A BIG Thank You To Conservative Evangelicals; A BIG Thank You To Southern Baptists; thank you emerging conversation? yes, but only a little one so far
***My fascination with the emerging conversation continues. A cluster of insights, critiques, and values (mainly ecclesiological, methodological and cultural ones) intrigue and attract: (1) the missional seriousness, (2) the recovery of mystery and the arts, (3) the endorsement and embrace of narrative, (4) the commitment to a nuanced and discriminating assessment of the significance of culture and to the planting of culturally contextualized churches (5) the ecumenical openness (notwithstanding the myopic and historically misinformed exclusion of conservative evangelicals from the group hug by some) (6) the recognition by some that none of the preceding need or ought to threaten the retention of orthodox and evangelical doctrinal commitments which really amount to the retention of biblical seriousness. And so, thank you emerging conversation/movement for these insights, critiques, and values. Thank you for the congregations consciously attempting the embodiment of these insights and values. Thank you emerging publishers of books and blogs as well.
But only a little thank you so far. At least compared to the BIG thank you due to conservative evangelicals including especially, in my case, Southern Baptists. Why? Because of the thousands of hospitals, schools, churches, and relief organizations you have created and sustained. [One of the first phone calls made whenever hurricanes bear down upon the United States (or Banda Aceh, Indonesia for that matter) is to Southern Baptists who have earned a world wide reputation for mobilizing effective and sustained help in the aftermath of natural disasters.] Because of the thousands of missionaries you send and support all over the world. And last but not least, thank you for the undeserved opportunities you have provided for me to serve the Lord and support my family for over thirty years.
Without backing away from a single expression of gratitude to or hopeful interest in the emerging conversation, I think a little historical perspective helps to cast matters in the proper light. The wisest and most knowledgeable friends of the emerging conversation have, perhaps rightly, eschewed even the designation “movement” to describe what lies behind the diverse collection of bloggers, writers, and pastors that can include such odd bedfellows as Mark Driscoll and Brian McLaren. Modesty, they insist, commends the term “conversation.” I agree. Some recognize that the conversation may end up serving merely as a prod to existing denominations, churches, and movements rather than become one itself. One prominent “pastor” of one of the (left wing?) emergent (not emerging!) “churches”/fellowships admitted to me that it might be better if his “fellowship” serves as a mere spiritual way station for spiritual wanderers who may move on to an actual church or not rather than become a real church itself. The reticence to have “church” as part of the name of some of these communities may end up being more prophetic than some realize! So the call for modesty commends itself.
Yet, some of the books and blogs fail the modesty test, especially where conservative evangelicals are in the crosshairs. Sweeping and dismissive caricatures take over. Straw men are set up and knocked down by these mere conversers at the drop of a hat. Smugness sets in and backslapping, self-congratulatory, guffawing rhetoric flows freely.
Why is this so? Especially given the embarrassing disparity in shear numbers, historical legacy, geographical presence and actual accomplishment between the emerging critiquing conversers and the conservative evangelical movement? Certain reasons seem obvious:
When your club is young, small, diverse, difficult to nail down, and hasn’t done much, you lack the history and identifiability to become an easy target. (I expect D.A. Carson is learning this afresh). When accomplishment is meager, little presents itself for critique.
Whereas, when you are old, successful, and established, your warts become all too obvious and inviting to the adolescent impulse to point them out.
I fear that some protest-driven, former conservative evangelical emerging conversers imagine that their insights, since absent from their own limited, idiosyncratic exposure to the enormous global movement that is conservative and evangelical, are thus absent from the whole shebang, and that is not so. Emerging conversers, authors, and pastors bring energetic articulation and attempted implementation of the insights and values that define them, not creation of those insights and values. Every authentically biblical value they highlight already exists and even flourishes among conservative evangelicals, but without the prominence or consciousness that pervades emerging thinking about and practice of the same.
A fair amount of distortive projecting and extrapolating is going on here. Friends of emerging rightly cry foul when the distortive generalizations appear in evangelical construals of the emerging conversation but display comparative high tolerance for the broad brush when critiquing evangelicals. If the emerging/emergent conversation/movement is too diverse to put up with (as Scot McKnight has correctly insisted) such a reductionistic construal as D.A. Carson settled for in his book, then the same applies to conservative evangelicals only exponentially more so.
Is the emerging conversation/movement diverse? Conservative evangelicalism is much more so. Is emerging tough to characterize? Evangelicalism much more so. I tell my students that Roman Catholicism must be treated as a special and complicated entity and phenomenon because of its long history, its global reach, and its historical importance and influence. I warn them that the temptation to caricature and dismiss runs high when Protestants, and especially evangelicals, attempt to understand Roman Catholicism. I tell them that the attempt to comprehend Roman Catholicism is often akin to a man blindfolded in a room with an elephant. What he thinks he encounters depends upon where he grabs hold! All of this could be said of conservative evangelicalism. And some of the emerging/emergent books and blogs don’t get this. This is troubling when some set themselves up as the respectful ones, the appreciators of nuance and mystery, the ecumenical community, the “friends” in conversation—the orthopraxy police!
Why do I care? Because I love conservative evangelicalism, Southern Baptists, AND much of what I see in the more doctrinally orthodox streams within the emerging movement. And, I believe my own denomination stands to benefit much from engagement with this conversation. And I believe that dissemination of the best insights from the emerging conversation within a denomination like Southern Baptists offers profound possibilities for their wider dissemination and longevity. And I do not want the possibilities for this kind of thing short-circuited by historical amnesia and sloppy caricature from any quarter.
So, just a little thank you to the emerging conversation/movement so far, but hoping for and even expecting the opportunity to give a Big thank you in due course.
But only a little thank you so far. At least compared to the BIG thank you due to conservative evangelicals including especially, in my case, Southern Baptists. Why? Because of the thousands of hospitals, schools, churches, and relief organizations you have created and sustained. [One of the first phone calls made whenever hurricanes bear down upon the United States (or Banda Aceh, Indonesia for that matter) is to Southern Baptists who have earned a world wide reputation for mobilizing effective and sustained help in the aftermath of natural disasters.] Because of the thousands of missionaries you send and support all over the world. And last but not least, thank you for the undeserved opportunities you have provided for me to serve the Lord and support my family for over thirty years.
Without backing away from a single expression of gratitude to or hopeful interest in the emerging conversation, I think a little historical perspective helps to cast matters in the proper light. The wisest and most knowledgeable friends of the emerging conversation have, perhaps rightly, eschewed even the designation “movement” to describe what lies behind the diverse collection of bloggers, writers, and pastors that can include such odd bedfellows as Mark Driscoll and Brian McLaren. Modesty, they insist, commends the term “conversation.” I agree. Some recognize that the conversation may end up serving merely as a prod to existing denominations, churches, and movements rather than become one itself. One prominent “pastor” of one of the (left wing?) emergent (not emerging!) “churches”/fellowships admitted to me that it might be better if his “fellowship” serves as a mere spiritual way station for spiritual wanderers who may move on to an actual church or not rather than become a real church itself. The reticence to have “church” as part of the name of some of these communities may end up being more prophetic than some realize! So the call for modesty commends itself.
Yet, some of the books and blogs fail the modesty test, especially where conservative evangelicals are in the crosshairs. Sweeping and dismissive caricatures take over. Straw men are set up and knocked down by these mere conversers at the drop of a hat. Smugness sets in and backslapping, self-congratulatory, guffawing rhetoric flows freely.
Why is this so? Especially given the embarrassing disparity in shear numbers, historical legacy, geographical presence and actual accomplishment between the emerging critiquing conversers and the conservative evangelical movement? Certain reasons seem obvious:
When your club is young, small, diverse, difficult to nail down, and hasn’t done much, you lack the history and identifiability to become an easy target. (I expect D.A. Carson is learning this afresh). When accomplishment is meager, little presents itself for critique.
Whereas, when you are old, successful, and established, your warts become all too obvious and inviting to the adolescent impulse to point them out.
I fear that some protest-driven, former conservative evangelical emerging conversers imagine that their insights, since absent from their own limited, idiosyncratic exposure to the enormous global movement that is conservative and evangelical, are thus absent from the whole shebang, and that is not so. Emerging conversers, authors, and pastors bring energetic articulation and attempted implementation of the insights and values that define them, not creation of those insights and values. Every authentically biblical value they highlight already exists and even flourishes among conservative evangelicals, but without the prominence or consciousness that pervades emerging thinking about and practice of the same.
A fair amount of distortive projecting and extrapolating is going on here. Friends of emerging rightly cry foul when the distortive generalizations appear in evangelical construals of the emerging conversation but display comparative high tolerance for the broad brush when critiquing evangelicals. If the emerging/emergent conversation/movement is too diverse to put up with (as Scot McKnight has correctly insisted) such a reductionistic construal as D.A. Carson settled for in his book, then the same applies to conservative evangelicals only exponentially more so.
Is the emerging conversation/movement diverse? Conservative evangelicalism is much more so. Is emerging tough to characterize? Evangelicalism much more so. I tell my students that Roman Catholicism must be treated as a special and complicated entity and phenomenon because of its long history, its global reach, and its historical importance and influence. I warn them that the temptation to caricature and dismiss runs high when Protestants, and especially evangelicals, attempt to understand Roman Catholicism. I tell them that the attempt to comprehend Roman Catholicism is often akin to a man blindfolded in a room with an elephant. What he thinks he encounters depends upon where he grabs hold! All of this could be said of conservative evangelicalism. And some of the emerging/emergent books and blogs don’t get this. This is troubling when some set themselves up as the respectful ones, the appreciators of nuance and mystery, the ecumenical community, the “friends” in conversation—the orthopraxy police!
Why do I care? Because I love conservative evangelicalism, Southern Baptists, AND much of what I see in the more doctrinally orthodox streams within the emerging movement. And, I believe my own denomination stands to benefit much from engagement with this conversation. And I believe that dissemination of the best insights from the emerging conversation within a denomination like Southern Baptists offers profound possibilities for their wider dissemination and longevity. And I do not want the possibilities for this kind of thing short-circuited by historical amnesia and sloppy caricature from any quarter.
So, just a little thank you to the emerging conversation/movement so far, but hoping for and even expecting the opportunity to give a Big thank you in due course.
posted by Mark DeVine at 1:15 PM
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