truth to tell

In this fairly recent article (I suppose it’s already obsolete as far as internet life goes), Jana Riess asks the big question “what do publishers means by ‘emergent’. Regarding the “branding of emergent,” she expresses her fears that the publishing world (something I know almost next to nothing about) will co-opt what is good in emergent in favor of the same old self-help crud that usually brings people to the “religion section” at Barnes and Noble.

Emergent folks deserve more than becoming the book equivalent of a glossy infomercial. I’m not the only one who’s uncomfortable: I can, in an utterly un-postmodern appeal to an Authority Figure, quote Brian McLaren on the subject: “It’s not about the church meeting your needs; it’s about joining the mission of God’s people to meet the world’s needs.”

What gets me about this article is that she highlights something I’ve been struggling with but she doesn’t really talk about the issue. She points to the “literati” who tend to scoff at emergent (they’re in abundance in seminaries throughout the US - heck, I’ve done some of it myself) by noting that there really is nothing new about what they’re saying from a theological perspective (and I’d say even from a Philosophical perspective - but that’s a whole other can of beans). But I think this point needs to be bourne out further.

I think, given the “critical” nature of my recent post, I need to make sure people know that I’m not one of those who wants emergent to go away. I think it’s a great idea, even though I often get a bit frustrated with some aspects of the conversation (I guess some would say that’s my inner protestant liberal -or- fundamentalist -or- modernist -or- aren’t they all the same anyway? coming out to haunt my blog). But I do think it needs to be said that there really is NOTHING NEW about what emergent Christians are saying. The author of the article points out that some “emergent” ideas can be found even in patristic literature (Origen was sooo emergent - Anselm, not so much). I’d be willing to say that there’s a stream of “emergent” thought running through all good theology - if by “emergent” one means a propensity toward conversation versus overt declarations of once-for-all truth and an ability to admit the limits of human reason.

But, as I’ve said in comments elsewhere, by the scale with which some folks measure degrees of “emergence” the protestant reformers were emergent (for the record, I REALLY don’t understand the disdain with which some emergent folks regard the reformers - emergent could NEVER {like the caps lock there?} have happened if it weren’t for the reformation; can you imagine what emergent “indulgences” would have looked like? Emergents (most of whom are - or used to be - for the most part evangelicals) owe their existence down the line to the reformation and I think it’s high time someone did a post-modern, emergent engagement with them).

While I’m not always in agreement with emergent voices out there (mostly because I still want to hold a small spot for universal, even objective truth of some kind - more to come on this), I do not want what is good in the conversation to be overtaken by the consumeristic impulse to buy-and-sell crap in a box and call it a book. And this is where the author of the article mentioned above and I are right on track with one another. She writes,

There is something special going on here, which is why the growing co-optation of the label Emergent for the same-old-same-old Christian books is so annoying. Here’s hoping that publishers (and authors) can restrain themselves before the label becomes meaningless.

So be careful - little eyes and ears - what you read and hear as “emergent” because if the publishing world has its way, it might just be pop-psychology or neo-fundamentalism.

Cheers,

A.T.