Emergence, The Spirit, and the Trap of the Klatch

There's been much to do lately in my denomination about the intersection between the "emergent church" and the Presbyterian Church. To hear it from some, it's the great hope of the church. The synthesis between this postmodern and socially-networked movement and the mainline church will, finally, bring in the young people.

Meaning, people under the age of 40. Sigh. I'm not even young by Presbyterian standards anymore.

There are articles about it in Presby magazines, and on the Presby website. Folks are eager to embrace this new movement. Of course, given the rapidity with which Presbyterians do things, this new excitement more or less coincides with the death of the emergent movement.

Truth be told, we're not a particularly lively critter lately. There's some puttering around on the presbymergent Facebook page, and a few meetings of good hearted fellow travelers. But the contagious energy and passion that drives and grows a movement? I wish I saw it, but I don't.

Where I still struggle with emergence, in either it's generic or presby manifestations, is in two particular areas.

First, that I just can't seem to find anyone else who's willing to write or say: emergence is a manifestation of the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. Yeah, I know, progressives and mainliners get all stammery and awkward when that topic comes up. We'd rather talk about interpretive frameworks and the dynamics of community and a relational church. Those things are nice and comfy and process-oriented. But somewhere, someone needs to be saying: "I've had a dream. I'm feeling a calling. I feel God moving in this." They don't need to be getting all glassy-eyed and Benny Hinn about it. We're just not that thing, thank the Maker.

But if this isn't about God working something new to transform and further our understanding of the Way Jesus lived and taught, then it's...well...not really worth paying attention to. It's just another incursion of cultural expectations into the life of the church. Yeah, it comes out of liberal academe. But if that's all it is, it's of no more spiritual value than the cultural phenomenon of the megachurch, and with considerably less influence. Maybe I haven't read enough. Maybe the forty presbymergentish bloggers whose feeds feed me just haven't gotten around to saying it or pointing me towards someone else who does. I'll keep listening.

Second, and related to the first, if the idea of relationality and the transforming power of Spirit-lead dialogue is to have any impact on the church, then it needs to be expressed in a very different way. Best I can tell, emergent conversations tend to be conversations among the like-minded. Little circles of young and youngish progressives gather to suck down Starbucks and light candles and read Rumi and do drum circles and talk amongst themselves about how crappy and abusive the rest of the church is. Sometimes, those same progs go and klatch with older progs in crumbling mostly-empty buildings. Candles are once again lit. It's all very cozy and safe. It's a fallout shelter for progressive Christians in a megachurch-nuked America.

But transformation only occurs when you graciously engage with the Other. That means making a point of getting out of our comfortable klatches and pushing outward into ones that aren't quite as easy. Can we share the value of Spirit-driven relationality with that fundamentalist blogger? Or that atheist with a chip on his shoulder? Do we reach out to that young Korean who's burned out on the relentless demands of the church she grew up in? Or that soldier who has returned from war with a shattered faith? Or that mom who goes to a Big Parking Lot church because it's kids program is a well-oiled machine that fits well with little Tyler's soccer schedule? Or the blue-haired matriarch of that little country church with 22 members?

Entering into dialog with folks who are Not Us in this era of social media is not logistically hard. Just spiritually challenging. Those conversations require us to speak our truths and have them tested. They require us to listen to others, and to speak the grace that we know in ways that might speak to them. Our faith does not ask us to limit our conversations to those who are us. Or to only value and show grace to those who are like us.

In fact, we're required to do exactly the opposite.

Relational Ethics

After reading a summary of the recent Barna Group survey on Americans and our "Biblical" morality, one of the things that struck me about it was the rather clumsy understanding of what does and does not constitute a Christian ethical framework.

What was presented in the study was the old tension between deontological and consequentialist ethics...to which you would justifiably say...what? Quoi? Basically, what that means is that morality tends to be understood in two separate ways.

"Deontological" ethics are ethics that appeal to or are founded in an absolute truth. Measured against that standard, things are either right, or they ain't. "Consequentialist" ethics are entirely contextual, and are classically and clumsily articulated as "the end justifies the means."

The Barna report implies that a fundamentalist "Biblical" morality was absolutist. It is, of course, but in such a way that doesn't really reflect the Bible.

The challenge for each of these approaches is that neither framework captures the foundation of Christian morality. Are we absolutists? Sure. It's very difficult to believe in God and not have a sense that morality transcends our immediate context. But the nature of that absolute belief...at least as Jesus taught it...is a bit different than the way it gets typically presented.

What Christian faith is not is a belief that a certain set of rules or laws have absolute authority. This has been the failure of both the hierarchical absolutism of Catholicism before the reformation and the literalist "Biblical" absolutism of Protestant fundamentalism. Christian faith is, instead, focused on an absolute that defines and governs both church and scripture. That absolute is the assertion that God is love. God's love is the heart of Torah, is made manifest in Jesus, and continues to articulate itself through the presence of God's own spirit working in the hearts of those who are willing to receive it.

If we accept this understanding of God as the absolute that governs our ethics, an interesting thing happens. Love is an absolute, but it is an absolute that can only be articulated contextually. If we are absolutely committed to loving our neighbor, then the way that love expresses itself must take the other...their needs, their context, their identity, their self...into account. If it doesn't, then it cannot be described as love.

The relational ethic that lies at the foundation of Torah, Prophets, Gospels, and Epistles explicitly spans that gap between the absolute and the infinite array of contexts and perspectives into which we have to apply it.