Bill Harryman's outstanding blog 'Integral Options Cafe' features a reprint of an article by retired Baptist pastor Howard Bess that argues that American Christianity is undergoing an important evolution from the dyed-in-the-wool fundamentalism characteristic of so many of its believers even in the 20th and 21st centuries into an "emerging church" of "post-Evangelical Christianity" that seems more hospitable to science, homosexuality, and cultural diversity. Bess lists the following eight elements of this new trend among Christians he calls "emergents":
1. Because of the findings of modern biblical scholarship and linguistics, emergents don't believe that any particular translation or version of the Bible is the "inerrant" word of God.
2. They are less likely to accept the traditional gospel accounts of Jesus as conclusive and are studying other documents for information on Jesus' life and teachings to gain a more realistic overall picture of who Jesus was and what he was about so that his example can be followed. "They ask 'If we are followers of Jesus, why do we not live and preach his message?'"
3. Science education has made them more likely to accept science and to seek ways to reconcile science with their faith than to reflexively reject science whenever it conflicts with scripture and Christian teachings.
4. They are increasingly disillusioned with the "clay feet" of church leaders and with the church's power to produce and sustain better leadership, and they're looking to create a church with leaders who walk the talk and inspire their congregations to follow their example.
5. As a result of being from and of being exposed to many cultures, they understand that people have different religious beliefs and that they and their beliefs shouldn't be condemned just because they don't toe the party line of biblical fundamentalism. Therefore, they're moving to make Christianity more inclusive of diversity.
6. They believe that greater emphasis should be placed on God's gracious and loving nature and that Old and New Testament depictions of God as "angry" and "vengeful" should be downplayed.
7. They have come to understand that human sexuality is "more complex" than the ancient and simplistic teachings of scripture and church make it out to be and that Christianity can and should embrace homosexuals rather than condemn them.
8. Christianity needs to be less bound by the constricting language of theology and by the cultural context in which theology develops and become more attuned to broader spiritual currents.
In his introduction to Bess' article, Bill Harryman writes that if what Bess says is true, we "may be witnessing the transformation of American Christianity from a Blue Meme mythic worldview toward an Orange Meme rational worldview." Harryman is referring to a theory or model of human psychological and cultural evolution called "spiral dynamics."
In spiral dynamics, a succession of identifiable "vMemes" or ways of understanding and orienting oneself to the world have developed over the course of human history, and each human being and each culture tend to operate predominately from one of these ways or vMemes unless and until circumstances cause the individual or culture to progress toward a higher vMeme that transcends and includes the lower vMemes. Spiral dynamics has conveniently assigned a color to each vMeme or level of memetic orientation, and when Bill Harryman makes reference to American Christianity evolving "from a Blue Meme mythic worldview toward an Orange Meme rational worldview," he means that American Christianity may be developing from an exclusive orientation to the world that is guided by slavish devotion to a set of guiding principles allegedly dictated by God or Ultimate Truth to a more inclusive orientation that embraces a rational, scientific approach to understanding and operating within the world.
Furthermore, in the spiral dynamics model, there are levels or vMemes higher or more evolved than Orange. If Bill Harryman is correct that the memetic center of gravity of American Christianity may be evolving out of myth-centered Blue and into rational Orange, it might eventually evolve to even higher levels, and one could surmise that the higher this development, the greater the potential of American Christianity to foster a genuine and deeper spirituality within its practitioners who increasingly eschew the rigid dictates of literal scripture and teachings that closely follow these dictates for the wisdom of actual, profound and transformative spiritual experience.
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