworthy, or beyond God's great love.

Which of course will demand a change of attitude in our doctrine... as it must in order for good Christian doctrine to be reflective of God's grace and truth, justice and mercy, forgiveness, hope, and peace. Hence, we take here at Relevancy22 the stance of modifying Christian orthodox doctrine to reflect a more gracious, more open, and more missional gospel of Christ than the one I grew up with that was hedged in by boundary markers and cultural rigidity. And have consequently re-worked Christian doctrine so as to open up its cultural edges and boundaries to its real spiritual center of Jesus. A center which might encourage the church to re-express its rhetorics and dogmas in such a way that Jesus is raised up while relenting of our own sinfulness of pride and self-righteousness. For most of what I read against homosexual lifestyles is that of our "old man" lifted in its pride and self-righteousness wishing to show the Lord Himself how much better "we are" in comparison to the life of "another" different from ourselves. Good Christian doctrine must never lead out with ourselves... but with the paradoxical Christ of the Gospels as we behold Him in all that He is.

Third, the bigger issue is how Christians perceive their place in a pluralistic,

pansexual, and postmodern metropolis. We are not in a position to bargain and

insist that if we can’t Christianize the city then we are entitled to our own

private ghetto inside the city. - Michael Bird

Part 2

Hence, another good theologian who I respect quite a bit is Roger Olson, whose article next appears after Brian's Q&A article. I give it here so that we as the church of God might understand the degree to which Christian doctrine must contextualize human society without re-assembling its heart-and-center around our own good wishes, wants, and needs. Roger makes the point that good orthodox Christian doctrine admits to theistic realism describing historical event and doctrine without existentially removing its historical character to an egress of symbolic realism. And yet, for myself, I think of an orthodoxy that intends to be postmodern must also admit to this latter - but without the removal of the former. That is, theistic realism is what drives symbolic realism, and not the other way around. Hence, this is where people like a Peter Rollins walks in to re-describe Christian symbolism around both the historical event and then impinge upon its subsequent meaning for postmoderns today using the language of existentialism and phenomenologicalism.

So we agree with Dr. Olson that theistic realism must be held to - but not to its own exclusion which is error that the theologian Marcus Borg has been doing in his symbolic research. Without historical event we have no Jesus, no Son of God, no cross, no ministry, no death or resurrection. Without which we would enter forthrightly through the doors of symbolic mysticism and magic. However, it must be admitted, that historical events have no relevancy or import to our lives without its necessary translation of message and meaning into our own lives both existentially and symbolically. That is, those biblical events must be translated into our minds and hearts so as to form a basis of reaction within us. This is the whole essence of the study of psychology (for a person) and sociology (for a group). And for that matter, the entire area of linguistics research pertaining to language, symbolic meaning, and societal discourse. Each covering the area of existentialism and phenomenology and the translation of meaning for a person into action and belief (whether a true false-belief, or a false true-belief, is another matter for another day). Basically, it demands the hard work of distinguishing good doctrine from bad - one that distinguishes between a misleading folklore-based religion from an evolving form of fundamental orthodoxy that is progressive and relevant. And how each affects our views of God, the Bible, our ministries, and communion/being/presence/relationship in the world. Hence the purpose of this blog here has been to define terms we think we know but really don't understand beyond the sound of their fury pounding in our ears and upon our judgmental minds and hearts when hearing caricatured words like "liberal, radical, belief, religion" shouted everywhere about us. Confusing us and creating the divide of discord and strife.

At which point Dr. Olson begins to distinguish Brian Mclaren's ministry path as one moving in Borg's direction, to which judgment I can only state that Roger's real concern is his wish to hold to a fundamental, perhaps non-postmodern, context of orthodoxy that can only be described in (modern) historical terms of interpretive event. Which in itself is a can of worms when injecting the word "interpretive." However, as a good historical theologian Dr. Olson has great insight into past church history - and so, we must at the last be familiar and cognizant with his concerns  related to our postmodern, contemporary times and its meaning for today's emergent church movement. An emergent church which seems to be described by Dr. Olson in its more leftist elements rather than at its heart and soul which we have taken great pains to describe in this blog's early days of writing before more recently moving to the more general position of a post-evangelic theology and doctrine. Of course, Dr. Olson stands wary of progressive theology as judged by his historical standards, which standards have come under their own judgment when viewed through the postmodern, post-structural lenses of interpretive experience. Which is the very thing he would react too. Naturally, then, there is a concern. A concern which we must pay attention to, and interact with, if the church is to minister and preach in this generation of post-postmoderns.

For myself, the emergent church has been a God-send to a less gracious, less godly, less accepting evangelical church dogma. One behaving as a healthy, strong brother in the Lord to the beggarly one that fell to the wayside when besotted with riches and honor, power and might. It is to the emergent church that the evangelic church must thank rather than show the thanklessness that it has over this past decade of pulpiteered rhetoric and institutionalized angst. For without the emergent church movement questioning unsound evangelic doctrine, that same doctrine would've continued unchecked in its pursuit of a Christ-less Christianity, or Jesus-less core impregnated with self-righteous doctrine, misleading dogma, and a folklore-based religion. Hence, a church which is not relevant to society is simply one that is dead at is core and self-serving to the cold harness of irrelevant church tradition, endearing church customs, and a heartless faith. But a contextualized church speaking good doctrine is much to be valued whatever its roots and history, ways and paths, balance and means. Ever is the balance between cultural accommodation and doctrinal relevancy a tightrope of of fear and exasperation. And ever must we weigh out God's love song  upon the insipid gallows of man.

Conclusion

I conclude with a third article by an Australian theologian by the name of Michael Bird. For the most part, from what little I know of Dr. Bird, he travels the fine line between good Christian doctrine and the translation of its orthodoxy into relevant, meaningful terms for Christian living and grace. He understands that today's American libertarian culture is a cultural war fraught between sexual equality and religious freedom. That it is neither biblically defensible nor morally virtuous for Christians to discriminate against one group of people over another in the name of a Christian conscience (in this case, homosexual men and women).

I like what I read in him and find that in this case, he's correct in his defense of a grace-filled Christianity that is indiscriminate, wise, and missionally loving without duplicity or guile. We live in difficult times that will try our soul, and especially wear upon our garments a mosaic of church fabrics woven with the pluralistic threads and thimble wishing to do the right thing though fraught with its own stereotypes and bugaboos (as I described it in an earlier article related to evangelical movies just recently). Let us be wise. Serve the Lord. And learn to unlearn and re-learn what good orthodox postmodern doctrine is, and is not. Peace my friends. May God's grace and blessed Spirit be with you.

R.E. Slater

February 26, 2013

Icarus flying too close to the Sun

Q & R: You, Rob Bell, Don Miller, and Christianity Today

http://brianmclaren.net/archives/blog/q-r-you-rob-bell-don-miller-and.html

Here's the Q:

Kevin Miller wrote a piece in Christianity Today (CT) about you, Rob Bell, and Don Miller. It follows other negative articles about you, and them, in CT. Do you think the portrayal was fair, and if not, why not?"

Here's the R:

I read the article a couple times and the first thing that struck me is that Rob, Don, and I function in the article as little more than a convenient apparatus against which to leverage so the author (and CT?) can double down on 3 things:

1. Evangelicals should submit to their pastors, ministers, and elders.

2. Evangelicals should stop trying to interpret the Bible on their own, but should listen to what "the church" says the Bible means (leaving the "Which church, when?" question open).

3. Evangelicals should double down on their rejection of homosexuality and refuse to compromise, even if it means unpopularity, rejection, or persecution by others.

According to the article, I did several things wrong.

1. I flirted with universalism.

Anyone who applies the term universalism to my understanding of things hasn't read me carefully. The situation is actually much "worse" than simply switching from exclusivism to inclusivism or universalism. I think the set of assumptions that divides the world into inclusivists, exclusivists, and universalists is deeply flawed. It's not that I've answered the "who goes to heaven" question differently - it's that I've become convinced (by Scripture and by many great theologians of the church through history) that "who goes to heaven" is not the primary question Jesus (or other biblical writers) came to ask. As I understand it, he and they were asking a very different primary question: "How can God's will be done on earth as in heaven?" That primary question will result in a very different kind of Christianity.

2. I left the pastorate.

Should spending 24 years as a church planter and pastor qualify one as a quitter? Although I did leave the pastorate 8 years ago, I didn't in any way leave the church. I'm a quiet and grateful member of a congregation in the community where I now live. My years as a pastor make me deeply grateful for every sermon, song, prayer, and eucharist that I am privileged to share in when I am at my home congregation. When I'm not at home, I spend my time working with and serving clergy and emerging leaders around the world. So I hope CT readers don't see leaving the pastorate as leaving ministry or the big-C Church!

3. I became convinced that older Evangelicals were wrong on homosexuality.

That's true, but it goes much farther than that. I think significant percentages of older Evangelicals are deeply wrong on a wide range of issues - including homosexuality, our spiritual responsibility for the environment, the reality of evolution and climate change, solidarity with the poor, our role regarding peacemaking and war, equality for women, the reality of white privilege and systemic racism, and the legitimacy of torture, to name a few. So homosexuality is only one of a long list of things that I think older white Evangelicals need to rethink. Thankfully, on most if not all of these issues, younger Evangelicals are moving to a more just and wise understanding than their parents and grandparents, just as their parents and grandparents forsook much of the overt racism and anti-Semitism that were much more common among their parents and grandparents.

The article implies or states that I went wrong in these ways because:

1. I was tempted by pride and celebrity, like Icarus "flying too high" in the old fable.

I certainly don't experience my life as having much to do with celebrity. When I travel, write, and speak, I work hard, and when I'm home, I live a quiet, modest life. True, I receive large doses of heart-felt encouragement from readers, but I also receive large doses of hell-fire condemnation (often from nonreaders) and sincere critique. I would think I have lost much more than I gained in terms of readership, popularity, etc., by taking the stands I've taken. I've made my choices for conscience not convenience or celebrity, and the same would be true for Rob and Don. I'm sad the article assumes otherwise.

2. I wanted to be "accepted by the culture" and was unwilling to be persecuted or maligned, favoring applause and popularity like a "false prophet."

Perhaps someday the author will find himself required by conscience to differ with the community in which he was raised, and he will find out that the persecution that hurts the most isn't from "the culture" but from one's own tribe.

3. I interpret the Bible to mean whatever I want it to mean, ignoring the teaching of the church.

Interestingly, the more I learned about the teaching of the church in its many forms across history, the more I saw it included a wide variety of opinions and views over time and in different regions. I saw it as a living tradition that engaged in self-critique and self-correction over time. The more I grappled with biblical interpretation, the more I came to believe it carries with it an intellectual and ethical responsibility - yes, to learn from, to honor, and to respect the tradition, but also to challenge it when necessary. In fact, challenging the tradition is part of the tradition … especially for Protestants, but also for Catholics. As I blogged recently in this regard, I think that some good and needed conversation about the Bible is happening among Evangelicals.

Dealing with Conservative Evangelical Media

For today's popular speakers who wonder if CT will be writing an article like this about them in ten years, I can only say that life is wonderful when you follow your conscience and aren't afraid. I know Rob and Don would agree. As the Proverb says, "The fear of men brings a snare," and as Jesus said, "The truth will set you free."

Several years ago, a respected older Evangelical theologian confided to me that if he had it to do over again, he wouldn't have let the fear of critique by Evangelical gatekeepers have such control over him. He encouraged me to follow my conscience and not trim my sails for fear of being singled out. I have tried to follow that advice, and am glad I did.

Kevin Miller is right - nobody should make choices based on pride, popularity, fear of persecution, celebrity, or selfish and stupid individualism. But Evangelicals will not be helping themselves if they assume the only reason people like us are critiqued in articles like this is because something is wrong with us. It would be good for Evangelicals, especially in places like CT, to go deeper in thinking about why they tend to lose (or drive away) so many of their promising young leaders.

The good news is that when I am among more open and hospitable Christians (Evangelical and otherwise), I find large numbers of people from a more restrictive Evangelical heritage - like Rob, Don, and myself- who were to some degree or another lost to or driven out of Evangelical circles. They are doing wonderful work in new settings, receiving a warm welcome, enjoying life, and creating space for others.

The article's subhead said, "A decade ago, [Bell, Miller, and McLaren] stood as the leading voices for our evangelical future. We all know what happened since. But do we know why?" I wonder how many people really know - or really want to know - what happened over the last decade, and I wonder how many, even after reading the article, really understand why. Maybe the article will stimulate some curiosity and some second thoughts.

[Late Addition: Someone just told me the article is on the website of Leadership Journal (where I used to be a regular columnist), not CT, but I think the 2 are still related.]

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A Good New Book: A Missional Orthodoxy: Theology and Ministry in a Post-Christian Context by Gary Tyra
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2014/02/a-good-new-book-a-missional-orthodoxy-theology-and-ministry-in-a-post-christian-context-by-gary-tyra/

by Roger Olson

February 25, 2014

Comments

A Good New Book: A Missional Orthodoxy: Theology And Ministry in a

Post-Christian  Context by Gary Tyra (InterVarsity Press, 2013)

This book is hefty but it packs a good and needed “punch.” For evangelicals interested in being both missional and orthodox at the same time, it’s a breath of fresh air. One of the book’s central theses, maybe its main thesis, is that too many especially younger evangelicals think they have to choose between being either missional or orthodox.

Tyra is associate professor of biblical and practical theology at Assemblies of God related Vanguard University of Southern California (formerly Southern California College). However, he does not promote Pentecostal theology in this book (or any other that I know of). I say this so that readers who know Tyra teaches at an AG university won’t dismiss the book as “Pentecostal theology.” Nothing in it conflicts with sound, evangelical Pentecostal theology, but its orientation is broader. I would call it progressive evangelical but rooted in biblical and ecumenical orthodoxy.

Tyra chooses two contemporary theologians as his foils or case studies for how not to be both missional and orthodox. By the end of the book it is clear that he is warning evangelicals to beware of the trajectory he perceives much of the emerging church movement to be on. His case study of this trajectory is Brian McLaren and especially his later writings (e.g., Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World).

His case study of outright, blatant unorthodox liberal theology, toward which he fears McLaren and others in the emerging church movement are moving, is Marcus Borg and especially his book The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith.

Throughout the book Tyra compares Borg and McLaren. Borg denies theistic realism, preferring a symbolic realism in which symbols and images that transform are more important and valuable for Christianity than historical events and doctrines. He embraces soteriological pluralism in which Jesus Christ is “our savior” but not “the only savior.” Borg is generally considered by all evangelicals to be one of the purest examples of classical but contemporary liberal theology—along with John Shelby Spong. (I mention them because they are scholarly popularizers of liberal theology whose books can generally be found in mainstream bookstores.)

Tyra makes clear that he does not think McLaren is yet where Borg is, but his comparisons of the two theologians demonstrate a trajectory that leads him to think McLaren will, if he keeps going in the same direction, end up where Borg is now. The difference is that McLaren does not deny key biblical and orthodox doctrines, but he does minimize their importance to almost a vanishing point (according to Tyra). Tyra’s thesis is that McLaren is flirting with the danger of throwing the baby of basic Christian orthodoxy (defined Christologically) out with the bathwater of fundamentalism (his own spiritual and theological background to which he is [over]reacting). The Borg quotes he juxtaposes with McLaren’s indicate that perhaps McLaren is overly inspired by Borg. Or perhaps he is simply thinking along the same lines so that, eventually, he may end up where Borg is.

This is one case, I think, where a slippery slope argument is couched so cautiously and demonstrated so voluminously that it carries some weight. Tyra does not say Borg and McLaren are brothers under the skin - or bedfellows theologically - but he does cautiously warn that McLaren’s movement is in Borg’s direction and that this is not healthy because, somewhere along the way, authentic Christianity gets jetissoned in favor of a bland, insipid, culturally accommodated liberalism.

Tyra’s message to young, missionally-minded evangelicals (or post-evangelicals) is to beware of following McLaren too far. He does not, in fundamentalist fashion, suggest they not read McLaren (or Borg, for that matter). He is very irenic and cautious in his warnings—making clear that he respects both men, especially McLaren, but worries about their theologies and their effects in the churches.

Tyra goes through the gamut of Christian doctrines, from methodology to eschatology, urging contextualization of the gospel without assimilation to culture. He agrees with much of what Borg and McLaren affirm while gently but firmly disagreeing with much of what they deny (orthodoxy in Borg’s case and the importance of orthodoxy in McLaren’s case).

Fundamentalists who read Tyra’s book will think he goes too far in revising what they consider biblical orthodoxy. He affirms inspiration without inerrancy (unless “inerrancy” is defined so broadly that it loses its meaning), atoning sacrifice of Christ without penal substitution, and kenotic Christology. And he argues very strenuously that Christians ought to avoid imposing Christianity on people in a totalizing manner.

Liberals who read Tyra’s book will think he is a fundamentalist because he affirms the supernatural, miracles, the unique inspiration and authority of the Bible, the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ (in more than a symbolic or functional sense), Jesus’ bodily resurrection and his return in glory.

But all Tyra’s requires for “orthodoxy” is four “Christological verities”—the main one being the incarnation, that Jesus Christ was and is both truly God and truly human.

Don’t imagine, however, that Tyra’s book is all negative. He transcends critique (of Borg and McLaren) to affirmation—of the church as missional in the sense of existing for the mission of God in the world (as opposed to existing for its own maintenance and glory).

So who are Tyra’s “heroes?” He relies heavily on Lesslie Newbigin and Darrell Guder—two heroes of “missional Christianity.” Neither was/is a fundamentalist. Both argued/argue for contextualization of the gospel without assimilation to culture (especially modernity).

One strength of Tyra’s book is its cautious, often even sympathetic, critiques of Borg and McLaren and others who, with good intentions, over react to fundamentalism. There is no hint of mean-spiritedness in Tyra’s book. If anything he bends over backwards to be irenic, generous and kind.

Another strength is the book’s detailed analysis of contemporary “postmodern” Christianity in all its varieties. He demonstrates the differences as well as the similarities (mainly of concern).

I think a major strength of the book is its emphasis on - and call for - balance... not throwing babies out with bathwater but finding and holding steady to basic, broad orthodoxy while rejecting narrow fundamentalism.

One obvious weakness (for many potential readers) of the book is its size (393 pages). However, I think it’s worth it. I read it twice—the second time in one day.

Another possible weakness is the “kid gloves” with which Tyra handles Borg and McLaren. Several readers have told me they think he needed to take off the gloves and be bolder in his assertions (e.g., say that Borg is a heretic). On the other hand, some readers think he is too critical of McLaren. So the weakness may be a tendency to pull punches where a few punches might be in order and even helpful to readers in discerning the point.

I highly recommend A Missional Orthodoxy to all readers interested in the contemporary Christian theological “scene” in America—especially the “scene” on bookshelves of theologically-minded non-scholars who are being swayed and influenced by popularizers such as Borg and McLaren.

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Thoughts on Kirsten Powers, Grace, Ghettos, & Conscience

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/euangelion/2014/02/thoughts-on-kirsten-powers-grace-ghettos-conscience/

by Michael Bird

February 25, 2014

Comments

Kirsten Powers and Justin Meritt wrote a piece in The Daily Beast about How Conservative Christians Selectively Apply Biblical Teachings in the Same-Sex Marriage Debate. The presenting issue is [the occurence of] recent laws in [the state of] Arizona which allow individuals and businesses the right to deny service to same-sex couples. The laws came into effect in order to protect photographers, florists, and cake-makers who can be sued for refusing to provide services to same-sex weddings. In contrast, Powers and Merritt claim “Christians wrestling with this issue must first resolve the primary issue of whether the Bible calls Christians to deny services to people who are engaging in behavior they believe violates the teachings of Christianity regarding marriage. The answer is, it does not.”

Many have regarded Powers’ and Merritt’s argument to be a sort of betrayal to the evangelical cause. My dear friend Denny Burk is frustrated and annoyed by their response, stating: “Do Powers and Merritt realize that they ratify the arguments of Christianity’s fiercest opponents when they attribute our conscientious objections to animus and bigotry?”

Now I understand that this might have a bit to do with American libertarian culture which I’m admittedly an expert on, and this issue is just one front in the culture war about sexual equality and religious freedom. That said, and with all due respect to my buddy Denny Burk, I think Powers and Meritt are basically right.

First, it does not seem biblically defensible or morally virtuous for Christians to discriminate against one group of people in the name of conscience. I do not understand why it is okay to discriminate against same-sex couples because of their unbiblical lifestyle and yet to happily provide services for straight couples who are cohabiting together, committing adultery, and then there is the entire quagmire of divorce and remarriage. Nowhere in Scripture are we told to shun homosexual men and women in the work place or to deny them our business because of their choice of sexual activity. Nowhere in Scripture is homosexual practice the one sin that is more perverse than all the others so we must flee from it at first chance. I understand if someone wants to be a Christian photographer and only do Christian weddings, then fine. That’s a niche market, operating within a particular network, and serves particular people. But there is no biblical warrant to discriminate against one particular group because it is the center of heated debates in the culture wars. So I entirely agree with Powers and Merritt:

Rather than protecting the conscience rights of Christians, this looks a lot more like randomly applying religious belief in a way that discriminates against and marginalizes one group of people, while turning a blind eye to another group. It’s hard to believe that Jesus was ever for that.

Second, I would say that refusing to serve people who are “homosexual” or “cohabiting” is actually unbiblical because it shows a failure to love one’s neighbor and inhibits our mission to be salt of the earth-people actually among the people. You cannot love your neighbor unless you are willing to talk to them, walk beside them, and work near them. The consciences of the weak – and by “weak” I mean “sensitive” not “inferior” – must not be allowed to circumvent the clear biblical command to love our neighbors and force us into some kind of Christian ghetto where gay and lesbian people are not allowed to venture. We are not Pharisees, we are not holy by separation from the world, but we are holy as we bear witness to Jesus Christ in the world. [Of note: "This is the very same world that Brian Mclaren wishes to invest his time, resources, strength, and energy - R.E. Slater]

Third, the bigger issue is how Christians perceive their place in a pluralistic, pansexual, and postmodern metropolis. We are not in a position to bargain and insist that if we can’t Christianize the city, then we are entitled to our own private ghetto inside the city. My friends, listen up, as my good friend John Dickson once said, we are not living in Jerusalem any more, we are living in Athens. We cannot barricade ourselves in one little corner of the agora and say to gays, lesbians, greenies, and left-wing academics, “You shall not pass.” We don’t have the right to a ghetto, which is actually a good thing! We need to be out and about in the agora. Me, personally, I think the best place for a Christian photographer to be is at a gay Jewish atheist wedding, doing their job, doing it well, doing it for the glory of God, and doing it in such a way as to be praised for one’s professionalism, one’s fairness, one’s graciousness, and thereby win the chance to preach what one lives: the gospel of grace!

In sum -

(1) If you want to live and work in a Christian bubble in order to protect your conscience, go ahead, but don’t expect to be able to selectively apply Christian standards to those who are not Christians in the post-Christian market place;

(2) Christians need to think less about preserving their own holiness from fear of contamination and starting working out instead how their holy-state-in-Christ might be a contagion in the work-place where God has called them (HT: Craig Blomberg); and,

(3) Its time to remember that we cannot retreat to some  ghetto to preserve our way of life and instead we should focus on being the salt and light of the world.

Look, Christians live in the market place and think in the public square, we cannot retreat because we are surrounded by non-Christian culture, so there is literally nowhere to go. Our escape route is cut off, there is no cavalry coming to save us, there are no wagons to circle. So its time to set up shop, get busy as tinkers, tailors, and candle stick makers, or  get on as journalists, academics, and pastors in the place where God has put us!