Phyllis
Tickle’s book The Great Emergence: How
Christianity Is Changing and Why is a relevant book to read because it
speaks of an issue that the church is currently facing. This issue is, in part,
the idea of a postmodern church. While this issue is relevant, Tickle does a
rather poor job executing the conversation. She brings up a lot of good points,
but she does not do a good job overall. One obvious example is simply in the
conversational way she presents her ideas. While this makes for an easy read,
this also allowed for many grammatical errors. A conversational-style approach
can be very helpful, but Tickle was not entirely successful in her attempt.
Also, she claims to be a scholar, and yet she does not give any real sources in
her bibliography. Most of her footnotes are simply extra comments or ideas that
she had. There is little evidence of extensive research.
The
emergent and the emerging church are the focus of this book, but Tickle does
more than simply speak of the shape the church is taking in the present day. She
also speaks of how the church has been formed and shaped since it was
conceived. Tickle claims that every five hundred years or so the church has
what one might call a rummage sale of sorts where the church takes into
consideration where it is heading and what it thinks should be kept as far as
beliefs and practices are concerned and what should be thrown out. The author
states that there have been four “greats” that have coincided with this rummage
sale. The first was Gregory the Great who kept the church from dividing itself
completely and led the way for the next five hundred years of church history. While
this first example works for Tickle’s five hundred year cycle, it could easily
be argued that other events in church history were just as important, or
perhaps even more important, than this example. It seems as though she decided
to talk about Gregory the Great simply because he fit into her five hundred
year pattern. The second period she mentions is The Great Schism in which the
church split in a way because of differing theological views. The church split
between the East and the West. The third was The Great Reformation in which the
Protestant church was formed because of the mishandling of the church by the
Catholics, which led in part to the age of enlightenment where science was
exalted, but also where the Bible tended to be seen as the sole authority of
Christianity. The fourth is what some are now calling The Great Emergence in
which the postmodern church has clashed with the modern church. Fundamentalism
is on its way out as a postmodern generation takes control of the church. While
this book is very fascinating and brings up a number of different relevant
issues regarding the church of today as well as the past, its author is not a
trained historian and is an independent researcher. This could indicate some
lack of credibility to the book. However, Tickle seems to have done at least
some research and she does indeed speak words of insight and truth concerning
the situation the church is facing today.
Tickle
begins her book by discussing the “rummage sale” idea of how the church reconfigures
itself every five hundred years or so. This reconfiguration occurs most often
because of Christianity becoming established in a certain way that may not
necessarily be the best way for Christianity to exist. The church becomes
institutional to such an extent that the church does not know why they believe
what they believe, or the beliefs of the church have come to include various
ideas that are not central to the church. These beliefs can creep towards the
center of the church’s core-beliefs without even being necessary to the faith
at all. A number of people within the church begin to recognize that the church
has come to believe in things that are not necessary to the faith, and yet many
believe that these things are necessary to the faith. Those who recognize that
the church has taken a hold of many unnecessary and even wrong beliefs begin to
take a stand, saying what they believe to be the true and pure purpose of the
church. This can cause conflicts within the church, because those who hold onto
these unnecessary and even wrong beliefs truly think that these things are
central to what being a Christian is all about. So the church begins to split
over these certain issues.
Tickle
gives examples from the past two thousand years of the different rummage sales
that have taken place within the church. She shows how the most significant
ones occur approximately every five hundred years and she gives the examples of
Gregory the Great, The Great Schism, The Great Reformation, and then concludes
that we are due for another rummage sale in the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries. She refers to this present rummage sale as The Great Emergence. It
is interesting to note, however, that the idea of the church realigning itself
every five hundred years actually goes further back than the existence of the
church. Christianity emerged out of Judaism and within Judaism there is also
seen this idea. The most obvious example of this would be five hundred years
before Gregory the Great in the occurrence of the founding of Christianity. In
this event, the Jews became split between those who were Christ-followers and
those who did not believe Jesus to be the Messiah. This event concurred with
the destruction of the second Jerusalem temple by the Romans. Five hundred years
before these events occurred is seen the destruction of the first temple by the
Babylonians which led to a new way of thinking within Judaism as portrayed in
the Babylonian exile and the Second Temple period. Five hundred years before
the re-alignment of thought caused by the Babylonian exile is seen the
establishment of the monarchy in Israel in which Jewish theology changed in the
transition from the rule of the judges to the rule of the kings. So Tickle
concludes that this concept of a religious “rummage sale” is not limited to
Christianity. She also points out that it was during these times before the
rise of Christianity in which human thought in general began to change among
other groups of people, not just those of the Judeo-Christian traditions. She
uses Plato and other Greek philosophers as examples of how people across the
world tend to go through five hundred year cycles where they sort through the
things they believe in order to see what should be kept and what should be
discarded. This transitional time period in the centuries before Christ is
referred to as “The Great Transformation.” [1] Tickle’s
conclusion is that all of humanity tends to readjust the way they perceive the
world about every five hundred years. They examine what they believe to be true
about the world, embracing that which rings true to them and throwing out
whatever no longer fits. This interpretation of history, however, appears to be
rather subjective in that Tickle appears to be reading her own ideas into
history. Even her own theory of five hundred year cycles falls apart when she
tries to apply it to humanity as a whole because when she speaks of the Greeks
she acknowledges that these patterns did not follow five hundred year cycles
among them.
Tickle
goes on to ask the question of how The Great Emergence came into existence and
concludes that the best way to go about studying The Great Emergence and how it
is coming into being is by studying the last great rummage sale of the church,
The Great Reformation, and how it came into existence. She then proceeds to
describe how The Great Reformation came to be. She points out how during the
time leading up to The Great Reformation there was a great deal of conflict
already within the church. Papal authority had been split between two separate
Popes – one, French and one Italian. Eventually, a third pope was added to the
mix, all three warring against each other. This event and other disheartening events
are what led to the reformation of the church which is most often associated
with Martin Luther and his nailing of his Theses to the door of Wittenberg’s
church. At this time, people were beginning to recognize that these three Popes
and the church leadership as a whole were not true to the spirit of the church
itself, or at least the spirit they felt the church was supposed to have. A
number of people, including Martin Luther, tried to reform the church in order
to bring it back to the way it was supposed to be. Enough people jumped on with
this thought of reforming the church that Rome panicked and fought against
them. This event is what led to the dividing split of the church between the Protestants
and the Catholics. Tickle points out that something similar to this is
occurring and will continue to occur within The Great Emergence of today. There
are enough people today who recognize how the church is not always as it should
be, and they are seeking to reform the church into the way they believe it
ought to be, or the way they believe the Holy Spirit intended it to be. However,
like the Catholic church of the Reformation, there are many within the church
of today who believe that the church ought to continue in the way that it has
the past two hundred years. These people will continue to fight and will
continue to break themselves off from those others in the church who do not
agree with their way of “doing church.”
One
of the key battles between the Protestants and the Catholics of The Great
Reformation was over authority. The Popes claimed to have ultimate authority over
church beliefs and doctrine, while the Protestants established the idea of the
priesthood of all believers, claiming that Scripture alone was the sole
authority of the church and that all individual believers had the right to
interpret Scripture personally by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The
Protestants also believed that the Pope was indeed capable of making errors.
Not only were the Popes capable of this, but they had done so.
Social
reformation also took place during the time of the Protestant Reformation.
City-states began to emerge and feudalism began to be done away with. Tickle
refers to these important changes, saying, “The processes which began and
solidified in the decades surrounding the Great Reformation became our new
common illusion, our new shared imagination as Westerners about how the world
works and how the elements of human life are to be ordered.” [2]
The way people looked at and perceived the world around them was changing
during this time period, and this change is seen in the way people understood
the function of the church. The Great Reformation and the changes it brought
about are deeply connected with the other changes seen during this time. Tickle
continues, “There is […] a very good reason why most general lectures about the
Great Reformation today commence with the […] observation that as a hinge time,
it was characterized by the rise of capitalism, of the middle class, of the
nation-state, and finally of Protestantism.” 2
This list of ideals have come to be associated with the Christian way of life
over the past couple of hundred years, as though these things that are a part
of Western life are also foundationally Christian. It is against this way of
thinking that the Emerging Church has come to speak. While the Catholics of the
Reformation believed that the Pope had ultimate authority of the church and was
infallible in what he spoke regarding Scripture, doctrine, and the church, the
church of today has embraced such Western thoughts of capitalism, the
middle-class, and the nation-state as though these were all Christian and
necessary beliefs of the church. The Great Emergence is then a questioning of
this positioning of these Western ideals as also Christian ideals. The Emerging
Church is not necessarily opposed to these “ideals” at all times, but it is
opposed to these “ideals” if they are imposed upon the greater Christian
population. The church must not be associated with certain Western opinions
which are not center to the Christian faith. Capitalism, the middle-class, the nation-state,
and even Protestantism itself may not in fact be central to Christianity as it
was intended to be lived. The Sola
Scriptura concept of the Reformation may in fact be a limited perspective
because authority may be found in other places as well.
With
The Great Reformation, power also came to be associated more so with wealth and
money. Those who were rich had the power. The balance of power has shifted
again during this time of The Great Emergence. Money has become less of a
factor as far as power is concerned. The new power of today’s world is that of
information. Those who have knowledge, have power. Also, just as The Great
Reformation was influenced by the technology of the time, so also The Great
Emergence has been influenced by the technology of this time. The Great
Reformation was able to come into being because of such inventions as
Gutenberg’s movable-type printing press. The Great Emergence has been able to
come into existence because of the invention of the internet and the World Wide
Web. Both the printing press and the internet served as a means of drawing
people together through the bond of shared knowledge. The difference is that in
Gutenberg’s time, it was those who had money who could be heard by the masses.
In this time of the internet, virtually everyone who wishes to be heard may be
heard regardless of their economic status.
The
time since The Great Reformation has been very modern in its approach to the way
it perceives the world. Within The Great Emergence is the idea that modernism
is not a necessary part of Christianity. Those who are in support of The Great
Emergence or at least in the re-shaping of the way the church thinks about
certain things tend to be more postmodern in their understanding of the way the
world works. Some of the influences upon the way this generation views the
world are in fact rooted in some of the ideas formed during the time of The
Great Reformation. One of these contributing factors has been the founding of
scientific thought and reasoning. It is ironic then that the advance of science
was one of the main contributors to the re-thinking of Sola Scriptura. Charles
Darwin’s writings on biological evolution and Sigmund Freud’s understandings of
dreams and psychology helped to pave the way for new ways of understanding the
world, the way the world works, and the ways in which people interact with the
world in which they live. Tickle also says that one of the most important
breakthroughs in scientific history which altered the course of church history
came with Einstein and his “special theory of relativity.” It came to be
recognized by the scientific community and eventually the general public that
there were certain things about the universe and the way it worked that simply
did not make sense or that went against the way people from a modernist
perspective had tended to view the universe. Along with Einstein’s theory came
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle which stated that one may study the speed and
position of something, but it becomes very difficult for one to study both the
speed and the position of something at the same time. [3] The
idea given was that the act of observing actually changes the thing being
observed. When applied to everyday life and Christianity specifically, this
idea sounds very postmodern. This is because it indicates that the truth of
something depends upon the one observing, which would mean that truth could
vary from person to person. With this specific application to Einstein’s special
theory of relativity began to emerge the idea of relative truth and the
uncertainty of everything. Many truths could in theory be possible.
Also
through science came the uncovering of such documents as the Dead Sea Scrolls
as well as the Quest for the Historical Jesus. Through the studies of ancient
documents, the church found itself wanting to know from where its faith had
come. Also, Pentecostalism came into being and influenced the church in another
way. One of the ways it influenced the church was in its emphasis upon the Holy
Spirit. It was believed by the Pentecostals that whatever the Holy Spirit
personally said to an individual outweighed whatever Scripture said. Also,
spirituality came to be emphasized in culture more than Christian spirituality
in particular. Tickle points to Alcoholics Anonymous as an example of this,
where recovery comes through the help of a “higher power,” and not necessarily
the Christian God. Another key influencer which led culture to emerge from
modernism into postmodernism was the “drug age” of the 1960 and 1970s. People
who experimented with drugs were opening themselves up to new ways of viewing
and experiencing the world. People began to believe in other or alternate
realities.
Towards
the end of her book, Tickle brings out a number of diagrams in order to show
which groups of which the church of today is made up, and to show where these
different groups within the church are heading and how they interact with each
other. She uses research which supports the idea of the church as a whole being
divided into four separate groups in a quadrilateral of sorts. These four
separate groups are referred to as Liturgicals, Social Justice Christians, Renewalists,
and Conservatives. [4]
The Social Justice Christians were originally called “Mainline” Christians, and
the Conservatives were originally known as “Fundamentalists,” but it was
thought that these names were no longer reflective of the groups. [5] These
different groups originally had distinct denominations contained within them.
The liturgicals, for example, were mainly Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and a
number of Lutherans. However, it has come to pass that these different
categories are no longer limited to certain denominations. It is coming to be
seen more and more that certain denominations are no longer limited to certain
kinds of people. Liturgicals, Social Justice Christians, Renewalists, and
Conservatives can be found in nearly every denomination. Many groups within the
church have begun to join together even as many have split apart. The
distinctions between many denominations have begun to blur because this
generation is discovering that Christians as a whole have more similarities
with each other than they do differences.
Near
the close of her book, Tickle describes Emergents as people who are not afraid
of paradox. [6]They
are postmodern, and are opened to truths which appear to be outside of the
realm of possibility. They are distrustful of meta-narratives because they are
based upon “humanity’s human thinking and explaining.” 6 They believe in narrative though, because
narrative is a reflection of the heart of humanity. She says that the future
church as shaped by the Emergents will be one that has sought to go back to the
way the church was intended to be. The church will be “de- Hellenized” and will
most likely appear be something very Jewish in its origins since the original
church was Jewish. She says, “[The Great Emergence] will rewrite Christian
theology – and thereby North American culture – into something far more Jewish,
more paradoxical, more narrative, and more mystical than anything the Church
has had for the last seventeen or eighteen hundred years.” [7]
Many of the beliefs that the church has had since the Reformation and even
since the time of The Great Schism may be subject to change. This will all be
done, however, in order to make the church purer than it is now. This will be
done in order to bring the church back to the way it was originally intended to
be, without the contamination of Western systems of belief.
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