8 Catalysts

This month, author/theologian/blogger Scot McKnight has an excellent piece on the Emergent Church in Christianity Today. The article is talking about what has shaped what is often called the "post-evangelical" movement. These are Gen X-ers and Y-ers who have evangelical Christian roots but who have made decidedly different choices in how to live out the faith while still claiming an essential loyalty to following Jesus.

McKnight breaks down eight catalysts that have shaped this movement and the people who are leading it. These eight catalysts have pushed the emergent movement to re-think how they were brought up and how they were taught to think about Jesus.

I want to sum up McKnight's points here today and then briefly take on a couple of them over the next several days: the good, the bad, the ugly. I think the catalysts that McKnight briefly explains in the article are exactly the issues that my students face and the conversations that I have all the time.

For those of you who are students, I hope that this might help inform your journey. For those of you who aren't, my guess is that you'll find some of your own struggles/questions/faith challenges here as well. And I hope that this might help you prepare for my students who are coming your way.

McKnight talks about these eight catalysts as challenges that have forced many evangelicals to either radically re-think the faith that they received or abandon it altogether. This is, indeed, what I see going on around me.

Without futher ado, here are McKnight's Eight Catalysts for the "ironic" faith of the Emergent Church:

1. The word "inerrancy" as it pertains to the Bible is "the wrong word at the wrong time, though it might have been the right word for a previous generation.

2. The gospel that emergents heard as children they believe is a caricature of Paul's teaching--Brian McLaren (often seen as the poster-child for the movement) calls it "Paulianity." The re-discovery of Jesus' teaching about the kingdom and the poor and life changing here and now (not just salvation when you die) creates a tension--if this is what Jesus talked about, why don't we talk about it, too? Why aren't we preaching Jesus' message? This message is often more political and social and global in its' scope.

3. Their educational history and experiences have led emergents to disown the idea that when science and the Bible contradict that science must step aside. They refuse to give the Bible the "trump card." They remain committed to it, but with a different view as to what it actually is and how it works as a piece of literature to describe the workings of the cosmos. They are both left and right wing, committed to the Bible and open to new ideas.

4. Emergents grew up in a time of serious public failings of evangelical leaders (Ted Swaggart and Jim Baker). This amplifies the feelings of cynicism towards the church as a viable institution...and creates the felt need to start over with greater authenticity.

5. The public schools message of multi-culturalism and pluralism conflicted with their church's teachings that those outside of Christ were doomed. "Possessing both a faith that is particular and an intimate knowledge of religious pluralism prodcued a tension that was nearly intolerable." This leads them to a religious pluralism or a much broader interpretation of what it means to be "a Christian."

6. For some the Bible has portrayals of God that does not square with their understanding of God as loving. So often they will mythologize or allegorize some portrayals of God (often in the OT) and say that later pictures are the real thing--i.e. Jesus as the perfect picture of the God who is altogether gracious and loving.

7. Homosexuality. They are convinced that sexuality is complicated, are committed to having relationships with all types of people, and live in a tension with the Bible about what to do about this issue.

8. That all our theology is language-based, which is shaped by culture. Can any one language or culture tell the whole story of God? Emergents by and large plead for a multi-lingual approach to telling God's story, which fits with their earlier influences of pluralism and mulit-culturalism.