Brian McLaren – one of the leading voices of the Emerging Church movement had the following exchange with an audience lately:
“Brian McLaren was about to speak at a church youth convention when his host asked the audience a provocative question.
How many considered themselves liberal Christians? A smattering of hands and a few cheers. Conservative? Louder claps and hoots. Then he asked: ‘How many of you wish there could be a third alternative?’
The room erupted with cheers. The host then introduced McLaren as a fellow pilgrim in search of the third alternative. The nondenominational evangelist —- labeled a ‘sage’ for ’emergent church,’ a growing theological movement aimed at a new generation —- was surprised by the response but says he understands it now.
‘One of the reasons they cheered is their sense that the polarization between conservative and liberal, evangelical and mainline, left and right has gotten so extreme, it seems like a cartoon,’ he says. ‘People have this sense that we’ve lost our balance.'”
The clergy retreat I just attended featured Howard Anderson (from the College of Preachers) as one of our presenters. One of the points that Howard made again and again is that the idea of dividing up the Church between two poles of liberal and conservative (or reappraiser and reasserter) is really modernist view of what is happening. In fact, as Diana Butler Bass has pointed out, there are many more strands present in the present controversy.
I’ve often thought that the idea of “centrism” which has been discussed so often on this blog is really just a way of saying that we represent the party of the intentional Church rather than the established church (to borrow Butler Bass’s category). Centrists seem more focused on gathering in worship with people than on making sure that everyone has the same agreed upon world-view and understanding of the mechanisms of salvation. It’s a community focused on the praxis of work and worship more than on the question of who’s in and who’s out of the Kingdom.
McLauren’s work in the Emerging Church movement has been one of my chief guides in coming to recognize the way this dynamic is being played out in the conflicts being seen in the mainline churches these days.
Read the rest here: Faith & Values: Voice of ‘sage’ inspires, unsettles | ajc.com
Thanks TitusOneNine for the pointer.
Hi Nick– per your: “I’ve often thought that the idea of “centrism” which has been discussed so often on this blog is really just a way of saying that we represent the party of the intentional Church rather than the established church (to borrow Butler Bass’s category). Centrists seem more focused on gathering in worship with people than on making sure that everyone has the same agreed upon world-view and understanding of the mechanisms of salvation” — I think I would say it slightly differently. When I became the rector of St. Paul’s Church, Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, in the middle 1980’s, there was in the Parish House a display of historical artifacts from the parish’s founding in the 1790’s, including a list of the founding vestry. On my vestry, in 1987, were two persons directly descended from and with the same last names as members of that first vestry. To me the “center” is entirely about “establishment.” It’s about holding the particular views, passions, commitments of the gathered congregation today, whatever they may be, in careful balance with the past and the future. About the “parish,” let’s say, rather than the “congregation.” “Priests come and priests go,” as one 90 year old who had lived her whole life in that parish told me. So do congregations, bishops, and the headlines of the day. Most of what everybody is saying in this moment,progressive and conservative alike, is going to look pretty goofy a century from now. I see “centerism” as being characterized fundamentally by a sense of profound humility, a willingness to see even what I hold most dearly at the moment as something provisional, something that both the past and the future will need to continue to shape and correct. That doesn’t mean I don’t engage thoughtfully and even passionately. But it does mean I’m careful not to damage the furniture.
Thanks Bruce. I think we’re saying the same thing, though I’ll happily concede that you’re saying it more eloquently.
What you’re talking about is the same thing I’m referring to when I mean that we’re intentional about following Christ and not about buying into any one particular “view, passion or commitment” as you put it. (Or at least I meant my post to be saying the same thing… Grin.)
I appreciate your note about our humility as well. Howard Anderson was making that point too – classical Anglicanism has always expressed a deep sense of humility and limitedness when it comes to trying to fully explain or understand the mysteries of God (like the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Ascension, etc.) My biggest fear about the Anglican Covenant is that it could be used to move us all to a more confessional stance – and that would seem to me to be going against our stance of humility in a way that would be a great loss.