The Emergent Church Part I: On being a human stewpot for 'Emergence'

I recently finished Becoming Conversant with the Emergent Church by D.A. Carson, a theologian I appreciate and respect. It’s a nuanced critique of the Emergent Church movement—Christians who have been rethinking Christian thought and practice over the past ~20 years, seeking to fittingly adapt to the “postmodern context”. As Emergent types use the term, “postmodernity” seems to encompass just about all the changes that have been happening in the western world of late. The bulk of what Carson says toward the Emergent Church amounts to informed, mature, constructive criticism (with some acknowledgement of positive facets of the movement). I appreciated his book.

Brian McLaren is one of the leading thinkers of the Emergent movement. I’ve read two or three of his books (A New Kind of Christian, A Search for What Makes Sense, about half of The Story We Find Ourselves In, and maybe some of A Search for What is Real), and really appreciated what he had to say. They provided encouragement and refreshment to me on my journey of faith and doubt. Sometimes I disagreed with McLaren, or thought he seemed a bit too impressed with himself (in his own self-deprecatory sort of way) or simplistic in his caricature of conservative Christianity. But I nevertheless felt understood and joined on my journey by a kindred spirit in a way I hadn’t experienced before to that degree.  And so I developed hope that if I can find a church full of people of a similar stripe, it may be a very good home for me.

Some of McLaren’s writings are a main target of Carson’s critique. Reading Becoming Conversant (among other factors that got me to read such a book in the first place) led me to wonder how much I should trust McLaren and the movement he’s a part of for spiritual guidance. I expect I’ll end up taking some and leaving some. So I have some sorting to do. And I wanted to include you in the process, and invite you to cross-check, affirm or add complimentary perspectives to what I say.

I want to share my sorting with you in three posts:

1.       This post: What I liked so much when I read McLaren (and by implication, what I like about the Emergent Church)

2.       A consideration of Carson’s informed critiques of McLaren and his movement

3.       Putting it all together, where does that leave us?

Why I resonate with McLaren

Please keep in mind that in what follows, I’m trying to put my finger on what I liked so much in McLaren’s books, whether or not they’re things God likes. Being myself, I will have a bias to paint things in a Tom-affirming sort of way, but I’m hoping to go light on the defensiveness here.

Looking back at what I marked in McLaren’s books, three related themes stand out:

A respect for ambiguity

Empathy

A love for freedom of thought

Much of what follows takes the form of generalizations and reflections on my own end of things. But I do have page numbers with examples of stuff that I can show you if you ask.

A respect for ambiguity

Both McLaren and I have a respect ambiguity. By that I don’t mean we think it’s better to be confused than to understand. Rather, we believe that there is much that is not clear, and we should learn to live well with that fact. Human beings work with simplified pictures of the world so we can handle its complexity. But over-simplification is tempting, dangerous, and very common.  So some of us take it upon ourselves to be habitual “devil’s advocates”, highlighting the “maybes” and “maybe nots” of life.

Both McLaren and I seem to get annoyed with people’s orderly, “just-so story” worldviews and have a hankering sometimes to smear things around a bit. Admittedly, sometimes the issue may be others’ convictions that we don’t like. Convictions can be powerful, scary things. If some Christian believes the Bible is clear on something when it actually isn’t, and they condemn other viable takes on that passage with the confidence that God backs their judgment, that’s a big problem. Likewise, if we preach as the gospel truth that which is really just an interpretive quirk or cultural sensibility of ours, we can distort God’s message, tying up unnecessary burdens made up of human teachings that weigh down our listeners, just as the Pharisees did. This isn’t just theoretical; Christian missionaries have been known to do this, and I hear the outcome has been ugly. And yes, I admit the opposite is also true: blurring the clear revelation of God is also dangerous. But some of us like to fix more attention on one side of the coin than the other.

Appreciating ambiguity doesn’t mean never speaking of truth or believing in knowledge. But it does (or at least should) encourage intellectual humility: being cautious of speaking or acting like we know more than we do, and expecting to be wrong on a regular basis. Those of us who appreciate ambiguity most likely have a special tendency not be certain we’re right on big questions of faith and theology. In such cases, we want to talk that way—honesty compels us to. For example, people like McLaren and I feel better about evangelizing with language that sounds like “here’s something wonderful I’ve discovered; you really should take a look” rather than “here’s the way things are (and why you’re wrong)”.

Empathy

In a recent post I brought up the issue of listening with an empathetic versus a critical orientation. I think McLaren feels his conservative protestant upbringing was overly dominated by a critical orientation toward outside ideas and perspectives. So he turns things around, listening empathetically to those who were considered outsiders and seeking to take their perspectives seriously, while in turn casting a critical eye toward the establishment from which he came.

Far as I can tell, my past did not leave me with a sour taste about religious conservatives. However, intellectual empathy is very important to me. I’m not sure why. I have a conviction that people need to be respectfully and carefully listened to and understood on their own terms. As I see it, that’s part of showing love.

Another deep-seated belief I have is that observing something for yourself, and being able to go back and verify that your memory serves you correctly brings a quality of knowledge and safeguard against error that mere acceptance on authority (taken alone) does not generally provide. For instance, those of us who read and accept the truth about quarks don’t know about quarks in as full or reliable a way as the physicists who study them do.

I imagine most of you also believe these two things (perhaps with some important qualifications). But for each of us, certain beliefs take particularly prominent roles in the physiology of our hearts; they exercise special influence in how we think and what we care about. That’s how these two beliefs are for me.

Brian McLaren is interested in listening to folks. He promotes listening unpresumptuously to people of other religious persuasions, and considering whether perhaps there is wisdom there we can learn from and honor (whether out of their religious traditions or from other parts of their thought).

Sometimes when you stand in other people’s shoes, you really want to question whether the negative judgments you were taught about them are true. If the Bible appears to judge or dismiss them too harshly, you may be motivated to look for ways to understand those passages that aren’t so harsh and that feel like they fit better with what you’ve seen of those people.

A love for freedom of thought

I’m a ponderer and an asker of questions. Some of those questions are questions about whether the Sunday school answers I was taught and accepted in the past are really true—or even whether the foundational basics of my religion are true. This has to do with the values I’ve mentioned:  taking challenging perspectives seriously and wanting to double-check the truth of my commitments through investigation (and feeling that to be a strength rather than a weakness).  But Christianity tends to emphasize the importance of believing certain things. Whether appropriately or not, one of the consequences of that emphasis has been that I don’t always feel safe or welcome asking my questions or seriously considering unorthodox alternatives. But I’ve longed for space to learn, for a sense that it’s okay for me to play around with ideas while seeking to better understand what’s true and risk making a few mistakes along the way.

McLaren affirmed this longing of mine. He helped me feel more comfortable as a big question asker. We’re both inclined to emphasize process and method in how we seek truth, rather than whether whatever method gets the predetermined “right answer”.  And we ask similar questions. For example, we both wonder about the nature and extent of the authority of scripture (one of those questions that I feel sometimes I’m not welcome to ask). Why? I want to take precautions against having to believe and teach harmful mistaken ideas pulled from the Bible that aren’t really what God says or commands. And that does mean I’m biased to look for ways around many of the more controversial traditional doctrines.

And a few more points

·         * Both McLaren and I really like freshness of thought. We both tend to think, for example, that the traditional spiritualistic language runs a big risk of becoming vacuous; the familiar grandiose words can start making us feel like we’re right by saying them even if we’re not thinking when we say them and hardly know what they mean. In contrast, we regard creative expression and new angles on various subjects as possible stimulants for thinking deeper and applying the core ideas more sincerely. Likewise, McLaren, other Emergent Church people and I are fans of living, worshiping and listening to God in fresh ways (whether new or just new to us), welcoming experiments.

·         * Both McLaren and I seem to be afraid of evangelism degenerating to a form of sales. Further, something turns in our stomachs when the motivation for evangelism, and the nature of the gospel in general are regarded as essentially a matter saving souls from hell to heaven. I’m not denying that these implications for the hereafter are a very important element of the Christian message; Jesus did come to save us from our sins and the wrath they deserve. But I (and McLaren) fear we can reduce the point of Jesus’ message to soul-saving in a way that distorts it and can lead to an anemic conception of what it means to follow Jesus. I’ve felt liable to do that myself, and I don’t like it.

·         * Both McLaren and I are inclined to think that different ways of thinking—and thus, different forms of thinking as a Christian—are appropriate to different cultural and historical contexts. Thus, a person living in a different world from that of the writers of the New Testament perhaps shouldn’t think just like those writers thought, even granting that the thinking found in the Bible was ideal to their situations and is authoritatively relevant to ours.

I think that covers it. It’s possible I’ve seen more of me in McLaren than there is. I welcome your thoughts on all this (as always). Thanks for reading.

The trouble with apologists

 Please excuse the stereotyping in which I'm about to dabble. I'll try and correct it toward the end. It's just more fun to criticize without qualifiers.

Do apologists ever annoy you, or is it just me?

A couple nights ago I was flipping through some apologetics literature (of the conservative Protestant variety). In particular, the apologists were defending the inerrancy of the Bible: the doctrine that the Bible, being God's word, is 100% without error in its original manuscripts whether concerning matters of faith and practice, history or science, and whether in what it teaches or what it merely "touches on". This contrasts with the view that the Bible is "infallible but not inerrant", the school of thought that the Bible is authoritative and absolutely trustworthy in matters of faith and practice, but should not be looked to as the gold standard in matters of, say, history or science, concerning which it might contain errors.

For my part, I'd rather not have to claim allegiance to one label or the other. I affirm that whatever a passage of scripture is meant to communicate must be true (without drawing boundaries as to which academic departments it has permission to speak to). But I'm presently shakier on the subject of secondary inferences (i.e. things arguably "touched on") especially where they seem unrelated to faith and practice. I sometimes feel people try to look to the Bible for authority in ways, matters and details that maybe God isn't actually speaking to. Frankly I get nervous sometimes reading the Bible, sensing legend and myth in some places but wondering if it's okay for me to interpret it that way.

So as I read these apologetics books, the pages glared back at me with a dogmatic tone of convicted orthodoxy.  I sensed an insinuation that Jesus himself stood behind the apologist's litigious shoulder casting his righteous glare upon me in all my free-thinking and intransigent presumptuousness. Why did I refuse to accept their arguments? Surely some sinful sacrilege, some heinous heresy, some fetid faithlessness lurketh within mine heart, callousing it unto the truth!

Well, and for sooth mayhaps some such foulor doth indeed lurk therein. It's both tempting and foolish to laugh off that kind of possibility. It is also quite possible that the apologist I was reading wouldn't mean to project the sort of attitude I sense from the page. But my focus here is the result in the reader, not the intent of the writer.

Recently I watched a TED talk about listening better (http://www.ted.com/talks/julian_treasure_5_ways_to_listen_better.html). Among the fellow's recommendations was to pay attention to different positions you might take in your listening. One of the pairs of stances he mentioned was critical / empathetic.

I often get the sense in reading theological arguments that the writer listens to his or her opponents with a strictly critical stance; when they articulate oposing arguments, they make little effort to show that they can empathize with where their opponents are coming from. I think this can be problematic. To their credit, often the apologists need to favor a critical stance; what they criticize or fight often needs serious fighting. And in the Bible, prophets, apostles, and Jesus all often dispute error sharply without any apparent empathetic concession, and I take it they were right to do so. Maybe they too would have irritated me. Especially if I'm like most of the folks they rebuked.

So what's the problem? The problem is in building trust. If I don't think you really understand where I'm coming from, I'm liable to question whether you really know the solution to where I'm coming from as well as you may think you do. This adds on top of the emotional knee-jerk reaction that if somebody's just flat out attacking me (and attacking my notions can sure feel like attacking me) they must be my enemy, someone to be resisted and (ideally) defeated. And that emotional reaction can be difficult to completely tame. The difficulty in taming it is no excuse for not trying, but mightn't it be preferable in general for the arguer to make it less of a challenge?

Another barrier to trust has to do with assumptions. Apologists tend to assume some conviction a priori and then look for arguments in their favor to use for persuading others. They may be justified in doing so, but in principle this approach makes me trust them less. I've encountered apologist types not only of the conservative Protestant fold, but also of Catholic, Mormon, and Islamic varieties, and more often than not, I've come away impressed. It's my sense that skilled debaters can generate fine-sounding arguments for all sorts of conflicting views, even arguments that are difficult to debunk or see through. Now suppose I assume neither that the apologist's conviction is correct or incorrect, but would like to learn the truth of things. Their arguments don't carry as much weight with me as the reasoning of somebody who confronted the issue with an open mind would: in the event that the apologist's assumption is wrong,  they're highly biased to be blind to their fault, and probably capable of doing a fine job defending it. They're much more like lawyers or politicians than witnesses or scientists.

It helps if I can have arguments presented by both sides and see them interact with each other. It also helps if the arguers admit victories for the other side, things they don't understand, and mistakes of their own. Though that might count against them in front of a shallow audience, it is evidence that they are humble people who realize their thinking is fallible and who value honesty and learning. And those values are cause for trust. I'm more inclined to put energy into open-mindedly working through arguments from that sort of person than to bother listening hard to someone who exudes proud confidence but seems presumptuous in their understanding of others (except maybe for the questionable pleasure of trying to show why they're wrong).

Now, stepping back, I should acknowledge that not all apologists fit the negative portrait I've drawn. Take for instance my friend Peter Payne (whose website may be found at www.crediblechristianity.org), who has worked for years as a professional Christian apologist. He tends to show an understanding of various sides of a given controversy. He comes across as respectful, and though he is very knowledgeable and credentialed, he doesn't intimidate or belittle. He admits to finding some questions people use to poke at Christianity personally challenging, the sorts of things he has some answers to offer, but admits to not being completely satisfied with the answers he has. If he persuades, it is through things like careful reasoning and evidence, not his own charisma. I really appreciate and respect all that. I've also read apologetics books by Brian McLaren (A Search for What Makes Sense) and Timothy Keller (The Reason for God) that lacked the annoying aura I've been clawing at. I bet McLaren dislikes it even more than I do, but that's a subject for another blog.

 Before wrapping up, I want to make clear what I'm saying, and what I'm not saying. Assuming the audience is unconvinced of the apologist's claim, and would like to learn the truth of the matter...

* A lack of empathetic consideration of opposing arguments and perspectives reduces an audience's trust, and it should.
* That same lack encourages a spirit of close-minded animosity in an audience (whether it should or not).
* Producing arguments to support a priori commitments reduces an audience's trust, and it should.
* Note, however, that neither of these factors serve to dispute an apologist's argument itself; arguing that someone's argument is wrong because you don't trust the messenger is a fallacy.
* Note also that I am not saying an empathetic consideration is always necessary,
* I am also not saying that people should be perpetually open-minded to all controversial suggestions (though personally I'm not a big fan of dogmatism).

So what are your reactions? Does anyone resonate? Or want to share a contrasting point of view? If you resonate with the annoyance over apologists, did my clawings scratch the nail on the head, or are there other factors in the trouble with apologists?