Book Review – The New Christians Part 3

This is the third part of the book review. You can find part 1 here and part 2 here.

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Chapter 5 – The paradoxes of our faith.

The section continued a dialog of what it means to engage a humble hermeneutic. He cites the issues of women’s suffrage and slavery as example, ones in which we now have a different opinion than 100-200 years ago. What was really strange was reading the name Daniel Henderson, the very man who baptized me, and now a pastor in Minnesota. Weird.

Tony does a good job of bringing out the slippery slope issue. He says,

“Based on his comments, he fears that humility – at least in the interpretation of the Bible – will lead to meaninglessness, to an inability to stand for something.”

He calls out the problem of certainty, which can lead to imperialism and instead offers Newbigin’s “proper confidence”. He brilliantly offers,

“While an emphasis on interpretation does preclude the many propositions about eternally “right” and “wrong” answers, it doesn’t mean that there’s not truth. Instead, it means that there are inherently better interpretations – that one interpretation can trump another.”

History clearly reveals that we have had better interpretations based on new information and dialog. The tension lies in the fact that we don’t like it when there are different interpretations than ours. Tony offers that this intellectual bravery to engage conversation and not settle is founded throughout history in Luther, Assisi, Day and Bonhoeffer.

Tony offers the idea that we can learn from any text in the library, not just the ones deemed “approved” by the church or written by Christian authors. This practice is one of the critical tensions between the traditional church and the emerging streams. To me, one is based on fear. The other is based on trust.

His dispatch #13 I would offer sums up the heart of the problem surrounding the misconceptions that Emergents don’t believe in truth. It says,

“Emergents believe that truth, like God, cannot be definitively articulated by finite human beings.”

What most people will probably hear or read or say when talking about Emergents is what amounts to an edited version of this statement; “Emergents believe that truth cannot be known by human being.” I appreciate Tony putting it into such a succinct, articulate statement.

Tony also explores a really good discussion on the nature of paradox and our desire to constantly solve the paradox. He shared his encounter with a physicist who explains that paradox is inherent to nature. An example is that a electron is both a particle AND a wave. He quotes the physicist as saying,

“I just think, if there are paradoxes in physics, then why shouldn’t there be paradoxes in theology too?”

Good food for thought for those who want to box God in. I would offer that the willingness to live in the tension of the paradox is one of the strongest traits of the emerging church.

Chapter 6 – Emergent community in the new world or “Do you trust me?”

In this chapter, Tony explores different ways emerging communities are exploring a generous orthodoxy. He profiles Tim Keel’s Jacob’s Well and shares what it’s like. He then offers an intriguing insight into how Wikipedia, an open source community of share concern can offer much to the emerging church communities. I must say that I really, really liked this idea of open source church. The concern for church heresy is mitigated by the group’s desire for truth. Messiness will occur but so will a burgeoning community. I love this section. At the heart of emerging churches is the willingness to fail and learn. We’re not afraid to grow from failure. Isn’t this real life anyway.

Tony provides a very short section on Binitarianism (the belief in the two of the three parts of the trinity). The point was that we have lost the Holy Spirit. This to me could have been a much larger section, especially in regards to interpretation. It is my sense that much of the emerging church stems from a desire to discover what the Holy Spirit is doing organically and participating where God is already working. His critique is that we do what we think works and then wonder why we’re burned out.

One of the pervasive notions of this section is the question, “Are we going to trust people?” This extends the generous orthodoxy to a generous orthopraxy, which is essentially what Jesus did when he left humanity and gave us the Holy Spirit to follow.

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Book Review – The New Christians Part 2

This is the third part of the book review. You can find part 1 here.

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Chapter 3 – Summary: Who are the Emergent Christians?

Tony provides a few observations he made based on a tour of emergent churches. His observations: disappointment with modern American Christianity, desire for inclusion, and hope filled orientation, resonated quite a bit with me, although I would have added a more wholistic approach to following Jesus to the mix.

He then offers what I think is one of the primary tensions in the church: the influence of culture and the sacred/secular divide. The tension is the classic in, not of question in Scripture. Do we simply separate ourselves? We can’t. The call is to be in the world. So if we tread in, how do we avoid the undue negative influence so we eventually look like the world, a loss of “not of”. He briefly mentions the forays into media and politics.

Tony then explores the “envelope of friendship” in a dialog with a leading conservative fundamental pastor. It’s an interesting dialog between the mindsets. I particularly liked the term envelope of friendship. It helps focus on what connects us rather than what separates us.

The last section explores the delicate interaction of engaging in the political sphere. My only wish would have been for Tony to explore the more missional trends within the emerging church as an alternative to the world’s political process. Our ability to feed the poor and love our neighbor has always been the best answer to the world’s practice of legislation.

Chapter 4 – Summary: Exploring Theology

Tony first begins to tackle some of the theological underpinning’s of traditional evangelical Christianity. He explores some of the classics assumptions we make throughout history, things like dispensational rapture, Bill Bright’s evangelism, and the Jesus film. He identifies the fundamental, yet classic, flaw that God’s actions are predicated on our actions, which they are not. We are in fact predicated on God’s actions. He says,

“But God is a being whose activity is, by definition, not contingent.”

Tony follows with what these old assumptions do. They motivate people. Tony explores his own story through Campus Crusades and the Mainline church. What I found truly valuable is Tony’s choice not to demonize the people he had learned from. His new found postmodern faith allowed him to humanize and forgive them. But this experience also allowed him to see that it was the theology that created the system, not bad people.

It is this core, the base of which is love that allows us to communicate and relate to people we don’t always agree with. It is also one of the central attributes that draws me to the emerging church. Tony captures it beautifully. He also say,

“Good theology begets beautiful Christianity.” and “Bad theology begets ugly Christianity.”

This echoes the words of Jesus when he said,

“No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.”

Tony apologizes for the comment but I wish he wouldn’t. He’s simply echoing the words of Jesus.

He also touches on what I think is a deeper issue within the church, especially for men. He says,

” So many emergents have become disheartened with a Christianity in which all the answers are already known, all the orthodoxies already reified. Instead – and emergents have been accused of being a bit puerile themselves in this regard – they’re looking for a Christianity that’s still exploratory, still adventurous.“

This charge hearkens to Freire’s banking model of education. Traditional church simply deposits the right answer into us. The emerging church on the other hands creates a space for us to explore the intricacy’s of our faith in a context that is void of shame.

Tony posits one idea that I would counter, that the Gospel is complex. I don’t assert that the Gospel is complex for the simple fact that in the presence of Jesus, the children got it. I would assert that we as humans make it complex, and much of the journey in following Jesus is dumping our own complexities, which are simply our objections to following, at the cross. We make it hard because we don’t like giving up control. But the emerging church is creating a context and space for allowing each person to process that journey at their own speed. I would offer that part of the problem is that our theology is still emerging and how we see it is still in the cocoon. The ego still wants the answer. Where I agree with Tony is that God is too complex to put in a box, and refuses to allow us to do so.

Note: The following is a weighty section of the book and you may need to be careful not to rush to judgment. I encourage you to sit with what he is saying to make sure what you think you hear is what he really is saying.

Tony also posits three assumptions about theology that can easily be misconstrued. He says, theology is local, conversational and temporary. This dialog is deeply dependent on his use of the word theology and how he defines it: discourse about God. It is easy to assume he is talking about truth, which He’s not. He talking about the conversations we have of God. It is my hope that people see this because I had to go back and read this twice to get it. (If I’m wrong Tony, please let me know.) I believe the point he is making is that we need to walk in humility about how we come to our conclusions because they are based on determining factors like where we came from and how we think.

The evidence Tony uses to base a lot of this position on is the history reveals we’ve gotten it wrong on issues such as slavery, the Crusades, etc. I completely agree with Tony here and share his call to humility.

I particularly enjoyed the section “the slippery slope”. Once of my chief concerns with critics of the emerging church is that they are rarely complaining about issues in the here and now but about “what ifs”. His story is hilarious in how much it reveals the fear that hides behind the what if slippery slope. He also follows with a dialog on interpreting Scripture between the pick-and-choose brain, a Biblicist, and an Emergent that is truly funny in its wit and revelation.

At the end of each chapter he shares a story that presents the previous dialog in a real way. In this chapter, the following quote comes from a friend of Tony’s in the Anglican church.

“I realized that his job at the seminary was to hone the canon, to firm up the boundaries, not to expand the boundaries.”

Oh, how we like to create the box…

Continue on to Part 3 here…

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Book Review – The New Christians Part 1

Summary: Tony provides a deep historical account of how and why the emerging church and emergent movement arrived and is what it is today. This is a must read book for those interested in the emerging church, or anyone who wants a clear picture of the emerging/emergent movement. If you are unwilling to read this book, you have no real leg to stand on in your critique.

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Note: Tony blends the use of Emergent and emerging church, where I would not. Emergent is an organization that coordinates activities and conversation, where the emerging church is the natural organic movement of God within the world today. It’s not a big deal but it helps to know the difference if you are reading this as a new comer.

Chapter 1 – Summary: What it means to deconstruct.

Tony created a valuable distinction for me in three words: reactionary, resolutionary, and revolutionary. Instead of jumping to the left/right, us/them mentality of the first two, Jesus chose the third way, staying in the tension of not demonizing the other.

I especially appreciated his quote from Anthony Smith in describing his view of the emerging church. Anthony said,

“First…there is an epistemological humility with this particular movement.”

That’s it. He gets it. So much of the emerging movement is a move a way from the arrogance that has pervaded Christianity, the run to know it all. I don’t know it all. And it’s nice to have great conversations with those who don’t know it all. And as we share together we can discover how God is moving.

Chapter 2 – Summary: The history of the emergent movement.

First I want to say that this chapter was worth the price of the book alone.

I really appreciated the metaphor of the lava flow. No matter how hard we try to contain it, creating hard, crusty shells on the surface, God finds a way to break through. This metaphor adequately describes the tension of any movement to break free from the chains that history always creates. That we don’t see the chains, when history is filled with examples, is a testament to the human condition.

Tony creates another distinction of Gospelism, which is mans desire to control or put rigid forms around what God is doing in our midst. To me, that’s religion.

He also continues the dialog on the natural human instinct to polarize, right/left, us/them, etc. He brings out the cultural swings from secularization to fundamentalism, and again draws us to the third way of Jesus. He finds describes it as,

“It’s what might be called the postmodern posture: an attempt to both maintain one’s distinctive identity while also being truly open to the identity of the other.”

The problem as Tony describes is that this living in the tension doesn’t fit into neat little packages.

I also appreciated reading the deep history of the initial Young Leaders Network and how it got started, the UK history with Jonny Baker and NOS, and the background to the interactive process of the web. It puts it in a framework that is larger, more global than just evangelicals.

Tony succinctly draws the distinction between bounded sets (unity based on membership), centered sets (unity based on beliefs), and emerging (unity based on relationship). I appreciate this distinction because it draws us into relationship not based on commonality but in our humanity.

Continue on to Part 2 here…

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