Emergent Church and Post-denominationalism
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
It always blows my mind when young leaders, finding their way into leadership in their local churches (this is not meant as a reflection on any folk in our own church), are so ready to dump whatever tradition or denomination of the church they grew up in (or found Christian faith in) when they meet a major disagreement or an old opinion which resists change. We want to leave. Start something brand new. No constraints. Gianni Vattimo called it “the tyrrany of the new.” It is that part of hypermodernity we can’t escape. I fear emergent church folk fall into this trap.
This however makes little sense amidst the postmodern worlds where knowledge has become fragmented, loosed from foundations and can really only gain stability from within a tradition. In After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre argued for the inherent repository for proven truth in the progression of traditions. In the midst of the demise of science and objective reason as the arbiters of all truth, traditions become the central enclave for the testing and proving of truth. It is within a sustainable conversation that has lasted longer than twenty years that we move forward towards understandings of God that have depth. Sustaining a conversation within a denomination is a discipline that creates substance and richness in our conversations and theologies. I feel more and more the denominations are open to this. As more and more younger evangelicals look for historical depth to their faith, they leave the independent rogue community church for the Roman or Anglo Catholic churches. Why can we not begin to see our denominations as traditions which extend the ancient faith. When you think about it, the independent local community church can only survive as long as everyone believes having an inerrant Bible is enough to arrive at all truth. Then you can rely on the autonomous superstar pastor as the only authority you need. But of course this is idiocy. I'm not saying the Bible ain't inerrant, I'm just saying it needs a history of interpretataion to make that inerrancy worth something. We need traditions.
This is why I was encouraged by Maggie Dawn’s comments on the value of traditions for the emergent church. (I first noticed her comment on a blog entry of Jordon Cooper’s which I couldn’t find tonite.) This is why I think the association of emergent church with post-denominationalism may be premature. This is why I question the anti institutionalism of some emergent friends as misplaced. More and more I see the denominational leadership recognizing they are dead if they keep trying to be a franchise that just seeks to protect turf. I see more and more cooperation between the denominations in missions, church planting. And look at what the Salvation Army has nurtured with Pernell Goodyear up in my in my old hometown in Canada. Look at what my own denomination has nurtured in the birth of our brand new community. I believe there is much more, much more to come. What is happening? Based upon all this, I believe the emergent churches and thinkers who are within the denomninations must keep working within and keep working together across denominational lines. Am I just way too optimistic?
For the furtherance of Christ's Mission in North America through His Church
Posted by David Fitch | 6:18 PM
COMMENTS:
Dave,
I hear what you are saying and I am encouraged to go back and read some of the suggested entries. The only consideration I would throw out there is that it is much easier to speak of tradition when you speak from a majority perspective, one that does not experience the same disconnect as others that have been somewhat marginalized by the very denominations they seek to get away from.
I agree that we cannot pick up and break, leave just because we disagree, or perhaps see little hope from our own perspective. However, I believe we must also have space created where we can walk through these struggles without condemnation from our peers or those in authority. It is tiring sometimes to be thrown in so quickly with a "generation" that is always looking for the next way to dodge authority. Perhaps we are not ready to just submit wholeheartedly, but we need space to work that out.
I am encouraged by this conversation. Thank you for your thoughts and I look forward to further conversation.
Blessings,
Linsey
6:46 AM
David,
I couldn't agree more. It seems to me that many naive leaders are far too ready to split at the first (or second) sign of "them not getting us" or of disagreement... in fact, early on in our church planting adventures here in Hamilton people would hear about what we were thinking/doing and say "what if the denomination doesn't let you?" and I, in my arrogance, ignorance, and immaturity would respond, "we'll do it without them".
No, we wouldn't. We wouldn't have been able to.
While intrinsic motivation is a valued character trait in church planting, what a stupid thing to think, that we can do it on our own.
We need larger networks, to keep us in The Way. I am not sure it has to be a denomination... but networks bigger than ourselves, for sure. And I agree that we need to keep collaborating and creating friendship and cmoounication and partnership beyond even denomination... and those who we have affinity with even.
Thanks for this post.
6:56 AM
To all of what you just said ...Amen ... thanks for saying it.
6:57 AM
I am sorry ... my first comment was for Linsey ... Amen to everything you said!! .. that post got posted right as Pernell was posting ... and to Pernell ... I agree also ... there are challenges within the denominations ...no one knows this more than Linsey ... but I have been surprised at how many new and vibrant thinkers ... men and women ... who challenge thoughtfully and with respect ... are heard and can change things. The denominations are in trouble and looking for a way to go on.
Blessings to both Linsey and Pernell in our efforts to further Christ's church.
7:23 AM
W.R. Inge (1860-1954) said, "There are two kinds of fools: One says, 'This is old therefore it is good.' The other one says, 'This is new therefore it is better.' Of course, he also said, "Every institution not only carries within it the seeds of its own dissolution, but prepares the way for its most hated rival."
9:19 AM
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10:22 AM
Here here. Wonderful comments, Dr. Fitch. Is it Chesterton who called tradition "the democracy of the dead"?
I appreciate how keenly your thoughts align with the practices of the New Testament church, who were motivated by the desire to both rehearse and inhabit the narrative of Christ's suffering and resurrection in their services by means of traditional activities shared by a majority of early Christendom.
The problem with heresy (which was more often actually heteropraxy rather than heterodoxy) was that it sought new ways to repackage the spiritual experience of the Church. It seems that the addiction to innovation may be a tradition in itself that dates back to the dawn of Christian thinking.
10:33 AM
David,
I share your concerns. I was an assistant pastor of a nondemoninational church and intentionally decided to church plant within a demoninational structure...though it has been very hard.
I get a lot of church planters who contact me and want to know how to proceed. Often, they want to plant within a denomination, but the denomination isn't very supportive of trying something untried. Alot of denominations realize that change is needed, but not many have done much about it.
10:37 AM
yes, might I think it was Chesterton, in "Orthodoxy" somewhere.
5:23 PM
Mike Leary ...
Good to hear from you ... hope all is well across the pond. Independent churches as heresy ... hmmmm . And Mark, no question denominations can be difficult. And sometimes denominations will be so narrow that folk will have no choice but to leave. Yet denominations can do so much with global mission connecting us to the world with opportunities to give and go. And they can provide the means for dialogue on the issues of the day that need change.
Blessings to all strugglers in the Way out there
4:25 AM
David, this is great stuff, however MacIntyre's understanding of tradition is somewhat different than what I'm reading here. MacIntyre describes tradition differently than what is commonly understood. The whole modernist perspective - out which postmodernism, in my opinion, is sort of a renewal movement – is built on many of the same assumptions about individualism, meaning my perspective is authoritative for me, yours for you, and, yes, we can learn from one another, but there is no fixed position that mediates our differing perspectives. Consequently, traditions are viewed as just dead rituals and practices because they are someone else’s. What MacIntyre conception of tradition is really a third way, different than modernism and postmodernism. Here the individual is subject to the tradition, not the tradition to the individual.
Since the Reformation, the standard of authority has been the individual. Couch it in terms of the rationalism of inerrancy or justification, but it ultimately is the individual who makes this determination. Attempts within the Reformed tradition to create authoritative norms, like the Westminster Confession, ended up being marginalized by the multiplicity of confessions that are written for specific time and situations. They are instructive for understanding belief, but serve as scientific rationalist statement, and not a tradition. The individualism inherent in Protestantism has not changed, even with the emergence of religious postmodernism. We are individualists who love Christ with all the contradictions that come with that.
Tradition from MacIntyre’s view is rather a bond of beliefs and practices that form our identity. They are not discrete commodities we select off the shelf to enliven our church life. This is the mistake, I believe, that many churches make in trying to adopt high-church forms of tradition. They are aesthetically pleasing, and as a result touch parts of our lives that rationalism does not. But they are not the tradition as it developed over the past two milennia. What MacIntyre points to is that in order to adopt the tradition, you have to apprentice yourself to it. You have to be willing to be transformed into its image, so to speak. Up to the late Middle Ages, the tradition of the church's beliefs and practices were to be learned and acquired in practice. The moral tradition of the church is the transformation of the individual over time into a mature human being focused upon the life in service to God within a specific calling or purpose. MacIntyre points to Aristotle's conception of the moral life like that of learning a craft, like woodworking or painting. There has to be certain virtues or practices already learned in order to learn the skills of craft. There has to be a desire to learn guided by reason that leads the individual through a journey of growth. And there has to be a purpose that gives meaning to the transformation. To become a master-craftsperson of the Christian life requires much more than just going down a checklist of traditions that might be appealing. As my Richard Lovelace, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary history professor, used to tell us, the first renewal movements were the monastic orders of the Middle Ages. Their purpose was to shape the whole person of the individual. In order to do this, you gave up your individual identity, and acquired the identity of the order or of craft. This is what MacIntyre is suggesting that tradition is.
Does this mean that not only evangelical churches, but all Protestant churches are some how suspect, and living an historically tenuous existence? Possibly, but not necessarily. However, I am convinced that as Protestantism comes to end of its late Middle Ages/ Enlightenment rationale, which is what I am seeing in what you are writing David, that it will embrace the whole of the historic Christian tradition, of thought, belief and practice from the early church through to Thomas Aquinas. And when we do, we will understand how our tradition transcends particular points in time, and gives us a clearer understanding of what it means to be the People of God in this time and place. Does this mean that we should all become Roman Catholics. No. It just means that we have to understand how the tradition of the church’s first 1500 years developed, and the impact it still has upon the church in our time.
9:57 AM
Ed,
It's a long post and hard to respond to all of it. I think your characterization of postmodernity as another form of individualism is somewhat misleading, as if there is any one postmodern view of the individual. What I see postmodern thought doing is decentering the individual, there are selves only as formed, shaped, technologized, products of texts. This leaves the door open then for a return to cultures, polis', places wherein selves are formed. The church of course being the place for Christian selves to be formed.
McIntyre, I believe sets the table for this to happen in traditions. His story in After Virtue is one where the Enlightenment fails to ground morality in the myth of the autonomous self. We must return to the progress of knowledge and selves (virtues) within traditions.
Anyways, I see that even denominations can become those kind of traditions. Places where doctrine and ways of life are worked out in a long stream of social embodiment. I admit, it is not what Alasdair Mc had in mind as far as a robust tradition, but I think this is the way we must go.
Your last paragraph is where we see eye to eye.
Ed ... If this keeps up, I think you and I might have to start a blog for the discussion of McIntyre and all his works.
Blessings
1:09 PM
I like the way you talk about preaching as a proclaimation of the reality of who God is, and inviting others to live in that reality. Other great themes are the biblical idea of justice, and the need for community.etc.
In the Lutheran tradition, we are centered around rhe Word and Sacrament.
11:53 AM
Your tradition, and others of the older liturgical traditions will have an easier time with all of this (talked about with Ed). On the other hand, there are other issues for the older European churches to deal with.
3:59 AM
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