Tony Campolo has an article in the Winston-Salem Journal called Growing: Movement is New Form of Evangelism. Thoughts? Before I comment on the article, I’d just like to say that I certainly don’t want to write an article on “what is the Emerging church” – because I think that it is so many different things to so many different people. For some, it’s a way to worship in a new way. For others, it’s a license to be free to question and doubt and feel safe(r). For yet others, it’s the ability to meet with others who are like-minded, get all their bitching out of their systems, and then begin to (re)think/imagine/construct what an “emerging” church might look like: and how that does impact our worship, our ecclesiology and (most) importantly, our theology. At any rate, it’s not a ‘movement’ I’d like to be called upon to define.
A few thoughts then, about the article:
- Campolo says the movement expresses “progressive evangelicalism.” I can definitely see how he gets this idea, as most of those who come to the Emergent Conventions are from non-denominational or the more “Evangelical” churches within mainline denominations. But let’s not forget that there are many mainliners who are very involved in the conversation; mainliners who probably would probably consider themselves “evangelical” – but not Evangelical.
- Continuing on that thread, Campolo says that “[E]mergent churches espouse a decentralized grassroots form of Christianity that rejects the hierarchal systems of denominational churches. Each emergent congregation makes its own decisions by consensus.” Which again, for those who have broken away from denominations, this would be true. But there are still many churches, who are totally online with the values of emergence, which still remain within the traditional structures of a denomination (whether that’s Baptist, PCUSA, Episcopal, UMC, etc.). It seems that someone, not familiar at all with the movement, would then believe that if a church is an “emergent church” – then it has turned its back on the institutionalized church – which would not be the case for all churches.
Anyone else, what do y’all think?
I started to comment but it turned into it’s own post.
You can find it here.
Two paragraphs in we get:
“This movement expresses what I call “progressive evangelicalism,” because it emphasizes traditional evangelical beliefs…” yada, yada, yada.
D’oh!
I expected better from him.
just to follow up with something more substantial…
I am a great admirer of Tony Campolo. He has bucked the fundagelical hierarchy for many, many years on issues that they would prefer to avoid (like, um, say, AIDS in Africa). He generally makes a lot of sense, and besides, who couldn’t admire a guy who sweats as much as he does on camera… (thinking of It’s Friday, but Sunday’s a Comin’ video…) Hence the disappointment that he kind of misses so much of what emergent is. So…
I guess it’s inevitable that people who come into contact with “emergent” folk will latch onto what they are familiar with. In Tony’s case (and much of fundagelical America) it’s classical Evangelicalism. Being less familiar with the other aspects they are easier for the casual observer to overlook.
Oh well.
Dave, in your critique of Campolo’s article you fail to give an alternative to his view. What exactly are these “less familiar…other aspects” to emergence he misses? Few people want to define emergence, or give any concrete meaning to the title, so can we really fault Campolo who is at least trying to define the movement for the general public? You can say yada, yada, yada, and we can sit around in emergent circles and cry, “Don’t define me, man” all we want. But, I don’t think that’s ultimately constructive. It seems we’re more apt lately to define emergence negatively by making statements of what we’re not. Campolo tried to me a statement about what we ARE, and I haven’t heard anyone give a good rebuttal that starts with the phrase, “We are this…”
Andrew,
To amplify: I merely observe that his view of emergent has two major flaws common to much of the current debate in the US:
1) he sees it only as an outgrowth of fundamental Evangelicalism.
2) He sees it as a very US-o-centric phenomenon. (He mentions “US and worldwide” early on, but the rest of the duiscussion is very much about the US.)
Is this a heinous crime? Probably not, but it continues to reinforce the notion in people on the fringes that emergent is exactly as described above. More evidence? The whole Reclaiming the Center book debate – which is essentially traditional fundagelicals sparring with emergent post-fundagelicals. To which the rest of us simply look on and ask WTF?
There are all kinds of expressions of emergent in the UK, Australia, New Zealand (as widely noted it’s mostly a first world phenomenon so far) and elsewhere that aren’t American in flavor at all. They may be to some degree “Evangelical”, but not by any means uniformly so.
I’d say that the US mainline denominations (like my own) are the least well represented, but we are here. There are many reasons for this lateness, some good (we have always had strong ties to the historical church through all the ages, so we have nothing to build/rebuild) to the bad (we’re pretty oblivious to much going on in the world because of all the stupid infighting).
Better? ;)
Better.
Phew, what a relief. I was afraid for a minute I was going to flunk commenting…
It should be clearer that a term paper is required and grades will be given ;)
I see the validity of the comments above. Coming from a more outside perspective, however, I think that it is notable that someone of Tony’s generation(being, I believe, a sixty-ish year old man), and prominence in the modern evangelical scene would give such attention and what seemed a very positive review to the emergent church.
Ditto, Tim.
(Does “fundagelical” mean anything, or is it just zippy name-calling? ‘Cause the best way to insult an evangelical is to call him or her a fundamentalist.)
I’m a bit more positive about Campolo’s article, because I track well with what some folks have been saying about an emergent “conversation” as opposed to a “movement.” There are many emergent values, and I don’t think there’s enough homogeny amongst emergent practitioners for outsiders (or anybody) to offer a cohesive, consistant explanation of “the emerging church” that fits in a 500-2000 word article.
For example, I’ve not seen any mainstream articles yet that can describe what I think is the most important bit: that allowing the form of the “church” to emerge organically driven by the interaction of the ancient faith with a new cultural context. Faith gets translated and re-articulated in new cultural/generational settings, and the way of discipleship and being together will look different in different mission contexts. Kind of an extension of “worship in vernacular languages.”
Regarding “fundagelical” – inasmuch as the terms “fundamentalist” and “evangelical” have no clear, unique, universal meaning (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist_Christianity) and in fact overlap considerably, I use fundagelical as a shorthand for the set that includes all fundamentalist and evangelicals, with significant overlap in the middle.
The people inside those camps probably see distinctions and divisions that are invisible to the outsider, which I am. If there’s a well known equivalent to “mainline” I guess I’d be amenable to using it instead.