Categories: uncategorized
Date: 26 March 2009 09:55:53
I'm obviously feeling a bit better this morning, I've started the day listening to Ian Mobsby's Greenbelt 2008 talk on What the Emerging Church and the Desert Mothers and Fathers Have in Common and it's managed to wind me up. Now before I start going of on a bit of one I want to make a couple of things clear: (i) I have huge respect for Ian Mobsby and Moot and (ii) I think that the emerging church is making a valid and valuable contribution to contemporary Christianity.
So what managed to penetrate the paracetamol / ibuprofen induced haze and get my brain working again? First off, the talk starts off by explaining how the emerging church has come out of Austrailia, New Zealand, USA and UK. Um, I'm sorry, but considering how influenced emerging church thinking has been by liberation theology, North African mystics and stuff from eastern spiritualities atleast a nod to the South would have been good. If we are ever going to move on from our Western elitist power trip we need to acknowledge how what we call emerging church might have been the brain child of a bunch of Western intellectuals but it owes it's heritage as much as to the spiritual and religious traditions of the south as it does to the cultural and philosophical traditions of 60's Europe and North America.
Second thing that wound me up was the way that there was talk of inclusion, etc, but it is a certain type of inclusion based on being able to be ascethically pleasing. The focus on culture inadvertantly leads to the emerging church being a church for "the beautiful people". The talk started describing the dominance of some icon within the emerging church sub-culture, which represents the trinity. This was fine, but it was to me an example of how the emerging church has developed a set of dominant symbols which reflect a certain type of literacy. What about the mass of people who engage with culture through "Mama Mia", "East Enders", "Rhianna", "Sweet Sixteen" and the like, how are we reflecting their culture within our emerging churches?
The third thing was that whilst he was making a very valid point about spiritual tourists wanting something that worked rather than something that was able to be true in a reductionist form this became a point of elitism. He said people don't want to walk into a dysfunctional church. Um, this is something I question. Sometimes a dysfunctional church is exactly what they need. A church riven by internal conflict is not what I mean by a dysfunctional church - that's a broken church. Rather what I mean is a church struggling to do its best to engage with God and reflect God in the everyday messiness of life. This type of church is likely to be inclusive in nature, whether it wants to be or not simply because it's dysfunctionality means that conformity is not a practical option.
Thirdly, in talking about the way Jesus is removed from the Spirit within far too much Christianity he used the illustration of a kind of "Holy One Parent Family" to show the problem. Now on one level I don't have a problem with this because it made the point but on another the choice of using the metaphor of the one parent family to represent brokeness and incompleteness is something I would challenge people to think about. On one level it may be true but it is also inadvertantly putting forward a picture of one parent families which I would wish to challenge. Language is a powerful thing in reinforcing perceptions.... we need to think how we use it.
Forthly, he talked about the need for different types of churches for different types of people. This is something I can agree with up to a point. However, if taken to its logical conclusion it (i) leads to exclusion, (ii) leads to problems of having to choose your dominant identity and (iii) leads to something which is not really church. The exclusion comes from creating communities for people like us. The problems come when people have a mixture of identities and are forced to choose which one is to be dominant and which to deny rather than simply being allowed to be all they are in one church setting. Church is somewhere a diverse group of people should be able to come together to build community. One of the main differences between church and the average social club is that in church we have to learn to live with "the other" and through the trinitarian God find ways of journeying forward together as we become challenged and are ourselves a challenge, in times of both joy and sadness. Splitting between the emerging and traditional takes us away from this. Rather what we need is spaces where we are one but we can also be many. We need unity and fragmentation similtaneously.... the exact challenge late / post modernity gives us.
Finally, at the end Mobsby was challenged on whether emerging church was only for intellectuals. The length of time it took for him to say no, it was for anybody willing to engage with complexity and not wanting simple answers was telling. Surely there needs to be a place in the emerging church for those who engage in culture by saying I like it because it's good.... don't know why, I just like it aswell as those who can give a variety of readings and quote who their influences have been. I think anybody who saw it will still remember that bit in The Monestry when the bloke had an experience of God and couldn't explain it. The monk told him sometimes that it's best not to try and explain. Church needs to be about experience aswell as all the flowery stuff. Equally church should be there for those who are living the issues of social justice rather than simply engaging with them. That's not to say there isn't a place for intellectual enagagement, of course there is. However, in looking at the complexity of God and life we need to appreciate the complexities can been seen in different ways, dependant upon what our life situations are. They won't always involve wresting with the academic problems. Sometimes people are too busy trying to find God and a way of living God in the everyday realities of survival.
Anyway, all that said it's an interesting and thought provoking talk.
P.s. thanks for the sympathy have appreciated it. Having a rant has worn me out a little..... I'm off back to bed for a bit.