Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Saturday, April 28, 2012

A "Call to Faith by Breaking Faith," by Ross Douthat, NYT




From the tenor of this article it seems that postmodern Christianity has a lot of issues to work through - its history, its message, its mission, its ministries, it teachings. One that will require the many hearts, hands and minds of Christiandom around us. And that fact alone makes me confident in Christianity's future after coming through so large a parade of this past 20th Century's (including modernism's!) foibles and follies. Rather than despair at the great task set ahead of us it should be look upon as one of providential opportunity and blessing. One filled with possibility and encouragement. For there can be no despair for the world - nor for Christians specifically - when Jesus is the focus of our discussions and our relationships with one another. Surely, the only despair can come from our errant perceptions and idolatries surrounding Jesus in what we deem Christianity to be - or should be - rather than what it really is, and can be. Let us learn from the past, listen to today's critics, and discover a more substantive faith that can comport with today's global environment and mutli-cultural issues, problems and greatness.

We need Christians who can re-vision the world around us - not Christian revisionists who stick their heads in the proverbial sand like an ostrich and refuse to update their faith and their people! People of God who understand how to minister and preach to the needs of humanity without losing the soul-and-spirit of the biblical themes of God's love and redemption, and the grace and forgiveness found in Christ Jesus our Savior and Lord. Several of the people we have been following here in this web blog are mentioned below (sic, Dr. Roger Olson and Miroslav Volf). And it is to this wisdom of God's discerning body of believers that will come the Church's future directions and goals through providentially placed thinkers and contemporary theologs.

Be at peace then and know that God is bigger than us. That God's Kingdom will surely invade the Age of Man to lead humanity out from its sin and woe by a heavenly Child come to be our Savior-Messiah. Be as little children then. And be at peace in your child-like faith. For God is great and can do marvelous things beyond our imaginations.

R.E. Slater
April 28, 2012





Breaking Faith

‘Bad Religion,’ by Ross Douthat
April 27, 2012


From “God’s Controversy With New England,” Michael Wigglesworth’s 1662 call to repentance, to the latest campaign autobiography by a presidential aspirant, the jeremiad has been one of the most durable literary forms throughout American history. Typically, the author identifies some golden age, one just now dissolving in the rearview mirror; recounts the slippery path of declension; and then prescribes an amendment of ways in order to avert further disaster.

Ross Douthat’s contribution to this genre, “Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics,” laments the departure from what he calls “a Christian center,” which “has helped bind together a teeming, diverse and fissiparous nation.” Absent a national church, he argues, Christianity “has frequently provided an invisible mortar for our culture and a common vocabulary for our great debates.”

Douthat’s halcyon age is the postwar period, especially the 1950s. Mainline Protestantism was flourishing, and Roman Catholics, having demonstrated their patriotism in World War II, enjoyed new status as part of Will Herberg’s ­“Protestant-Catholic-Jew” America. “A kind of Christian convergence was the defining feature of this era,” Douthat asserts, and he cites the work of Reinhold Niebuhr, Billy Graham, Fulton Sheen and Martin Luther King Jr. as evidence that “the divided houses of American Christendom didn’t just grow, they grew closer together, re-engaged with one another after decades of fragmentation and self-segregation.”

Or did they? Niebuhr snubbed Graham during that evangelist’s storied 16-week revival at Madison Square Garden in 1957, and Graham did not participate in any of King’s civil rights marches or demonstrations. Bishop Sheen’s television popularity notwithstanding, Protestants continued to take shots at Catholicism; witness the runaway success of Paul Blanshard’s “American Freedom and Catholic Power” (11 printings in as many months) and the religious opposition that very nearly cost John F. Kennedy the presidency in 1960. Douthat, an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times, extols Dwight Eisenhower’s laying of the cornerstone at the Inter­church Center in Upper Manhattan on Oct. 12, 1958, as “a celebration of Christian convergence and institutional vitality,” but he neglects to mention the temple bombing in Atlanta earlier that same day, a tragedy that even the president managed to acknowledge amid his platitudes about religion as the “firm foundation” of the nation’s character.

But a jeremiad, almost by definition, will not let thorny details stand in the way of a good romp, so let’s set aside these cavils and play along. Douthat locates the end of “the postwar moment” in 1963, just after King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. American Christianity, the author says, was at the height of its influence; Richard Russell, the segregationist senator from Georgia, would complain that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed only because “those damn preachers got the idea that it was a moral issue.”

Douthat’s narrative of decline implicates the sexual revolution; globalization (by which he means exposure to non-Christian religions); and the Vietnam War, which bifurcated American Christianity. Seminary enrollments declined, denominations faced budgetary stringencies and the elites “understood that the only reason to pay attention to traditional Christianity was to subject it to a withering critique.” Add to that the ordination of women, the growing acceptance of divorce and the destigmatizing of homosexuality, and you have a traditionalist’s nightmare.

Douthat, himself a conservative Catholic, believes that evangelicals generally hewed to the resistance model. By the 1980s, he insists, “what vitality remained in American Christendom was being sustained by the unexpected alliance between evangelicals and Catholics,” although he acknowledges that the religious right’s identification with George W. Bush tarnished its reputation.

The plunge into heresy, Douthat believes, can be traced to theological developments like the revisionist Jesus Seminar and the unlikely trinity of Elaine Pagels, Bart Ehrman and Dan Brown. Douthat accuses them of discrediting Christian orthodoxy in the interests of remaking Jesus in their own image, often for political ends. Debunking the debunkers, Douthat concludes that “they speak the language of the conspiratorial pamphlet, the paranoid chain e-mail — or the paperback thriller.” The currency of these ideas has given rise to what the author calls the “God Within” movement. “A choose-your-own-Jesus mentality,” Douthat writes, “encourages spiritual seekers to screen out discomfiting parts of the New Testament and focus only on whichever Christ they find most congenial.”

The “God Within” malady has infected evangelicals as well, as seen in the so-called prosperity gospel. Douthat harvests a lot of low-hanging fruit in this section, and who can blame him? The pablum peddled by Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer and countless others surely represents an adumbration of Christian orthodoxy, but Douthat also criticizes Michael Novak’s defense of capitalism for being a betrayal of traditional Catholic teachings. All of this leaves us sinking into a morass of gluttony and narcissism, which has been inflected into the political arena as American ­exceptionalism.

Although Douthat’s grasp of American religious history is sometimes tenuous — he misdates the Second Great Awakening, mistakes Puritans for Pilgrims and erroneously traces the disaffection of American Catholics to the Second Vatican Council rather than the papal encyclical “Humanae Vitae” — there is much to commend his argument. Yes, the indexes of religious adherence are down, and the quality of religious discourse in America has diminished since the 1950s, in part because of the preference for therapy over theology. Theological illiteracy is appalling; many theologians, like academics generally, prefer to speak to one another rather than engage the public.

But the glass-is-half-full approach, to borrow from the famous Peace Corps ad of this era, looks rather different. I’m not sure that the enervation of religion as institution since the 1950s is entirely a bad thing; institutions, in my experience, are remarkably poor vessels for piety. An alternative reading of the liberal “accommodationists” Douthat so reviles is that they have enough confidence in the relevance and integrity of the faith to confront, however imperfectly, such fraught issues as women’s ordination and homosexuality rather than allow them to fester as they have for centuries. I suspect, moreover, that Douthat has overestimated the influence of intellectual trends like the Jesus Seminar. The thinkers he quotes are important, but I would also recommend the lesser-known work of writers like Roger Olson, Jean Sulivan, Doug Frank, Miroslav Volf and David James Duncan as evidence of the vitality of Christian thinking; they may occasionally poke provocatively at the edges of orthodoxy, but most do so from well within its frame. Finally, the fact that we are having this conversation at all (much less in the pages of this newspaper) is testament to the enduring relevance of faith in what sociologists long ago predicted would be a secular society.

Like any good jeremiad, “Bad Religion” concludes with what evangelicals would recognize as an altar call. Douthat invites readers to entertain “the possibility that Christianity might be an inheritance rather than a burden,” and he elevates such eclectic phenomena as home schooling, third-world Christianity and the Latin Mass as sources for renewal.

Religion in the rearview mirror never looked better.


Randall Balmer, an Episcopal priest and a professor of American religious history at Barnard College, is the author of a dozen books, including “Thy Kingdom Come” and “God in the White House.”



Repost: Matthew Harding - "Let Us Dance!"

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.' " (Rev 21.1-4)


Let Us Dance!
by Matt Harding

2008





2012






"This is now an older video but it works still, for me, as a powerful visual metaphor for the 'new heavens and new earth,' the biblical notion that this whole earth will be restored and renewed under God’s eschatological loving care.

To be fair, it wasn’t the original intention of the video, which is pretty cool all on its own (apart from the analogical connection to eschatology), but set it alongside the vision of Rev. 21 and you have a picture of: Dancing. Joy. Happiness. Reunion. Health. Solid, beautiful earth. Reconciliation and Peace. The 'coming of God.' The New Jerusalem joining the present world. The coming Kingdom. Of Christ who is all in all. Maranatha! "

by Kyle Roberts, Bethel College
http://kylearoberts.com/wordpress/?p=446



When I first saw this video I didn't know what to expect and the longer I watched it the more my heart was moved by its incredible vision. It brought tears of joy to my eyes, and my heart just wanted to burst with its beauty, as I thought of God's love for us and this wonderful life made so beautiful when we all join in. Come, let us Dance! Let us Celebrate t-o-g-e-t-h-e-r in this thing called Life!

R.E. Slater
May 15, 2011




On Things that Last - Revival, Relationship, Faith

"I Used to Be On Fire for God"

Jordan White
 
Me and Britt
It started junior year of high school when I went to my friend’s charismatic youth group. The room was dark, the music was loud and there was a lot of dancing. People were crying on the floor, shouting unintelligible languages and jumping.

It was the weirdest, most electric thing I’d ever experienced. I was "on fire" for God.



I was raised almost completely out of church by completely Christian parents. I’ve only recently come to understand what it was that hurt them about church and why they can’t bring themselves to go back. It’s an unspoken bond not unlike people who’ve experienced something traumatic like a car accident. The connection is in the eyes, in the way we talk about who we were as compared to who we are. When I was in high school and on fire for God, I thought my parents were scared. Little did I know, God is scary.



The problem with revival is that it is a fleeting notion.



While in high school and on fire for God, I was a leader for a campus ministry called CRASH. The name came from a group of rhinos running into buildings or something Christian-edgy like that. We met once a week on Friday mornings before school, and it was my job to lead sermons for the 15 or so students brave enough to show up before school and worship. When I didn’t sleep through my alarm, I dragged my younger brother to school at six and planned out lessons five minutes before I was supposed to deliver them.

I was really terrible at leading CRASH. My ego and self-confidence levels were at an all-time high with practicality trailing enormously behind me. That was a serious problem with my brand of Christianity. It was more about me believing unwaveringly in my own enlightenment than it was about sharing God’s love. I saw myself as a revolutionary Christian leader whose stories were sure to circulate for millennia to come. It was all about the sexiness of healings and loud worship and not at all about listening. But one time, I did do something right. “Right,” meaning "impactful."



Our group met in the old theater of the high school. Our small following didn’t come close to filling the 1,000-seat auditorium, but occasionally that worked in our favor. On this particular morning, I was talking about how we shouldn’t be scared to spread the Gospel to each and every person we meet. I’m sure I quoted (potentially misquoted) the verse about how if we deny God before man, then Jesus will deny us before His Father.



From the stage, I asked for a volunteer to come stand on a box. After a long pause, I got one. He slowly approached the steps to the left of the stage and stood next to me. Then I asked him what he was passionate about. I had also been talking about how God works through our passions and that we should be bold about those as well. Like a good revolutionary, I took this simple question and made something radical and showy out of it.



I jumped off the stage and ran toward the back of the auditorium. By the time I got to the door, my participant, viewers, fellow leaders and church instructor were all very confused. From the back of the auditorium I shouted at my participant and asked him again what he was passionate about. He responded, but I couldn’t hear him—or rather, pretended not to. I kept having him repeat it at increasing decibel levels until the boy was screaming from the box. I felt like Brad Pitt in Fight Club.



Everyone laughed as I walked back up, and the electricity of emotion overwhelmed the group. People were nervous (and maybe a little bit excited) about the concept of yelling in front of their peers.



“If you can’t yell about God here, in an empty auditorium with all of your friends, how are you going to preach the Gospel out there [I pointed to the rest of the school] in the real world?” I baited them.



One by one, students walked up to the box and yelled at me. Like I said, this was the highlight of my CRASH career. At the end of the meeting, our church advisor, Paul, talked to me about the lesson. He was a youth pastor at a local Baptist church and much shyer than any of us.



“I’m not sure I could have done that, man. If you would have called me up there, I’m not sure I could have yelled like that. That would be way out of my comfort zone,” Paul said. 

I could barely hear him talking over the sound of my already bulbous ego being further inflated with the hot air of spiritual elitism. I was more spiritual than a grown man who was working as a youth pastor! That was worth, like, 3,000 revival points!



The problem with revival-driven ministry, as I’ve come to understand it, is that it leaves its believers high and dry when they run out of steam. It’s a dangerous act of creating unrealistic expectations and glorifying actions. Or at least, that’s what I’ve seen in my friends from my old church who don’t go anymore. 

That’s how I felt after I cooled off for God and realized I’d been placing all the importance on the “acts of God” as opposed to a relationship with God. I felt like I’d been chasing healings and miracles and revivals for so long that I’d forgotten how to be a normal person. I also felt like normality was defeat, that if I wasn’t speaking in tongues during algebra, I wasn’t pleasing to God.



One of my friends listens to a pastor who says that the opposite of Christianity isn’t atheism, it’s idolatry. I think he’s right. The tricky part is that we make idols out of some really cool things sometimes. Whenever the mission becomes more important than the person for whom we’re doing the mission, we get in trouble.

Accepting grace is probably one of the hardest things for humans to do, especially in a culture where we’re made so very aware of our shortcomings. But just like anything else, accepting grace is a balancing act. The charismatic church I attended through high school was focused on just that. We were good at accepting grace. Weirdly enough, that was kind of our thing. We were so good at accepting grace and believing ourselves to be revivalists that we didn’t really have room for the guilt of our transgressions.



If there’s anything I’ve learned about God, it’s that all my formulas fall short. Grace is so strange because it doesn’t fall into the natural cause-effect relationship of our Earth. I’m starting to think the relationship is what’s most important—that no matter how many healings I’ve seen or auditoriums I’ve yelled in, quality time is what’s most important.

Jordan White started writing in the sixth grade when he told a girl that he wrote poetry in order to make her like him. Turns out, she wanted to read some of his poetryso he started writing and never looked back. Read his blog here.

 

Of God's Love & GateKeepers of Another Sort - How Does God Love? "...If Not More"

Three little words about how we are loved raises a bigger question
Published: Friday, April 27, 2012, 9:37 AM
Kathy Higbee
IMG_4722.jpeg

GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- Some powerful voices shared the air at a breakfast this past week to help extend the reach of Hope Network's pastoral services.

But it was a three-word interjection from a woman in a wheelchair who stole the show, or at least helped drive home a point that perhaps all of us should stop to consider from time to time.

"If not more," said Kathy Higbee, just loud enough to be heard, but in a tone so reverently put that it raised both mild laughter and goosebumps.

Kathy was listening to Chuck Ely describe how God loves us all, and how that includes the likes of Kathy, people with special challenges whom we too often relegate to a back burner.

Because they look or sound or feel different from the rest of us "normal" people, we consciously or unconsciously tend to subjugate them to second-class status, and that's dangerous territory, especially from a spiritual standpoint.

Chuck was reminding those at the breakfast that Our Lord loves those with limitations just as much as everyone else.

And that's when Kathy piped up with "If not more."

You can slice and dice this a lot of different ways, of course. You could blame Kathy for a haughty attitude, daring to assume that the Creator plays favorites, that his chosen ones use wheelchairs and crutches and braces. That they require special therapies, feeding tubes.

But maybe he does. And wouldn't that be a wonderfully startling thing, to see Heaven's gatekeepers adorned in halos of another sort?

I first met Kathy last year, while writing profiles of people who make Hope Network the force that it is for people both struggling and soaring. It's an organization that works tirelessly to help 23,000 people a year harness their gifts, to reach their potential, no matter their lot in life.

We're talking ex-offenders and kids with autism and people fighting back from traumatic brain injury. People with needs the rest of us could only imagine, elements capable of humbling us each and every time we sweat the small stuff that makes us look, well, small.

Kathy Higbee is part of a prayer group that Chuck Ely helps direct at one of Hope Network's many sites. And I still have in my notes the first words I heard her utter, responding to the prospect that handicapped people raise their voices in song:

"The Lord doesn't mind how we sound."

How profound. Although that's not my first impression of Kathy, because I am ashamed to say that when I first laid eyes on her, my mind registered "Gal in wheelchair."

Kathy Higbee never asked for that. If it weren't for a motor vehicle accident some 20 years ago that robbed her of the ability to walk and talk without a slight slur -- that caused injury to her brain at the age of 19 -- I might have met her and thought "Engaging woman in her late 30s…nice hair."

With three words, though, Kathy helped me to see well beyond that and wonder if those with so-called limitations have a special place in the Savior's heart. And why not, given Jesus' propensity to break bread with the untouchables of his time on earth.

With three words, a woman who's been ignored and passed over and misunderstood raised the consciousness of a roomful of men and women who didn't come to hear her speak.

But I'm guessing that, thanks to Kathy's impromptu lesson, more than one of us walked away to question how warmly we embrace all God's children.

If not more.


Feel moved to help advance the mission of Hope Network? Visit them online.
Email: rademachertom@gmail.com



http://www.hopenetwork.org/



Friday, April 27, 2012

Stop Waiting For God To Tell You What To Do With Your Life

http://justinzoradi.com/home/item/stop-waiting-for-god.html
by Justin Zoradi
April 25, 2012

The waterbed, the pinprick, and the tidal wave

Stop Waiting For God To Tell You What To Do With Your Life
 
 
A friend told me that while he hated bussing tables at the restaurant where he was working, he was still waiting for God to tell him what to do with his life. He believed that if he was patient enough and did his work well, eventually God would reveal his true calling.
 
I told him I don’t think God works like that.
 
We all want to do meaningful work and find our passion, but I can guarantee you this: Your purpose in life will never be written on the wall. And it will never be revealed to you in full.
 
I watched a brilliant video recently where some Danish filmmakers did a bunch of really stupid things and slowed them down to 2,500 frames a second. They blew up microwaves, chain-sawed coke bottles, and at the very end, pricked a tiny hole in a waterbed. At first, nothing really happened. A few drops of water spilled out. But in a matter of seconds, 200 gallons exploded from that tiny hole, flooding the bedroom.
 
You want to do meaningful work? Stop sitting on your hands waiting for God to tell you what to do.
 
No matter how lofty, unattainable, or idealistic, choose that one thing that keeps you up at night and stick a pin through it. Only then can the tidal wave of God’s glory and purpose flood your bedroom.
 
It seems like a lot of people are walking around holding that pin, scared to commit to putting it somewhere. Many people die holding it, their purpose and passion endlessly prayed for but never pursued.
 
I believe God joins us only when we take that initial risk. If you have a tiny twinge of passion toward anything, you have to jump right through it on your own. It is there that God will meet you.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Stephen Hawking, The Grand Design of God and the Cosmos


As an aside, I am currently re-reading Stephen Hawkings book, The Grand Design (2010), wherein he affirms the mechanistic, reductionist view of the form and frame of science. As a Christian, especially as one understanding the entanglement of the Godhead in our created world (sic relational/process theology: How Should We Read the Bible?), this type of assertion rings hollow for me. But one that I will allow from a non-Christian viewpoint because, in the case of natural scientific law, natural phenomena does run with a regularity unnecessary for a supernatural intervention as noted by the mathematician LaPlace to Napoleon when asking of God's necessity if physical laws run themselves (scientific determinism). Quipped LaPlace, "Sire, I have not needed that hypothesis." (pg 30, Hawkings).... And this on the heels of Sir Isaac Newton's earlier discoveries of the foundational classic laws of physics yet believing that God was somehow in the machine that He had built and now maintains.

Yet, this is the very method by which God had chosen to create in order to maintain His creation. In essence, God lies "behind" the process. And when these processes are looked into further, we see a "lively dance of chaotic, complex structure dynamically interacting with itself." That is, "there is an intrinsic openness in nature - seen in quantum phenomena, chaos, even [biological] epigenetics" to loosely quote from Poe and Davis. It is this very "freedom" within nature's inherent structure that testifies to God's imprint and interaction (sic, God's Role in Creation).

"If we were somehow able to fully explain the operation of the physical universe,
we would not have explained God out of the picture. Rather, we would have
explained the regular and repeatable sustaining activity of God." - Biologos

A "freedom" bent towards death and destruction (because of sin) that God has likewise enlivened (or re-invigorated) with a bent towards creative renewal and rebirth unto life and light. But a type of "freedom" that is a necessary consequence of creation's mystery that can allow for reconstruction from chaos (or, for that matter, evolutionary natural selection) by the intent and will of a God intimately involved in this re-creative process as Sovereign-Redeemer-Creator (sic, Evolution: Is God Just Playing Dice?).

Not only did God create, but even now creates, as He ever will - and always will - create until creation becomes one with His mind and will. Enmeshing the trinity of the cosmos, earth and world to the trinity of the Godhead (Father, Son, Spirit, three-in-one) till all becomes a rhombian fellowship in singular eternality (to put it in Hawking paradigm).

Consequently, though I have a very high respect towards Stephen Hawkings and his labor within the quantum physics world (besides being a favorite read of mine), a simple atheistic, reductionist/dualistic view towards science and the world is not satisfactory for a Christian holding a theology that is non-reductionistic/non-dualistic on the very same interpretive basis as the same science used. Nor can it be a helpful theology for biblical discovery and teaching, when thinking through God's interaction with man cosmically, ecologically, anthropologically, and spiritually.

R.E. Slater
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/04/26/god-and-the-cosmos-rjs/

by RJS
April 26, 2012
Comment

I was recently sent by the publisher a copy of the new book by Harry Lee Poe and Jimmy H. Davis God and the Cosmos: Divine Activity in Space, Time and History. Harry Lee Poe (Ph.D., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is the Charles Colson Professor of Faith and Culture at Union University in Jacksonville TN, Jimmy H. Davis (Ph.D. University of Illinois) is University Professor of Chemistry at Union University. This book should prove to be something a bit different from our usual fare of late.

There are a number of different questions at play in the discussion of the interaction between science and the Christian faith. For some people the controversy over creation and evolution is driven by a desire to be faithful to scripture, and explicitly to a favored interpretation of scripture. Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis fall into this category. For others there is an appreciation for the sciences, but also a conviction that if the science is true traces of it will be found in scripture. Hugh Ross and Reasons to Believe fall into this category. But there is another set of question at play, especially within the Intelligent Design movement. Science and scientists are finding a natural explanation for all manner of phenomena formerly attributed to the work of God. This appears to squeeze God into an increasingly small corner of the universe – and many argue it removes God from the picture all together. As Laplace famously replied to Napoleon … we have “no need of that hypothesis.” Poe and Davis are addressing these latter kinds of questions in their book. Can a transcendent and personal God really act in the universe? and Can science help us answer this question?

The introduction to the book begins with reflections by Davis and Poe. Davis begins by posing the question – where is God in, for example, a chemical reaction? The reaction is the same and the explanation is the same whatever the worldview or presupposition of the person who brings together the reactants and starts the process.
Modern science assumes that all physical events have physical causes. In order to find these causes, modern science breaks down the event into parts and looks for some mechanism (pattern of connections) that give rise to the event being studied. Modern science explains natural phenomena in terms of natural events and does not invoke supernatural invention. (p. 15)
There is an assumption of methodological naturalism inherent in the processwe are quickly left with a deist view of God. He got things started, set the laws, and now steps back and lets it go.

Davis suggests that the error in this approach lies in the mechanical view of the cosmos. The models we construct are closed machines. But there is an intrinsic openness in nature – seen in quantum phenomena, chaos, and epigenetics.
This openness is an internal part of nature, not a God-of-the-Gaps ignorance that will one day be removed. We suggest in this monograph that God is there not only in the working of the “machine” but in the underlying software that tells the “machine” how to behave in a particular situation. It is an open universe providing an open vista on which the master Artist can craft what he wills. (p. 23)
Do you think explanations for observed phenomena are a zero-sum game – either there is a natural explanation or there is divine action?

Is this either-or attitude a problem in the church or in our society at large?

Harry Lee Poe provides a theological response to begin to address the question of how God relates to the world.
Answers to the question of how God acts on the universe have tended to be reductionist. As such, they have tended to be unhelpful. More complicated answers seldom gain a hearing because people prefer simple, black-and-white, either-or explanations. Politicians learned this trait of human nature long ago; thus the trait has charm both for fundamentalism and for unbelief. (p. 25)
The black-and-white, either-or explanations are intrinsically unsatisfactory. They simply cannot account for the world we see. Poe relates this to the complexity of the world and to the progression or hierarchies of complexity introduced by Arthur Peacocke. He suggests that different kinds of rules apply at different levels of existence. There is, it seems, a fundamental distinction between the laws that describe the simplicity of the atom and the laws that describe the complexity of a living cell.
Neither reductionist science nor reductionist theology help us understand this universe where one kind of rule applies at the level of human experience and another kind of rule applies at the quantum level of subatomic particles. (p. 26)
Poe sketches briefly in this introduction four theological ideas that may help to move us forward:
Freedom of the triune God. God is not just creator who says and it is, not just incarnate Son, not just Holy Spirit who animates but with no plan or goal. He is not deist, self-limiting, or undirected.
Only a truly trinitarian model of one God can help us move to a clearer understanding of how God might relate to such a complex structure as the universe in appropriate ways for different levels of physical complexity. (p. 28)
Directional universe: Simplicity to complexity. The universe is dynamic with a linear direction from energy to matter to life to consciousness. [More rather, from complexity to complexity. - res]
Progress: A value-based goal. Here Harry Lee Poe quotes Edgar Allen Poe (an indirect ancestor of his, about whom he has written a biography Evermore: Edgar Allan Poe and the Mystery of the Universe):
In Eureka (1848), Edgar Allen Poe’s original proposal of a big bang theory and the origin of life, Poe described the interaction of the elements and life forms in adaptation in terms of a grand narrative. He said, “The plots of God are perfect. The Universe is a plot of God.” (p. 29)
Open universe. Here Poe returns to the idea introduced by Davis. There is an openness in the universe at each level of complexity. A personal mind – a human mind or the mind of God – can interact with and change the course of nature without violating the laws of nature. “Rather than hiding in the gaps, God is involved in the big observables that science describes.

The remainder of God and the Cosmos is divided into two parts – first looking at theology and asking what kind of God interacts with the world and then looking at the universe and asking what kind of world allows God to interact. It looks like this will lead to some interesting questions and, I hope, some interesting posts over the next few weeks.

Where would you look for evidence of the action or purpose of God in the universe?

How should Christians respond to the “mechanical” view of the universe that removes God from the picture?


If you wish to contact me directly, you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.
If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.



The Failure of Christianity is a Modern Myth


by Scot McKnight
April 26, 2012

If you are, say, Voltaire, or a postmodern journalist, then the failure of Christianity is the way to tell the story of the course of history. Of course Christianity gets muddled, but there’s far more in that story about love and creativity and beauty and justice and healing and education and hope. So N.T. Wright, in How God Became King (p. 162-163). The world without the gospel of Jesus, Wright claims, would be “the cultural and ideological equivalent of those horrible 1960s buildings that were structures without spirit, boxes without beauty, all function and no flourish” (163).

The Enlightenment had to tell that story because it had to tell history with itself as the goal and the center, while Christianity had an entirely different eschatology — so the Enlightenment pushed religion into the private world and told it stay put. The storytellers may say otherwise, but the Christian story is good and goes on because it has an anchor in the cross and resurrection of Jesus, because Jesus is the reigning king, and because the kingdom will come.

How do you differ Wright’s kingdom theocracy with the four views below? How and why have the cross and the kingdom been separated?

But too much of Christianity bought the Enlightenment’s story and it led to dualities: cross Christians with saving-for-heaven agendas and religion vs. kingdom Christians with social justice agendas and politics. Tom Wright’s thesis — of all his writings mind you — is that kingdom and cross belong together and that the kingdom vision is simultaneously social and spiritual.

Which just shows one more time how important eschatology is: the NT eschatology is one in which the kingdom has already begun to appear but still will happen completely in the future. But what has happened is not just the internal, religiousness or spirituality but instead the kingdom has been inaugurated holistically — social, cultural, political, cosmic and spiritual.

Wright steps up his critique of how the church has read the Gospels, though there are exceptions: Wilberforce, Tutu, William Temple, Reinhold and H. Richard Niebuhr, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. [I wonder what N.T. Wright thinks of Wesley, of Edwards, of Kuyper, of Finney.]

Wright finds four reactions to what has happened in modernity:

1. “This” [world, kingdom, etc] doesn’t matter; we’re going to heaven when we die; we’ll leave this old world behind us. Wright accurately observes this gets too close to gnosticism.

2. Neo-Anabaptists: get the church in order, live as a beacon of light, “but without actually engaging with the world.” Well, that is precisely not what the Neo-Anabaptists argue or do; instead Tom is here speaking of some forms, perhaps most, of Anabaptism. The original Anabaptists — we’re speaking here of Grebel, Blaurock, Hubmaier — were social protesters fighting Catholic taxes. Anabaptism did go through a quietist and sectarian, separatistic period, but the modern “Neo-” Anabaptists are anything but quietist and uninvolved. Think Sider and Yoder or Claiborne and McKenna… very involved.

3. Right-wing Christian activism. Those who exulted in the killing of Osama bin Laden; FoxNews.

4. Left-wing Christian activism. Those often fighting for the poor and pushing a new sexual ethic are often aping liberal modernism (166). The UK Christians are grumpy pragmatists, Tom says. He parrots them with a caricature: “What do we want? Gradual change! When do we want it? In due course!” [LOL]

5. And there are the Reformers (who assumed by justification what late medieval theologians meant and were discussing) and the modern proponents of empire criticism (who assume when Paul spoke into empire that he meant by that term what we mean today).

So we need to read the New Testament afresh.

The Jewish vision was a theocracy — an on-earth, creational theocracy, ruled by image-bearers (Eikons of God). This is not what left-wingers today perceive. He sees a temptation toward anarchy in the left-wing. [Well, yes, but also strong centralization.] Nor is the right-winger small government the solution. So, in spite of the Anabaptists who gnarl at Tom on this one, creational monotheism works best with humans ruling as wise stewards under God.

Power isn’t the problem; the problem is who does what with that power. In other words, the biblical approach is not a fear of rule or power or leaders; it is a fear of bad rule. Neither anarchy nor small government is the way forward; the way is good government. Theocracy, then, is the right word.

And the right theocracy is messianic rule by the Messiah/King.




Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Contrasting Postmodern Emergent Churches with the 1970s Jesus People Movement

Emerging Churches and the Jesus People Movement Compared

by Roger Olson
April 25, 2012


Earlier I blogged about similarities I see between the Young, Restless, Reformed movement and the Bill Gothard Basic Youth Conflicts Seminars movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Now I would like to discuss similarities and differences between two mostly youth-oriented Christian movements separated by about forty years—the contemporary Emerging (or Emergent) Churches Movement (ECM) and the much earlier Jesus People Movement (JPM).

Recently I’ve been reading Tony Jones’s new book The Church is Flat which examines eight leading ECM congregations. The book grew out of his Princeton dissertation and is quite scholarly—not your average, run-of-the-mill popular book about the ECM (not that there have been very many). Of course, Tony has been a leader in the ECM and is well qualified to write about it. I haven’t finished the book yet, but so far I’m finding it insightful and informative. (The eight churches used as case studies are Solomon’s Porch, Vintage Faith, Jacob’s Well, Pathways, Journey, Church of the Apostles, House of Mercy, and Cedar Ridge Community. For their locations and leaders google them!)

Before I draw my comparisons, I want to establish my qualifications for doing it. I was involved in the JPM in the early 1970s. I was present the night Larry Norman premiered “I Wish We’d All Been Ready” to a large audience. I was the local organizer of a very early concert by the then-new band Petra. (They took a free will offering!) I led a Jesus People coffeehouse for a while. I grew my hair long (almost getting expelled from Bible college for that!), wore the clothes and hung out at JPM coffeehouses all around the Upper Midwest. I read all the books by Arthur Blessitt and listened to Keith Green music and was assistant pastor at a church that was the local center of the JPM.

I was the main speaker at a retreat for ECM church planters in 2001 and spoke at several emerging churches including Journey (Dallas). I’ve attended many churches associated with the ECM and have gotten to know some of the ECM’s leaders including Doug Pagitt (who has interviewed me on his radio program and we’ve talked at length over meals, etc.), Tony Jones, Dan Kimball, Brian McLaren (who has visited my classes and done Q & A with the students). My daughter and her husband attended Pathways in Denver and helped start one of its neighborhood satellite congregations. I attended Pathways’ main meeting once and the satellite church many times. I attended and spoke at the National Pastors Convention in San Diego—a major networking event for the ECM. I have read many books about the ECM and by people associated with it.

So, I think I’m in a pretty good position to compare the two movements and I think I see striking similarities as well as profound differences. The similarities are striking enough, I think, to bear reflection about larger trends in American Christianity (especially) over the past half century.

It’s dangerous to generalize about either the JPM or the ECM:

  • Neither had/has a headquarters or unifying organization.
  • Both were/are grassroots movements that seemed to spring up spontaneously and then snowball first into apparently relatively cohesive movements and then fall apart over deep differences of philosophy, theology and practice.
  • Both had/have strong, public personalities that provide a certain degree of identity to their movements, but neither had/has any single personality looked up to by everyone associated with them.
  • Both were/are very diverse but unified by a common, minimal ethos that set/sets them apart from the “mainstream” of American Christianity—evangelical or mainline.

SIMILARITIES

First, some similarities. (For convenience and simplicity’s sake I will now use only the present tense even though the JPM hardly exists anymore except in remnants here and there such as Jesus People USA in Chicago.)

  • Both movements are marked by strong, mainly youthful dissatisfaction with “standard” churches and Christianity. Both are marked by belief that standard Christianity in America is shallow, inauthentic, culturally accommodated and suited mainly for middle class people whose main commitments are to middle class (or upwardly mobile) values.
  • Both display a sense of alienation from the dominant culture (religious and secular) of their parents.
  • Both search for authenticity, often by reacting in rather extreme ways to their perceptions of mainstream Christianity.
  • Both have older “guru” type thinkers and leaders most of the early adherents look up to. For the JPM it was Chuck Smith; for the ECM it is Brian McLaren. (Others could be named.)
  • Both freely experiment with new forms of worship and break from traditional norms of reverence in worship and appearance, language, etc. Both have music that appeals to them that is not particularly appealing to their elders or peers in more traditional churches.
  • Both highly value community, relationships, belonging before believing or behaving.
  • Both prefer informality in worship to liturgy or forms of worship spelled out on a “worship folder.” (Although both also drew on older traditions, adapting them to their own preferences and styles.)
  • Both prefer non-hierarchical patterns of church leadership, although both also tend to have strong leaders in local congregations.
  • Both tend to have congregations without membership in any traditional sense led by small groups of elders (sometimes called by some other name) who are the only “real (voting) members.”
  • Both tend to disdain authoritative tradition and formal, academic theology and emphasize the freedom to reinvent Christianity for their own cultures. (For the JPM it was the “hippie culture” and for the ECM it is “postmodern culture.”)

I think that’s sufficient to demonstrate some very real similarities between the two movements that don’t look much alike on the surface. And therein lies one of the main differences which is where I’ll begin with the contrast part of the comparison. My thesis is that these two movements are more similar than most people have thought or mentioned. And that could be instructive for the ECM as it looks into its future and tries to avoid pitfalls.


DISSIMILARITIES
  • Second, some dissimilarities. The JPM was raucous, flamboyant, “in your face,” noisy and at times intentionally offensive. It bordered on fanaticism and sometimes fell headlong into it. The ECM is, by comparison, reserved, almost introverted.
  • The ECM demonstrates its disdain for traditional Christianity (in terms of mainstream church life) with irony; the JPM demonstrated it with rallies characterized by open denunciations of mainstream Christianity.
  • The ECM tends to be middle to upper class economically and more educated than the average American. The JPM was more diverse economically and in terms of education.
  • The JPM was charismatic and/or fundamentalist; the ECM is theologically diverse.
  • The ECM is socially transformative; the JPM was apocalyptic.
  • The JPM was uncomfortable with ambiguity; the ECM revels in ambiguity (for the most, part with notable exceptions).
  • The ECM incorporates elements of ancient traditions into worship; the JPM tended to disdain everything ancient and traditional (after the first century) and sought to restore “pure New Testament Christianity.”
  • The “mission” of the ECM is to translate authentic Christianity into postmodern idiom for hipsters (and hipster wannabes). The “mission” of the JPM was to translate authentic Christianity into “hippie” idiom for the “flower generation” (and hippie wannabes which is what I was). (In neither case am I using those labels pejoratively.)

As an older person who was involved in the JPM when younger I see both as experimental religious movements led mainly by young people (who are now getting older). JPM meetings had very few children (at first) or middle aged people (except pastors who found a way to attach themselves to the movement) to say nothing of elderly people. The same was true and still is true to a very large extent of ECM meetings (although this is changing as it changed for the JPM after the first five years or so). In other words, both seem to be driven by youthful alienation from parental/”mainstream,” institutions, styles and values.

This is a notable feature of culture generally over the last half century: teenagers and twenty-somethings believing their elders, for the most part, have little or nothing to offer (other than financial support). Ageism is a form of prejudice not much talked about (except with regard to aging actresses finding it difficult to land roles). I confess that as a twenty-something I fell into that American trend of a “youth culture” superior to “adult culture.” My parents and people their age simply “didn’t get it.” To me and my peers, they were just waiting to die. Now I feel the same attitude from many teens and twenty-somethings. (Not most of my students, fortunately!) Of course, over the past half century older people have done little to help the situation; we have tended to regard young people in general (our own children and other loved ones and students excepted) as blind fools rushing to make the same mistakes generations before them have made (and maybe worse ones) with little regard for history and what it could teach them.

I believe generational alienation is a notable but not much talked about social problem. And it has invaded the churches along with every other form of segregation. ECM churches tend to be youth-oriented. (Admittedly “youth” is a broadening category as the original ECM people age.) I recently stayed at a hotel where a church “for” older people met. I predict there will be more of them as more churches adopt contemporary worship and experimental styles of worship to draw in or keep younger people. One of the things I value very highly about the church my wife and I attend is its intergenerational richness. This past Sunday the teens led the morning worship service. One of them, about sixteen years old, gave the “children’s sermon” only she invited older people (than her) to come down to the front, sit on the floor and listen to her teach them. Many went. Unfortunately, as in most churches, our adult Sunday School program is generationally divided. I personally think it would be better to have intergenerational classes centered around subjects. The church life groups, however, are, for the most part, intergenerational. The Sunday morning worship service is “blended.”

My word of advice to ECM folks is a quote from essayist Alexander Pope:

“We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow.
Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so.”

My word of advice to older people is taken from 1 Timothy 4:12: Don’t despise youth.

My advice to both is, strive to overcome generational prejudice. It’s a cultural thing, not a Christian virtue.



Comments

Russ says:
Excellent as always Roger. Two thumbs up on the contrasts between ECM / JPM. Interestingly, my earliest experiences as a growing Christian had been touched by the JPM movement, even though I participated in mostly mainstream evangelical churches. However, those churches had a passion for people, mission and ministry, and consequently, movements like the JPM had influenced us.
Apparently, old hippies never die, and so the ECM immediately attracted me. However, in its earliest years it seemed to have abandoned all reason and spoke in an unclear muddle of youthful whim and theological whimsy. It took many years to sort out its “visage/image.” Unfortunately, it snapped all the clearer in the Spring of 2011 when Evangelical fury raged and it became evidentially clearer just what emergent Christianity was, and was not, from its birthing parent of evangelicalism.

Too, one of the very first things I met within my ECM church was ageism. It was ugly and taught us clear lessons about discrimination’s ugliness. We were thankful for the burden and resisted as we could. Still, it seems that if a “youthful theolog” isn’t representing the movement than it has very few followers. So our prayer, “God help the young, and the older to bear.”

Finally, it is my hope that the ECM continues, expands and grows. It seems in the best position to heal, integrate, and unite all the many forms of Christianity (what is it? like 38,000 different flavors now, counting all the denominations, gatherings, cells and the like?). It offers the greatest freedom of expression and centers simply upon Jesus.

One of the best things I’ve seen is the desire for an “open, dynamic” bible as human language returns to a less strict form of absolutism and allows for ambiguity to enter back in to a degree that can be helpful. Not quite mystical, but certainly divine, God is closer to man now than when held hostage to dogmas and doctrines. Thus, the fresh airs of the NPP (New Perspective of Paul) and the new impetus to re-examine Scripture as authentic and authoritative (vs. inerrant language) through the lens of postmodernism and open/process theology.



John John C says:
Thanks for this, Roger – I’ve read a lot of your posts, and this is one of the best, partly because it’s a pioneering attempt to compare two movements that are rarely compared. I wonder whether there’s a bigger difference in terms of trajectory. The JPM movement was primitivist and anti-intellectual and it tended to merge eventually with conservative or charismatic or seeker-friendly Evangelicalism; the EMC is much more bookish, postmodern and neo-traditionalist, and is more likely to move in other directions – especially towards mainline Protestantism insofar as it is liturgical, progressive and open to ancient Christian practices (think Phyllis Tickle).

The other major difference which you don’t really highlight concerns evangelism – aggressive efforts to get people ‘saved’ were central to the JPM (think Calvary Chapel, Larry Norman, Keith Green, even Bob Dylan’s Christian phase). It seems to be a much lower priority for the EMC.
 



Mike Clawson says
April 25, 2012 at 8:39 pm
Good thoughts Roger. As I told you in person, I wrote a paper on this (already sent you a copy), which agrees with many of your points. For the benefit of your readers, here is the conclusion:

"It seems clear that the relationship between the Jesus Movement and emerging Christianity is much more complex than it would appear at first glance. In some ways the emerging movement is a reaction against the very aspects of the evangelical subculture that the Jesus Movement helped to create – from its sacred/secular dualism, to its overly individualistic and consumerist approach to church, to its right-wing politics. At the same time emergents have taken up and carry on the Jesus People’s emphasis on creativity and innovation, their willingness to adapt to culture for the sake of evangelism, their suspicion of institutionalism and conventional religious authorities, and their demand for a more authentic and passionately committed approach to faith. Furthermore, it is not certain that the emerging movement could have arisen at all if not for the earlier development of the evangelical youth ministry subculture that the Jesus Movement helped to create.

"In other ways, however, the Jesus Movement and emerging Christianity are still two very different movements. While the Jesus People were overwhelmed by the pluralistic options of their day, responding by confidently declaring only “One Way!”, emergents have embraced and seem to thrive on pluralism. While the Jesus People were emotionalistic, charismatic, and (in most cases) intellectually unsophisticated, emerging Christians are highly theological and frequently suspicious of some charismatic groups’ tendencies towards spiritual manipulation and authoritarian control. While the Jesus People were apocalyptic, emergents tend towards realized eschatology. And while the Jesus People were mostly fundamentalist primitivists, even the most conservative of emergents tend to skew more towards liberal theologies or, at the very least, progressive evangelicalism.

"Finally, while the Jesus Movement was largely a youth phenomenon, tied very closely to one rather transitory cultural moment, fading out or morphing into something else once that moment had passed and that culture dissolved, the emerging movement grows out of a much larger and longer-term historical shift – the transition from modernity to postmodernity. Accordingly, emerging Christianity is much less tied to a single generation. It consists of all age demographics: Millennials, Gen-Xers, Boomers, and those even younger and older. Emergents are therefore more flexible as they continue to interact with a changing culture. It is perhaps much less likely, therefore, simply to fade quickly from view as the Jesus Movement did. Ultimately, however, only time will tell.

"As you can see, my one main disagreement with your conclusions is that I don’t think the ECM is defined primarily by generational differences. It is not merely a youth movement, nor simply a rebellion against an older generation. The conversation may have started that way in the mid-1990s, as some were wanting to discover how to reach “Gen X” with the gospel, but it very quickly (in its earliest gatherings) saw that the main issue was not Boomers vs. Gen X, but Modern vs. Postmodern, which is a much larger cultural shift that has been in the works over multiple generations. In other words, the difference is not related to age (demographics) but mindset (psychographics). If some emergent communities seem to skew younger, that may be a function simply of percentages – a higher percentage of Gen Xers than Boomers have a postmodern mindset – though I think it may also have a lot to do with circumstances of when and where and how those churches were planted. In my own experience, there are an awful lot of older emergents as well. Every emerging church and cohort I have ever been a part of has included at least as many empty-nesters as twenty-somethings (if not more), and most emergent events I have been at also have a wide generational spread. In fact, after the Midwest Emergent Gathering I organized in 2007, some of complaints we received was that there weren’t enough younger people – most of the attendees were pastors and church leaders in their 40s and 50s or above."

So yeah, based on my own experiences I would say that the perceived youthfulness of the ECM is an illusion, and where it does exist, doesn’t actually mean what one would first assume. Emergents aren’t rebelling against just their parents, they’re rebelling against (or attempting to move beyond) modernity as a whole.

  • rogereolson says:
  • Thanks for your insights, Mike. We’ll agree to disagree about the ageism issue. But I do agree that the ECM is moving away from that into a more age diverse demographic. I think a lot of boomers are attracted to the ECM, but so were many attracted to the JPM. The coffeehouse I led attracted all ages, but the center was clearly the younger crowd. The older were mostly observers. Everything about it was geared to the hippies (or hippie wannabes). The ECM congregations I’ve visited and conventions I’ve attended have been heavily skewed toward twenty-somethings especially in terms of taste in music (but not only that). There is every possibility, of course, that the ECM is evolving in ways I haven’t noticed. We old people are slower to notice change, you know. :)