Cherry-picking the Past: The Emergent Church and its Discontents

Since I’ve been back in Des Moines for several months now, I’ve read stories in several of the local news publications about a few churches in the area that exhibit traits of the so-called “Emergent church” and have visited a church or two that would probably characterize themselves as such. The Emergent church seems to be popping up in cities everywhere, and Des Moines is no exception, as it makes its appeal to the growing “young adult” demographic. Interestingly, the “young adults” at these churches tend to be predominantly white, middle-class, disaffected evangelicals and fundamentalists, which gives these communities a strong “niche-market,” that is to say non-catholic (in the sense of the church universal and historic), feel and look.

I have come to believe that these “emergent” communities fail to improve upon the various fundamentalisms and evangelicalisms from which they spring (and they do, in fact, define themselves in reaction to these traditions) and end up maintaining the same basic framework, with all of its flaws, of low-church evangelicalism, even while coming to different (though mostly uninteresting) conclusions.

So, what is my beef with all things Emergent. For starters, these communities frequently have little to no critique of culture or technology. The prevailing assumption of their more traditionally evangelical (though not necessarily fundamentalist) forebears remains intact: culture and technology are wholly neutral husks through which the Gospel is communicated. The naivete of such a position is hard to quantify, since cultural critics and sociologists have refuted this assumption over and over again. Neil Postman, being one such critic, argued in his prophetic book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, that the forms of discourse a culture assumes have different horizons of possibility. For example, television is a great medium for entertainment, but a horrible medium for serious political exchange. Why? Because the medium itself is geared toward novelty, meaningless soundbytes, and images (as opposed to text). Culture and technology function in two relevant ways here: They make some things that were previously impossible (or at least very difficult), possible; and, here is the frequently ignored element, they make some things that were previously possible much more difficult. To play on Postman’s favorite whipping boy, television, TV makes entertainment much more readily available and sitcoms, e.g., possible, but it also turns living rooms throughout the world into venues of passive media consumption frequently opposed to actual conversation with family and friends.

Further, Emergent communities exhibit an interest in the great tradition of the historical church, but instead of these communities and individuals submitting themselves to the sturdy, well-worn grooves of a venerable tradition, they magisterially stand over traditions cherry-picking them in a consumptive fashion, treating the ancient church like a bargain badger at a Dollar Tree. This consumptive approach also rips liturgical practices out of their respective contexts, distorting their meaning and significance in the process. What does it mean, for example, for a church in the non-denominational denomination to incorporate holy water into its worship life? There is a particular theology of holy water that makes sense within, for example, a Roman Catholic context that has a strongly sacramental understanding of Baptism, which doesn’t make sense in a church that views baptism in a purely symbolic way.

Finally, in my experience visiting these churches and reading the movement’s authors, it seems to me that many emergent churches fail to appropriately emphasize the depth of the reality of human sin. Frequently, there is a good and right emphasis on recovering the centrality of the kingdom of God, but this sometimes gets portrayed as akin to joining up with a social or political cause like environmentalism. In other words, Jesus came to announce his project for redeeming creation-gone-awry and we simply need to get on board and lend a helping hand. The biblical reality is that we are massively central to the problem due to our holistic depravity (See Romans 8:18-25 on this). In order to join Jesus in his kingdom work, we first need to address our own brokenness through repentance of our sin and faith in Jesus and his atoning work on the cross. It is only when we humble ourselves in genuine contrition and prostrate ourselves at the feet of Jesus and seek mercy that we can in any meaningful way contribute to the work God is doing to heal his desperately ill cosmos. Because of this, the preaching and teaching of churches must continually emphasize our need to continually die to self and live to Christ, as the sanctifying work of God in our lives not only brings healing to us, but also makes us into the kind of image-bearers that better reflect Jesus’ likeness and perfect dominion.

In the end, without a sturdy, solid tradition under which to submit and draw upon, our churches end up mirroring the host culture in all the wrong ways and selling out the power of the Gospel for trite evangelical silliness and triviality. Jesus didn’t come to establish his kingdom by the way of the cross so that we might fingerpaint and interpretively dance during the Eucharist. Don’t get me wrong, a recovery of artistic expression and freedom in worship is necessary for churches plagued by evangelical functionalism, but this expression must be contextualized within the great tradition that has been handed down by the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church that has gone before us and shown us well-worn grooves of faithfulness in which to follow. Apart from this, Emergent churches simply reflect the boring consumerism and individualism of the culture-at-large.