America Divided: What the Surveys Say...

As both a Progressive Christian and Process-based Christian this website here does stand on the side of equal civil rights for all regardless of sex, gender, race, culture, religion, or nationality. Either we are at the beginning of a better democracy than America has ever known before as its pluralistic culture unites itself with the United States Constitution to observe liberty and equality for all its peoples. Or, we are at the very end of Jeffersonian democracy as it shatters under the weight of white Christian nationalists, white supremacists, and social media propagandists seeking to remake America into their own monolithic image of intolerance for all, to all, and by all. Thus today's belated survey bookending the civil rights protests begun in the 1950s and 60s seventy years earlier....

R.E. Slater

October 28, 2021

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Dramatic Partisan Differences On Blame

for January 6 Riots

https://www.prri.org/research/dramatic-partisan-differences-on-blame-for-january-6-riots/

09.15.2021

Topics: Politics & Elections Religion & Culture

Majorities of Americans Place Blame for January 6 Insurrection on White Supremacist Groups, Donald Trump, and Conservative Media Platforms, But Dramatic Partisan Differences Persist.

According to new data from PRRI, majorities of Americans say white supremacist groups (59%), former president Donald Trump (56%), and conservative media platforms that spread conspiracy theories and misinformation (55%) shoulder a lot of responsibility for the violent actions of the rioters who took over the U.S. Capitol on January 6. These views have stayed remarkably stable since mid-January, when 62% placed a lot of blame on white supremacist groups, 57% on Trump, and 57% on conservative media platforms that spread misinformation. There are not significant differences between these numbers and January data within subgroups, either.

Additionally, about four in ten Americans put a lot of the blame for the Capitol riot on Republican leaders (41%), and 29% put a lot of the blame on white conservative Christian groups. Despite the lack of any credible evidence that substantial numbers of liberal or left-wing groups participated in the riot, 38% put a lot of blame on these groups.

Blame Attribution by Party Affiliation

Republicans assign blame for the Capitol riots very differently from most Americans. About three in ten Republicans hold white supremacist groups (30%) and conservative media platforms that spread conspiracy theories and misinformation (27%) responsible for the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Only 15% of Republicans place a lot of blame on Donald Trump, and less than one in ten say Republican leaders (9%) and white conservative Christian groups (8%) hold a lot of responsibility for the Capitol riots. Strikingly, six in ten (61%) Republicans place a lot of responsibility for the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol on liberal or left-wing activists. Liberal activists are the only group a majority of Republicans say bear a lot of responsibility for this event.

Republicans’ blame attributions vary by which media sources they trust most to provide accurate information about politics and current events. Only a sliver of Republicans who most trust Fox News and far-right sources such as Newsmax and One America News Network say Trump holds a lot of the blame (3% each), and similarly few place a lot of blame on white conservative Christian groups (2% and 1%, respectively) and Republican leaders (2% and 0%, respectively). Fox News viewers are more likely than far-right news viewers to say a lot of blame goes to white supremacist groups (25% and 17%, respectively) and conservative media platforms that spread conspiracy theories and misinformation (21% and 15%, respectively). Not surprisingly, far-right news viewers are more likely than Fox News viewers to falsely assert that a lot of blame goes to liberal or left-wing activists for the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol (76% and 69%, respectively), though both groups overwhelmingly hold this view.

By contrast, Republicans who most trust broadcast network news, such as NBC, ABC, and CBS, are much more likely to place a lot of blame with white supremacist groups (61%), Donald Trump (50%), conservative media platforms that spread conspiracy theories and misinformation (46%), Republican leaders (23%), and white conservative Christian groups (21%). Still, a majority (53%) also assign a lot of blame to liberal and left-wing activists.

The vast majority of Democrats assign a lot of responsibility for the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6 to Donald Trump (89%), white supremacist groups (83%), conservative media platforms that spread conspiracy theories and misinformation (78%), and Republican leaders (70%). About half of Democrats say white conservative Christian groups (48%) hold a lot of blame, and nearly three in ten (27%) hold liberal or left-wing activists responsible.

Independents fall in between Republicans and Democrats, with majorities saying white supremacist groups (59%), Donald Trump (57%), and conservative media platforms that spread conspiracy theories and misinformation (55%) hold a lot of the blame for January 6. Fewer place a lot of the blame on Republicans leaders (37%), liberal or left-wing activists (34%), and white conservative Christian groups (27%).

Blame Attribution by Religion

White Christian groups are much less likely to blame right-leaning people or groups than other religious groups. White evangelical Protestants’ attitudes closely resemble those of Republicans in that few place a lot of blame for the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6 on Donald Trump (26%), Republican leaders (16%), and white Christian conservative groups (8%). More than one-third say white supremacist groups (37%) and conservative media platforms that spread conspiracy theories and misinformation (34%) hold a lot of the blame. The only group a majority of white evangelical Protestants blame for the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is liberal or left-wing activists (57%).

Nearly half of white mainline (non-evangelical) Protestants put a lot of blame on white supremacist groups (49%), conservative media platforms that spread conspiracy theories and misinformation (45%), liberal or left-wing activists (44%), and Donald Trump (43%). A majority of white Catholics place a lot of blame with white supremacist groups (54%) and conservative media platforms that spread conspiracy theories and misinformation (54%), while half (50%) attribute a lot of blame to Trump and 44% say liberal or left-wing activists hold a lot of the blame for the violent attack.

By contrast, eight in ten Black Protestants (80%) say white supremacist groups hold a lot of the blame, as do 73% of Hispanic Catholics, 69% of Jewish Americans, 65% of religiously unaffiliated Americans, 65% of other Protestants of color, 63% of other Christians, 62% of other non-Christian religious Americans, 59% of Hispanic Protestants, and 56% of Latter-day Saints. Similarly, about two-thirds of religiously unaffiliated Americans (67%), Black Protestants (66%), and other Christians (65%) place a lot of blame on conservative media platforms that spread conspiracy theories and misinformation, as do 59% of Hispanic Catholics, 58% of other Protestants of color, 55% of Jewish Americans, and 51% of Latter-day Saints. Less than half of Hispanic Protestants (48%) say the same.

Black Protestants are most likely to put a lot of the blame on Trump (79%), as are majorities of other Christians (74%), religiously unaffiliated Americans (69%), Hispanic Catholics (69%), other Protestants of color (65%), Hispanic Protestants (64%), other non-Christian religious Americans (64%), and Jewish Americans (57%). Less than half of Latter-day Saints (48%) say Trump shoulders a lot of the blame.

Blame Attribution by Views of Trump

Trump Favorability

Donald Trump’s favorability ratings remain about the same as they were in January: 34% of Americans hold favorable views of the former president, while 64% hold unfavorable views of him, including a 51% majority of Americans who hold very unfavorable views of him. In January, 31% of Americans viewed Trump favorably and 67% unfavorably, with 54% who viewed him very unfavorably.

Not surprisingly, only 8% of those who view Trump favorably blame him a lot for the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, compared to 83% of those who view him unfavorably.

About one in four Americans who view Trump favorably blame white supremacist groups (27%) and conservative media platforms that spread conspiracy theories and misinformation (24%) a lot for the violence on January 6, and fewer assign a lot of blame to Republican leaders (7%) and white conservative Christian groups (7%). Among Americans who view Trump favorably, six in ten (60%) assign a lot of responsibility for the attack on the U.S. Capitol to liberal or left-wing activists.

By contrast, majorities of Americans who view Trump unfavorably assign a lot of responsibility to white supremacist groups (77%), conservative media platforms that spread conspiracy theories and misinformation (73%), and Republican leaders (60%). They are less likely to blame white conservative Christian groups (42%) and liberal or left-wing activists (27%).

Belief That Trump Is a “True Patriot”

About one-third of Americans agree that “President Trump is a true patriot” (34%), compared to 63% who disagree, including nearly half (49%) who completely disagree. These views have not changed since January 2021. Not surprisingly, Republicans (79%) are substantially more likely to think that Trump is a true patriot than independents (34%) and Democrats (7%).

Views of Trump as a true patriot are highly correlated with low blame attribution for the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Among those who view Trump as a true patriot, only 10% blame him for the attack on the Capitol, compared to 83% of those who disagree that Trump is a true patriot.

White evangelical Protestants are the only religious group among whom a majority agree that Trump is a true patriot (68%). The only other religious groups among whom more than four in ten agree are white mainline Protestants (45%) and white Catholics (45%). Strong majorities of all other religious groups reject this idea.

Few Americans who think Trump is a true patriot place a lot of blame for January 6 on white supremacist groups (27%), conservative media platforms that spread conspiracy theories and misinformation (25%), white conservative Christian groups (8%), or Republican leaders (7%). Most Americans who view Trump as a true patriot assign a lot of responsibility for the attack on the U.S. Capitol to liberal or left-wing activists (59%).

By contrast, majorities of Americans who disagree that Trump is a true patriot assign a lot of responsibility to white supremacist groups (77%), conservative media platforms that spread conspiracy theories and misinformation (72%), and Republican leaders (60%). They are less likely to blame white conservative Christian groups (41%) and liberal or left-wing activists (27%) for the violent actions of the rioters who took over the U.S. Capitol building on January 6.

Blame Attribution by the Belief That the 2020 Election

Was Stolen From Donald Trump

Less than three in ten Americans (29%) agree that “The 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump,” compared to 69% who disagree, including 58% who completely disagree. These views have remained stable since March 2021. But Republicans hold views that are far outliers compared to the opinions of other Americans. More than seven in ten Republicans (71%) report that they believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, compared to 23% of independents and only 5% of Democrats.

The only religious group among whom a majority believes the election was stolen are white evangelical Protestants (61%). About four in ten white mainline Protestants (40%) and white Catholics (39%) agree, but less than one in three of every other religious group say the election was stolen.

Not surprisingly, given the goal of the January 6 rioters was to keep Trump in the White House, only 7% of Americans who agree that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump blame him a lot for the violence that took place that day, compared to 78% among those who disagree that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Among those who agree that the election was stolen from Trump, few blame white supremacist groups (24%), conservative media platforms that spread conspiracy theories and misinformation (23%), white conservative Christian groups (7%), or Republican leaders (7%). Most Americans who agree that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump place a lot of blame on liberal or left-wing activists (63%) for the violent actions of the rioters who took over the Capitol.

By contrast, majorities of Americans who disagree that the election was stolen from Donald Trump assign a lot of responsibility to white supremacist groups (74%), conservative media platforms that spread conspiracy theories and misinformation (70%), and Republican leaders (56%). They are less likely to blame white conservative Christian groups (39%) and liberal or left-wing activists (28%) for the violent actions of the rioters who took over the U.S. Capitol building on January 6.

Blame Attribution by QAnon Beliefs

Many believers of QAnon conspiracy theories participated in the Capitol siege that disrupted the certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory.

In this analysis, QAnon beliefs are measured based on respondents’ feelings about three statements: (1) The government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex-trafficking operation; (2) There is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders; and (3) Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country. QAnon believers (17% of Americans) mostly agree with these statements, whereas doubters (48% of Americans) are generally negative toward them and rejecters (35% of Americans) strongly disagree with all three statements.[1]

Belief in QAnon conspiracies is correlated with blame attribution for the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Only about one-third or less of QAnon believers assign a lot of responsibility for the January 6 attack to white supremacist groups (36%), conservative media platforms that spread conspiracy theories and misinformation (36%), Donald Trump (30%), Republican leaders (23%), and white conservative Christian groups (18%). The only group the majority of QAnon believers hold responsible for the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6 is liberal or left-wing activists (59%).

By contrast, strong majorities of QAnon rejecters assign a lot of responsibility for the violent actions of the rioters who took over the Capitol to Donald Trump (83%), white supremacist groups (78%), conservative media platforms that spread conspiracy theories and misinformation (78%), and Republican leaders (61%). Only 20% of QAnon rejecters assign a lot of responsibility for the attacks on the Capitol building to liberal or left-wing activists.

Blame Attribution by Views of the Impact of Violent Rhetoric

Nine months after the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, opinions about how much harsh and violent language in politics contributes to violent actions in society remain stable. Nearly six in ten Americans (56%) say that harsh and violent language in politics contributes “a lot” to violent actions in society today, compared to 60% in January 2021. An additional 33% say it contributes a little, slightly up from 30% in January, and only 10% say harsh and violent political language does not contribute at all to violent action, virtually the same as in January (9%).

Democrats are significantly more likely than Republicans to say that harsh and violent language contributes a lot to violent actions (75% vs. 40%), views that have not shifted significantly since January (79% and 37%, respectively). A slightly smaller majority of independents (54%) think that violent language contributes a lot to violent action today than in January (61%).

Majorities of Americans who think that harsh and violent language contributes a lot to violent actions today assign a lot of responsibility to white supremacist groups (74%), Donald Trump (74%), conservative media platforms that spread conspiracy theories and misinformation (72%), and Republican leaders (57%) for the violent actions of the rioters who took over the Capitol. Fewer assign a lot of responsibility to white conservative Christian groups (41%) or liberal or left-wing activists (37%). By contrast, among Americans who think that harsh and violent language has no influence on violent actions today, one in five or less blame any of these groups, except for liberal or left-wing activists, for the events of January 2021.

The Chasm Between Our Political Parties Revealed by the January 6 Insurrection

As the above analysis indicates, not only on specific issues related to the January 6 insurrection but also on perceptions of the link between harsh rhetoric and violent actions, we see strong asymmetric partisan polarization. Increasingly, Republicans hold views on these issues that are outliers compared to the views of other Americans. In partisan terms, political independents hold views much closer to those of Democrats than Republicans.

The chart below shows the distance between partisans and independents on several of the attitudes measured in this report: assigning blame to Donald Trump for the violent January 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol, belief that Trump is a true patriot, belief that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, belief in QAnon conspiracy theories, and beliefs in the links between harsh rhetoric and violent actions.

The gap between Democrats and Republicans on these measures is best described as a canyon. There is a 74-percentage-point difference in placing a lot of blame for violent attacks on the U.S. Capitol on January 6 on Donald Trump between Democrats (89%) and Republicans (15%). Similarly, the difference in thinking Trump is a true patriot is 72 percentage points between partisans (79% Republicans, 7% Democrats), and an astonishing 71% of Republicans think the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, compared to only 5% of Democrats. A smaller gap exists on how violent language affects violent actions, but the 35-percentage-point difference between Democrats (75%) and Republicans (40%) is still quite large. Perhaps most frightening, although the smallest gap in terms of percentage differences, nearly three times more Republicans (29%) than Democrats (9%) believe QAnon conspiracy theories. There seems to be little chance for cross-party agreement on issues involving Trump and the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

Survey Methodology

The survey was designed and conducted by PRRI among a representative sample of 5,415 adults (age 18 and up) living in all 50 states in the United States, including 5,032 who are part of Ipsos’s Knowledge Panel and an additional 383 who were recruited by Ipsos using opt-in survey panels to increase the sample sizes in smaller states. Interviews were conducted online between August 9 and 30, 2021.

Respondents are recruited to the KnowledgePanel using an addressed-based sampling methodology from the Delivery Sequence File of the USPS – a database with full coverage of all delivery addresses in the U.S. As such, it covers all households regardless of their phone status, providing a representative online sample. Unlike opt-in panels, households are not permitted to “self-select” into the panel; and are generally limited to how many surveys they can take within a given time period.

The initial sample drawn from the KnowledgePanel was adjusted using pre-stratification weights so that it approximates the adult U.S. population defined by the latest March supplement of the Current Population Survey. Next, a probability proportional to size (PPS) sampling scheme was used to select a representative sample.

To reduce the effects of any non-response bias, a post-stratification adjustment was applied based on demographic distributions from the most recent American Community Survey (ACS). The post-stratification weight rebalanced the sample based on the following benchmarks: age, race and ethnicity, gender, Census division, metro area, education, and income. The sample weighting was accomplished using an iterative proportional fitting (IFP) process that simultaneously balances the distributions of all variables. Weights were trimmed to prevent individual interviews from having too much influence on the final results. In addition to an overall national weight, separate weights were computed for each state to ensure that the demographic characteristics of the sample closely approximate the demographic characteristics of the target populations. The state-level post-stratification weights rebalanced the sample based on the following benchmarks: age, race and ethnicity, gender, education, and income.

These weights from the KnowledgePanel cases were then used as the benchmarks for the additional opt-in sample in a process called “calibration.” This calibration process is used to correct for inherent biases associated with nonprobability opt-in panels. The calibration methodology aims to realign respondents from nonprobability samples with respect to a multidimensional set of measures to improve their representation.

The margin of error for the national survey is +/- 1.86 percentage points at the 95% level of confidence, including the design effect for the survey of 1.96. In addition to sampling error, surveys may also be subject to error or bias due to question wording, context, and order effects. Additional details about the KnowledgePanel can be found on the Ipsos website: https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/solution/knowledgepanel

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Endnotes

[1] For more on QAnon beliefs, see PRRI’s previous report:

https://www.prri.org/research/qanon-conspiracy-american-politics-report/

Home Page Featured image: Tyler Merbler

America is no longer as evangelical as it was

Amid Evangelical decline, growing split between young Christians and church eldersThe number of white evangelical Protestants fell from about 23 percent of the US population in 2006 to 17 percent in 2016, and only 11 percent are under 30, according to a survey of more than 100,000 Americans. | Christian Science Monitor

America is no longer as evangelical as

it was -- and here's why

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/10/opinions/american-evangelicals-protestantism-butler-bass/index.html

Opinion by Diana Butler Bass

July 11, 2021

Diana Butler Bass (@DianaButlerBass) is the author of 11 books on American religion and cultural trends, including her most recent, "Freeing Jesus: Rediscovering Jesus as Friend, Teacher, Savior, Lord, Way and Presence." She was a member of the Public Religion Research Institute board from 2008 to 2018. The views expressed here are hers. Read more opinion on CNN.

In 1994, I quit.

Twenty years earlier, I'd been born again. I had grown up in a liberal Methodist church but started going to a nondenominational church with high school friends. When I told my friends that I'd given my life to Jesus, there were hugs and tears. Jesus embraced me, and so did they. I had a new family -- and everything changed.

Diana Butler Bass

I had not only converted to Jesus, but I'd entered another world, one with its own language, practices, ethics and expectations. I learned this sort of Christianity had a name: "Evangelical" meaning "good news." And it seemed very good to me. Evangelical faith was warm, assuring, enthusiastic, serious and deeply pious. I attended an evangelical college, graduated from an evangelical seminary and did doctoral work with a leading evangelical scholar. I was proud to be evangelical.

Evangelical Christianity was everything to me back then: faith, work, friends, life. It stayed that way until my questions started. Evangelicalism became the religious right, it became obvious that women would never be accepted as leaders, and closeted gay evangelical friends died of AIDS.

After a protracted internal struggle, I couldn't do it anymore. I joined a liberal Episcopal church, returning to the kind of mainline Protestantism I'd known before being born again.

It was hard leaving evangelical Christianity. Through the years, I'd occasionally meet someone who had a similar experience, but such encounters were often random, or felt furtive. Mostly, when it came to my spiritual journey, I've felt alone. Until this week.

On July 8, the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) released its American Religious Landscape survey for 2020. The report resembled those of recent years, affirming now-familiar trends shaping 21st century American religion: increasing racial diversity in Christian communities, the sizable presence of world religions other than Christianity and the explosive growth of those who are religiously unaffiliated.

In other words, there were no major surprises -- except one. Unlike previous surveys, this one showed that the decline among White Christians has slowed. Indeed, the percentage of White Christians actually rose slightly due to growth in an unlikely category -- an increase among white mainline Protestants, "an uptick" of 3.5% in their proportion of the American population.

This uptick is especially surprising when compared to the drop in White evangelical Protestantism. The report pointedly states: "Since 2006, white evangelical Protestants have experienced the most precipitous drop in affiliation, shrinking from 23% of Americans in 2006 to 14% in 2020."

White mainline Protestantism is growing; White evangelicalism is declining. And that is big news.

Most researchers divide White American Protestantism into two large families: Evangelical and mainline. Evangelicalism comprises a multitude of theologically conservative Protestants who typically belong to groups such as the Southern Baptist Convention, the Assemblies of God or to independent, nondenominational mega-church congregations.

Mainline Protestantism (sometimes referred to as "old-line," "mainstream," or "ecumenical") is an umbrella designation for those more theologically moderate and liberal Protestants who identify with the Episcopal Church (TEC), Presbyterian Church, USA (PCUSA), United Methodist Church (UMC), United Church of Christ (UCC) or the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).

Chances are that if you grew up Protestant and attending church in America, you worshipped on one side of this divide or the other, even if you did not know this history or which camp your church was in. Or, like me, you moved between them, as I was first mainline, then evangelical, and then mainline again.

PRRI indicates that the mainline rebound is significant: "The slight increase in white Christians between 2018 and 2020 was driven primarily by an uptick in the proportion of white mainline (non-evangelical) Protestants... Since 2007, white mainline (non-evangelical) Protestants have declined from 19% of the population to a low of 13% in 2016, but the last three years have seen small but steady increases, up to 16% in 2020."

For several years, observers have noted the decline of White evangelicalism. As white evangelical numbers declined, the percentage of religiously unaffiliated Americans went up. There appeared to be a correlation between the two -- ex-evangelicals moved to the "none" category. Over the last three years, however, the unaffiliated category has stabilized while the white evangelical exodus continued. At the same time, the white mainline category has risen.

This shift suggests that some portion of ex-evangelicals are finding their way toward mainline or another non-evangelical Protestant sense of identity.

This doesn't mean that Americans are necessarily returning to mainline churches in droves. The PRRI study is not about church attendance or membership. It isn't about what people do. It is about identity - labels people use to describe their religious lives. The data suggests that White Protestants are distancing themselves from "evangelical." Many apparently leave religion altogether. But others -- whose numbers might be that modest "uptick" -- may be reacquainting themselves with mainline Protestantism.

Dividing Protestants into two categories goes back to the early 20th century when the two groups were called "fundamentalists" and "modernists." In the 1920s, Protestants quarreled over the Bible and evolution, their churches and seminaries split. The two factions largely went their separate ways, eventually morphing into "evangelicals" and "mainliners" as they are called today.

In the middle decades of the 20th century, mainline Protestants held more cultural and political power. By the mid-1970s, however, their numbers -- and influence -- began a rapid decline.

As the mainline went into a demographic tailspin, evangelicals fought for greater recognition in politics and culture, surprising nearly everyone with the size of their churches, the energy of their organizations and a kind of expressive spirituality. Their robust ascent into the public conversation, their political acumen and their fundraising prowess, transformed American politics and church life seemingly overnight.

In the last quarter of the 20th century, mainline Protestantism faded from public view. "Evangelical" became coterminous with "Protestant." If one was born after 1980, it was hard to know that mainline Protestantism even existed.

Pendulums do, however, swing. And it could be that this is the historical moment when America's Protestant pendulum is moving away from its evangelical side to its more liberal one once again.

What is certain is that America is no longer as evangelical as it was. But it is not as mainline as it was in the mid-20th century either. Both terms used to describe American Protestantism are more fluid than most people know, and both "evangelical" and "mainline" are undergoing changes. This may lead to a genuine renewal of the old mainline Protestant denominations -- it is too early to tell. This shift, however, will have political and social consequences.

Ultimately, data is about stories. This recent PRRI poll suggests a new one may be unfolding.

Beyond scholarly speculation, analytical research and historical theories, however, numbers also quantify the experiences of real people. There are millions of stories -- enough to now show up as data -- of spiritual journeys of those who have left evangelicalism and are searching for a new sense of identity, deeper meaning and a place to call home.

- DBB

[WP] The rapid decline of White evangelical America?

[RNS] The ‘nones’ are growing — and growing more diverse

Religious disaffiliation has risen in every generation, including even older Americans, though the sharpest spike in nones is occurring with the millennials.

Amazon Link

Winner of the 2019 Grawemeyer Award in Religion

Robert P. Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, spells out the profound political and cultural consequences of a new reality—that America is no longer a majority white Christian nation. “Quite possibly the most illuminating text for this election year” (The New York Times Book Review).

For most of our nation’s history, White Christian America (WCA) set the tone for our national policy and shaped American ideals. But especially since the 1990s, WCA has steadily lost influence, following declines within both its mainline and evangelical branches. Today, America is no longer demographically or culturally a majority white, Christian nation.

Drawing on more than four decades of polling data, The End of White Christian America explains and analyzes the waning vitality of WCA. Robert P. Jones argues that the visceral nature of today’s most heated issues—the vociferous arguments around same-sex marriage and religious and sexual liberty, the rise of the Tea Party following the election of our first black president, and stark disagreements between black and white Americans over the fairness of the criminal justice system—can only be understood against the backdrop of white Christians’ anxieties as America’s racial and religious topography shifts around them.

Beyond 2016, the descendants of WCA will lack the political power they once had to set the terms of the nation’s debate over values and morals and to determine election outcomes. Looking ahead, Jones forecasts the ways that they might adjust to find their place in the new America—and the consequences for us all if they don’t. “Jones’s analysis is an insightful combination of history, sociology, religious studies, and political science….This book will be of interest to a wide range of readers across the political spectrum” (Library Journal).

Amazon Link

Does process theology have something to say about political and social issues and our response to them?

In this short book, Bruce Epperly says that it has much to say, and can shape not just the ethics and policies of a better world, but also the way in which we debate and decide those policies. Process theology invites discussion and even guides us toward acceptable and positive compromises.

No major political issue of the western world is excluded from this discussion. From immigration to criminal justice, from abortion to reproductive health, from the environment to economic development, process thinking can help guide examination, shaping, and implementation of solutions for a troubled world.

This book is suitable for individual reading by anyone who wants to take a fresh look at policy from an open-minded, progressive point of view. It can also be helpful in group studies for those who want to study how to apply prophetic proclamation to daily living.

Where is Christianity headed? The view from 2019

The global distribution of Christians: Countries colored a darker shade have a
higher proportion of Christians. - Wikipedia | ANALYSIS (19 December 2011). "Table:
Religious Composition by Country, in Percentages". Pewforum.org. Retrieved 17 August2012. 

My world religion class last year pointed out 3 of every 4 immigrants coming into America are persecuted, asylum-seeking Christians. Moreover, the fastest growing churches in America are non-white as they spread Jesus to their cultural segments. Pentecostalism is here to stay - empowering and providing meaningful social transformation. The Nones, Dones and Millennials have declared any spirituality must be actualized, consistent with Jesus' love, and full of good earth care. That many non-growing church congregations are not reaching the youth, have become time-dated capsules of church culture and beliefs, or have Americanized the gospel or bible in someway.

When I started Revelancy22 ten years ago I had to work through all these trends, and as I did I began to realize that my dissatisfaction with Christianity began with many of the issues I was not seeing addressed within my brand of Christianity. At which point I started to re-write a more cohesive gospel narrative which embraced as many factors as required conscious thought and discussion. In essence, I wanted to provide helpful navigational aides to fellow Christians similarly burdened as I.

Though unpopular, ignored, or dismissed I see today the help my-and-other similarly engaged bloggers have provided many during recent troubling times - that Jesus is relevant, His gospel of love and salvation effective, His healing ministry meaningful, His obedient, discerning church socially relevant and engaged, and Spirit-driven hope may be real, inspiring toward ethical action, and overcoming to a secular society full of wind and Jesus-less words. The following survey shows the same as has every previous survey this past decade. Peace.

R.E. Slater

January 16, 2019

* * * * * * * * * *

For 400 years, Christianity has been molded by the largely European culture that came out of the
Enlightenment, but it is recentering its footprint and becoming a non-Western religion. Image
by Bernd Thaller/Creative Commons

Where is Christianity headed? The view from 2019

https://religionnews.com/2019/01/10/where-is-christianity-headed-the-view-from-2019/

by Wesley Granberg-Michaelson

January 10, 2019

(RNS) — As 2019 begins, the world is becoming more religious, not less. Faith from diverse traditions grows as population expands throughout most of the Global South. Last year, nearly 50 million more Christians were added in Africa, making it the continent with the most adherents to Christianity in the world, 631 million.

In the U.S., a narrative of religious decline and growing secularism is now culturally popular. The percentage of “nones” — those claiming no religious affiliation — is growing, particularly among millennials. But what are the deeper trends and challenges, beneath the headlines, that are likely to shape the future of faith?

White U.S. congregations are withering. From 1991 to 2014, the number of white Protestants declined by a third, a trend that will continue as they age: Though 20 percent of Americans are 18 to 34 years of age, only 1 in 10 white Protestant congregations reflects that in their attendance. As a result, more than half of U.S. congregations now have fewer than 100 members. Hundreds will close this year.

Where there is growth in American Christian denominations, it is driven mostly by nonwhites, whether Catholic or Protestant, evangelical or mainline. Over the past half-century, 71 percent of growth in Catholicism, for instance, has come from its Hispanic community. In the Assemblies of God, one of the few U.S. denominations to show overall growth, white membership slightly declined while nonwhite membership increased by 43 percent over 10 years.

Multiracial congregations are also expanding to draw 1 in 5 churchgoing Americans, and surveys report a higher level of spiritual vitality among them compared with racially homogeneous congregations.

Globally, thanks to dramatic geographic and demographic changes, Christianity is recentering its footprint and becoming a non-Western religion. For 400 years, the faith has been molded by the largely European culture that came out of the Enlightenment. But today its vitality is coming from emerging expressions of Christianity in Africa as well as in Asia and Latin America.

These new influences are raising new questions about the relationship of the individual to the community, rational versus nonrational pathways to perceiving truth and the interplay of the spiritual and material realms.

As the yearning for authentic spiritual experience moves from the head to the heart in this new environment, spirit-filled communities are flourishing. Today, 1 of 4 Christians in the world identifies as Pentecostal or charismatic, with Pentecostalism growing at roughly four times the rate of the world’s population itself.

The popular image of Pentecostals as television preachers extolling a prosperity gospel and flitting around on private jets obscures the real causes for much of the movement’s explosive growth: small Pentecostal communities among the marginalized in the Global South that are providing empowerment and social transformation.

In wealthy Western countries, a strong spiritual driver is the visible impact of climate change. After centuries of a Western Christian cosmology that empties the material world of spiritual value, care of creation is becoming a foundation of Christian faith and practice, as Pope Francis proclaimed in his prophetic encyclical “Laudato Si’.” Saving the Earth has become a spiritual calling.

But the West, particularly the U.S., has to open its eyes to startling developments in the rest of the world. The “Trump Effect” has undermined the integrity of Christian witness in America in the eyes of the global church. Most non-American church leaders can’t believe the public support given to President Trump by some conservative U.S. church leaders and cannot understand the deafening silence of others.

Trump’s own statements have scandalized the non-Western church, in referring to African nations as “s—hole countries” and in proclaiming an “America first” policy that sounds in many places like a theological heresy that puts the Bible second. American Christianity across all traditions faces the imperative of de-Americanizing its witness if it is to have any global integrity. The world won’t give any credibility to versions of the gospel that baptize American power, wealth and global reach with notions of spiritual blessing, especially under the leadership of Trump.

It is also essential to confront culture wars in the church at home and abroad. The division in the church over ethical understandings of sexuality will persist for decades, since no action of a denominational general conference, synod, assembly or council will change the sexual orientation of its members. While the church in the Global South mostly holds to strong conservative views on this matter, diversity also exists there and will slowly grow.

The key question ahead is whether the core of the gospel is declared to be at stake in these differences over same-gender covenanted partnerships, and divide us, or whether they will be seen as ethical and pastoral challenges that should not undercut the unifying call to follow Christ’s mission in the world.

Meanwhile, “belonging before believing” is reshaping pathways of discipleship. The thirst for authentic community, evident in the appeal of Taize to young people and countless other small initiatives, demonstrates a need to rethink how we welcome others into our faith or tradition. The demand that outsiders first adhere to specific beliefs expressed in creeds or confessions is giving way to inviting them first to explore and share in worship, reflection and service. Eventually this will alter traditional ecclesiology and understandings of discipleship.

If there is a theme in what lies ahead for the church as we enter a new year, it is that the white Western Christian bubble that has powerfully shaped Christianity for the past four centuries is now beginning to burst. Future expressions of Christian faith will be shaped by its interactions with non-Western and nonwhite cultures. This will present challenges to the established church in the U.S. but may hold the keys to its revitalization.

- WGM

(Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, whose latest book is “Future Faith:Ten Challenges Reshaping Christianity in the 21st Century,” served for 17 years as general secretary of the Reformed Church in America.)

When Religion Makes People Worse

This statue of Jesus crucified is included in a collection of
the fragments from Reims Cathedral in France, on display
at the National WWI Museum at  Liberty Memorial in Kansas
City, Mo., on May 2, 2014. The museum holds the most
diverse collection of artifacts around the world. | Religion
News Service photo by Sally Morrow

Christians, Conflicts & Change: When religion makes people worse

http://religionnews.com/2016/04/05/religion-makes-people-worse/

by David Gushee

April 15, 2016

Religion can do a great job helping believers discern right from wrong. Religion can do a great job helping believers relate kindly and justly to other people. And religion can do a great job stiffening the will of believers when they face unjust suffering for their faith.

I was taught these things when I studied Christian ethics, and they continue to motivate me in my work as an ethics professor today.

But hard experience has me seeing the negation of these claims more than I did at the beginning of my journey.

Now I see that religion can sometimes do a very poor job helping believers discern right from wrong. Religion can do a very poor job helping believers relate kindly and justly to others. And religion can easily persuade people that the rejection they are receiving for their hurtful or ill-considered convictions is martyrdom for God’s Truth, leaving them even more entrenched in their destructive beliefs.

My two key teachers in the field of Christian ethics in the 1980s were the Baptist Glen Stassen of Southern Baptist Seminary and the Lutheran Larry Rasmussen of Union Seminary in New York. These men knew each other and shared many common scholarly interests that shaped me as well. These included the Nazi period in Germany, the extraordinary life of the scholar-pastor-resister Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the challenge of overcoming racism, and the fight against the nuclear arms race during the Cold War.

Both men modeled and taught me an essentially hopeful vision about the role that Christian convictions can play in making Christians more faithful and society better. They taught a faith that had learned very deeply the lessons of the Nazi period; that honored Dietrich Bonhoeffer for standing fast against Nazi seductions when so many of his fellow Christians surrendered their souls; that resisted America’s own racism; and that rejected the idea that more nukes would make the world safer.

My own dissertation focused on that small minority of Christians who rescued Jews during the Holocaust. I sought to discover what kind of character, motivations, and faith shaped these people who risked their lives when their neighbors were standing by indifferently. I have spent much of my career attempting to teach what I have sometimes called a “rescuer Christianity,” as over against a “bystander Christianity.”

But now as a wizened old veteran of the fight, I struggle with discouragement sometimes. It is not just that many Christians fail to live up to the clear demands of Christian discipleship. It’s that we can’t even agree on what those demands are. We all say we believe in Jesus, but what we make of that belief is so irreconcilably different that I am not sure that we are in any meaningful way members of the same religious community.

I should have seen this more clearly all along. After all, could it really be said that a Dietrich Bonhoeffer who died resisting Hitler shared the same religion as the “Christian” men who murdered children in Hitler’s name? What was the religious commonality between white Christian KKK members and black Christians fighting for an end to segregation and lynching? And how much do pro-torture, Islamophobic Christians have in common with those who take the opposite path?

A faith that stands with the crucified ones of this world is very different from a faith that does the crucifying. The question becomes not whether you say you follow Jesus, but which Jesus you follow.

Worst of all has been my discovery in recent years of versions of Christianity that actually make people worse human beings than they might otherwise have been. Here churches, pastors, or individuals interpret Scripture or faith in such a way that they do harm they would not do if they were just good old-fashioned pagans. I never anticipated that I would think: “If we could just keep people out of (this version of) church, they would be better people.”

Christian leaders often puzzle over why Christianity in America is declining so badly. Here’s a reason: some highly visible versions of Christianity are so abhorrent that reasonably sensible people want nothing to do with Christianity or the people who practice it.

The same, of course, holds for abhorrent versions of other religions. But that’s their problem, and this one is mine.

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.

* * * * * * * * * *

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).