The Fabric of Faithfulness

Emergent Syncretism or Contextualization In my reading of discussions of worship and the emerging church there is a central question that I keep coming back to. Is the critique that typical evangelicalism has “over-accommodated ” with the consumer culture resulting from liberalism’s end game, or is the critique itself “over-accommodated” with contemporary youth culture, with a nefarious brand of post-modernism. In other words, is the emerging church movement a vital example of contextualizing the gospel, or is it a syncretism like I saw in the catholic church in rural South America. Examples of my concern: Are discussions of authority and knowledge in the emerging church influenced by Derrida and Lyotard just because those thinkers are hip to the academy, or is there legitimate critique expressed there that merits serious review by the Christian (regardless of cultural orientation). Are there other voices that are expressing the same critique of modern epistemology without the same cynicism and skepticism (Plantiga, Alston, Woltersdorff come to mind). Is the emergent revision of “primacy of the word” an appropriate contextualization? The reformation appropriately put the sermon in front, but postmodern culture would seem to challenge that centrality with its interest in image, in sensory experience as preferential ways of learning. Len Sweet talks about contemporary culture as being “EPIC” – experiential, participatory, image based and communal, and you see churches moving to teach followers in these ways. Yet we also hear grave concern about the impact of moving away from a word based faith to a spectacle based faith. See Ralph Wood’s critique of Peter Jackson’s Rings Trilogy. Pat Rolleston told me that he felt the emergent church was retuning to the sort of romanticism that through history inevitably become apostasy. I’d like to see that teased out concretely but I have feeling he’s right. Along the same lines, in as much as the emergent church places emphasis on experiential learning they are exposed to Michael Horton’s diatribe against contemporary worship – where he says we misunderstand god when we try to create experiences where he will act in power. He advocates a return to the sacramental and the traditional – tools used for centuries to draw our hearts close to god. It reminds my of my theory of the evangelical banal – where there is an intentional disinterest in the aesthetic, so that any powerful expression of goodness and beauty has to be performed by God alone – “Lest we make the mistake of thinking that God did something that in fact was done by our own hands” I am not so naive as to believe that the traditional evangelical church has the corner on biblical faith – and I even have a strong conviction that the evangelical church has accommodated to contemporary liberalism and modernity in deeply troubling ways. But teasing apart the syncretistic from the biblical, and then turning to face contemporary culture with a vital contextual faith that doesn’t just fall right into another syncretism – will be a great challenge.