The Official Website of Mike Adkins .com

Phyllis Tickle’s newest book, The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why, arrived yesterday. At 172 pages, this small but elegant volume (aren’t all Tickle’s books elegant?) both informs and disappoints. Tickle takes on the daunting task of reviewing the major turning points or `Great’ events in the life of the Christian church. Her contention is that every 500 years or so the church goes through a `great’ transformation.

Counting back from the present, the Great Reformation took place about 500 years ago — 1517 to be exact. Prior to that, The Great Schism occurred when the Eastern and Western churches split over icons and statues. Five hundred years earlier, Gregory the Great blessed and encouraged the monastic orders which would preserve the Christian faith through the Dark Ages. Of course, 500 years before that, we’re back in the first century and the time of the apostles. Today, Tickle contends, the church in in the throes of The Great Emergence.

But, the Great Emergence is not just religious. It is also cultural, technological, and sociological. Of course, context shaped each of the other `great’ church transformations as well, and this time is no different. Tickle takes the reader on an overflight of church history, world events, and charts the shifts in the center of authority in the life of the church. In the Great Reformation, of course, the cry of authority was sola scriptura – only scripture. Tickle traces the diminution of the authoritative place of scripture in culture and Christianity from its heady beginnings in the Reformation to its marginalization in the current postmodern era. The book provides thoughtful tracing of influential elements as Tickle leads the reader on a quest for a center of authority.

But, while Tickle’s insights and examples provide clues to the transformative forces in our culture and society, the book disappoints when we arrive at the present. Tickle sees all denominations, all churches, all movements in the quadrant of Christianity — conservative, liturgical, renewalist, and social justice — as converging toward the center. Granted, there are those denominations and groups that cling to their identities in a kind of resistant pushback, but Tickle’s vision is that we are all being swept up into the next great moment of the church — The Great Emergence. Every church, not just the cool emerging church types, are part of The Great Emergence. I’m not sure that is happening, but I could have lived with Tickle’s opinion except for some examples she uses.

Tickle uses John Wimber and the Vineyard churches as an example of this new kind of emergence. She correctly credits Quakers — Richard Foster, Parker Palmer, etc — with great influence on the spirituality of the Great Emergence. I might add Elton Trueblood to that list, as mentor to Foster, but Tickle doesn’t. But, in her citing of John Wimber, she goes off track. She credits Wimber with being a “founder” of the Church Growth department at Fuller, and calls Peter Wagner his colleague. I was present at Fuller during Wagner’s tenure, and I was enrolled in the DMin program in church growth. I attended one of the Signs and Wonders classes, heard Wimber speak, and got a sense of his idea of `power evangelism.’

Wimber was not a founder of the church growth movement. He was an adjunct faculty member at Fuller. Dr. Donald McGavran was the founder, Peter Wagner was his protege. I met McGavran once, although he had retired when I was enrolled at Fuller. Tickle misunderstands Wimber’s approach, and also overestimates the Quaker influence on Wimber. Wimber left the traditional church in which he had become a Christian because he wanted to `do the stuff’ — heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons, and so on. I also attended the Vineyard church that Wimber headed, and it was no Quaker meeting. So, at the end of the book, Tickle disappoints. Simple fact-checking could have offered a corrective to her inclusion of Wimber.

While Wimber did create a powerful new church community called Vineyard, he used signs and wonders as power evangelism to win people to Christ. All of that was very much part of the church growth movement that believed in attractional evangelism. Wimber’s brand just happened to be one of the more interesting versions of church growth techniques being used to gather people. She also wrongly attributes the concept of bounded sets and centered sets to Wimber when actually it was Paul Hiebert, the missiologist, who used those concepts to illustrate new approaches to understanding the place of persons in the Kingdom of God.

Would I recommend the book? A qualified yes is in order here. The book succeeds in all but the last chapter. If you want a great overview of where Christianity has been, what the influences were that got it there, and where it might be headed, Tickle’s book provides a good, concise overview. My disappointment was that it fails to see clearly the way forward, and misinterprets some of the church’s most recent experiements, such as Vineyard. But, Tickle is an elegant writer, and the book is a valuable resource to those aware of its short-comings.
Rating: 3 / 5

“Emergent” Christianity resembles the Borg (of Star Trek) to the extent that Phyllis Tickle and her book truly are representative. With one important flaw which I will mention later.

Let me state at the outset this is not the “full” review I had intended. A full and critical review article of The Great Emergence by Phyllis Tickle would take a long time and a lot of space. The book is so problematic that one hardly knows where to begin. Like performing an autopsy on a brontosaurus. So without supplying all the appropriate citations and evidence – and whoever reads this will be entirely right to complain – I must summarize for now my various points of critique.

Let me also share that I do not wish to demonize(?) Phyllis Tickle. I am sure she is intelligent sweet sincere knowledgeable and does not write from ill motives. Indeed I first read this book with positive anticipation. The senior pastor heard her speak at a conference and spoke highly of her and her presentation. And of her book. I trust him and value his opinion. I assumed “I am going to enjoy this I look forward to what she has to say”.

By the second chapter I had red flags going up in my mind. After the last footnote of the last chapter I could only conclude the book was truly dreadful. I can only wonder what a competent and respected theologian and/or church historian would have to say about it.

One key question is “does she describe these social/cultural/religious shifts to which the church must respond? or does she believe in these changes?” I am convinced she does not describe but rather advocates. Where she says culture is taking us – that is where she believes the Christian movement should go. Without supplying all the evidence for this conclusion let me briefly suggest the reader observe carefully the language she uses to describe various trends and theological stances and religious groups. Notice what the assumed “center” is to which she compares everything else. (And yes I am invoking a form of deconstruction here.)

To prepare for a brief conversation about the book in staff meeting I jotted down a quick list of “problems” on the back inside page.

1. Her “this dramatic shift happens every 500 years” historical schema does not hold up. Can we really say 500 A.D. was that much more significant than 400? 600? 800? What of the Ecumenical Councils? I thinka strong case can be made for the edict of Constantine more than Pope Gregory the Great. Can we really say 1000 A.D. was the point of dramatic shift? Historical changes are rather gradual. According to Kallistos Ware in The Orthodox Church 1054 A.D. marked when East and West formally renounced each other – but they continued in relationship until the 13th century and the sack of Constantinople. Granted Tickle has a reply: “preformation and postformation”. The big shift was coming. The big shift continues to work itself out. But this strikes me as a cheap convenience. Such a schema allows one to choose nearly any point in history and say “here is the dramatic change!” and then explain away big changes before as “preformation” and big changes after as “postformation”. I will give her the Reformation – yes indeed a dramatic shift around 1500 A.D. (And if big shifts really occur more or less on schedule – then it is not 2017 A.D. yet.)

This 500 year pattern is crucial to her thesis. If such dramatic changes occur every 500 years and are in a sense inevitable so the Church just needs to accept them as such and adapt/change with them – such as now around 2000 A.D. But if there is no such pattern than can be defended historically – there is nothing “inevitable” about the current shifts she describes (and well – one of the few good things about her book).

2. She describes theological positions poorly. How often she equates sola scriptura, scriptura sola with inerrancy and literalism. But this is patently absurd. I know plenty of people who believe that the Bible is the primary or even sole authority for Christian faith and practice who do not necessarily assume inerrancy or especially literalism. At best – and this may be another one of the few good things she accomplishes – she describes how the Bible no longer is assumed to be a book that answers many of the deep questions that human beings have.

3. It is clear she has no use for the Bible as a source of authority – except insofar as we interpret it according to our own mercurial and protean understands of what “the Holy Spirit says to us”. This is classic American Episcopalianism.

4. She sets up almost incomprehensible metaphors which she controls. She declares which part of the metaphor one view is and which part of the metaphor is some group – and then the metaphor neatly demonstrates how that view loses and this group prevails. I like metaphors and use them frequently myself – but metaphors have limits. They describe but do not determine. I submit that Tickle uses metaphors to determine. “Sorry but your view/group is this part of the metaphor that gets changed or swept away by the inevitable rhythms of history”.

5. This leads to another critique – what I call her “imperious/imperial point of view”. She is like the third person omniscient voice in a novel who floats above history and has it all worked out. Her people are on the right side – the side of culture and history. Our people – and here I think the “losers” in her thesis are clearly those of a more “conservative” Christian bent – are doomed. Hard to explain and I would understand if the reader demands better examples.

6. She defines and then employs terms rather arbitrarily. What exactly does she mean by “corporeality” as opposed to “morality” and “spirituality”? She sets orthopraxy and orthodoxy against each other (more or less – there is one moment where she moderates this binary dichotomy) and throws sexual morality under “orthodoxy” rather than orthopraxy. You gotta be kidding me.

7. She clearly assumes that the Christian church does not only change how it communicates (form) but what it believes and practices (content) according to changes in the surrounding culture. Shifts in culture determine not only the form but the content of Christian mission. (I acknowledge that we may ask fairly, Does she describe or advocate this point? I submit she advocates and believe that careful reading supports this.)

8. Even this seems to be a contradiction. Toward the beginning of her book she seems to say the Church must change its structures (the “rummage sale” metaphor – which is actually another good thing she offers) but quickly it becomes clear that no she also has in mind its theology and practice. When the Virgin Birth (whatever the merits/details of that teaching) is true because it is “beautiful” not because it happened (or not) – surely that is advocating a fundamental shift in content. She does not just want the form/expression of the Christian church to change – she wants its theology to change.

9. Tickle marginalizes dissent. This is particularly evident on pages 136-137 in which people who do not buy into the “emergence” are reactors who are part of a general backlash and – notice her metaphor! – are retreating to the corners of her square diagram (137).

10. Tickle is a hypocrite – in my opinion. Sorry if that sounds harsh. She clearly sympathizes with the current leadership and direction of the Episcopal Church. (Notice the quote from Presiding Bishop Jefferts-Schori on the back jacket.) And also frequently describes “emergence” as breaking up authoritarian hierarchies. But the Episcopal Church for all its theological liberalism is indisputably becoming more authoritarian. The Presiding Bishop speaks and acts like a Metropolitan rather than a “first among equals” whose primary job is simply to call and moderate meetings of the House of Bishops.

11. She defines words in such a way as to privilege the viewpoint with which she sympathizes. Notice that when she sets theonomy against orthonomy (which clearly she associates with emergents – see 2nd to last paragraph of page 149). Orthonomy is a kind of “correct harmoniousness” or beauty (149). Aw shucks. Which means theonomy is what? Neither beautiful nor harmonious?

12. She gives way too much credit to emergents for being a vital and growing group. Christianity has grown “exponentially” in the hands of emergents?!? (121) If emergent Christianity is more or less liberal Christianity (and this is what I think she assumes although it is not entirely clear or consistent) then the statement is just nuts. Liberal Christianity – right or wrong – is dying rapidly. (To be fair conservative evangelical Christianity is not growing much – but it is not imploding at quite the same rate.) Where is Christianity truly growing “exponentially”? In the Global South thank you very much. And Global South Christians are not terribly liberal or emergent.

13. She says the new shift will get rid of the “Hellenization” of Christianity – which seems to mean more traditional/conservative Christian theology is very Greek and not very Hebrew/mystical. She is half right about this. But it is not clear that a more “Hebrew and mystical” Christianity necessarily means we suddenly say “the Resurrection is true because it is beautiful – and it does not matter whether it happened or not”. Moreover Eastern Orthodox Christianity is explicitly non-Hellenized. (Now whether that is true or not we can debate.) So here you have a non-Hellenized and very mystical form of Christianity – and it is again neither terribly liberal or emergent.

14. The whole book assumes a Western and Protestant point of view. Where is the “Church” going? How should “it” change? Why because modern Western culture and society are changing! Where does this leave the majority of Christians who are neither Western nor Protestant? The geographical center of Christianity is now in Africa. Africa! Should African and Asian Christians read this book and say “oh gosh yeah we sure need to change – I mean look at all these changes in modern American culture and society”? Why should the majority of Christians go where American Protestantism wants to go?

15. Tickle predicts a movement toward:

… a system of ecclesial authority that waits upon the Spirit and rests in the interlacing lives of Bible-listening, Bible-honoring believers (153) [that "rewrites Christian theology" her words!] into something far more Jewish, more paradoxical, more narrative, and more mystical than anything the Church has had for the last seventeen or eighteen hundred years. (162)

Tell me – having thoroughly demolished sola scriptura (and I would partly agree with that – partly!) and gotten rid of the Bible in favor of how individuals sense the Holy Spirit (with which I almost entirely disagree) – how can one speak of people who are “Bible-listening, Bible-honoring”? She must be joking.

I am sorry but this book strike me as almost entirely boilerplate religious liberalism. And its goal is to make us all stop resisting the changes we see because they are inevitable. The Church must follow culture/society.

By the way – if you think I am too hard on this book I suggest you take a look at the last footnote to the last chapter (164-165). I wonder how many people get to see what can only be described as the most insane and heretical paragraph in the entire work. See – the Great Emergence is also a bi-millennial phenomenon. The beginning to Christ the emphasis is on “God the Father”. From Christ to now on “Christ the Son”. From now to around 4000 A.D. (or CE which Tickle prefers – and I prefer CE also except most people do not understand it) the “primacy in worship and in human affairs of God the Spirit”. And yes indeed 4000-5000 will be the “consummate and glorious union of all three parts of the Godhead within space/time”.

That is just nuts. A healthy doctrine – and yeah I know Tickle is hard on things like “dogma” and “doctrine” but tough cookies – of the Holy Trinity does not allow anyone to say that Christ (or the not-yet-incarnate Second Person of the Trinity who is the Son) was not really around until… But especially that there has not been an emphasis on the Holy Spirit until now? Is she kidding?!? Hello – book of Acts? Pauline theology? The last two thousand years have been two millennia of the Holy Spirit thank you very much. And no Orthodox theologian could ever take this seriously – nor should they.

Let me conclude with a brief postscript.

Another “emergent” writer is Brian McLaren. When I read a generous orthodoxy – sort of a theological manifesto(?) for emergent Christians – I thought “wow I agree with almost all of this, I guess I would identify myself with the emergent movement”. But if Phyllis Tickle truly represents and describes accurately the true nature and direction of “emergent Christianity” (and we can debate that – conservative readers take note!) then suddenly I find myself suddenly suspicious of Brian McLaren – what about his other books? And of other “emergent” pastors/teachers/preachers who until now I have enjoyed and appreciated.

If Tickle’s book is what Emergents are really about and where really they are going – then I cannot join them. Instead of selling me on the “emergence” Tickly has instead turned me against it.
Rating: 1 / 5

This is a book that was fascinating to me. So much of it was of strong interest, and it is so well researched and packed with complex analysis and theory, that I chose to read it a 2nd time for deeper understanding, and parts of it a third time!

The Great Emergence is a good summary of some of the broad strokes of Christian history, in the context of wider societal and technological change. It is a helpful summary of some of the trends in the last ½ century of the American Church. I do feel there are areas of lack of clarity and some speculation in analysis that I don’t agree with fully, or question. With all that, still, I am somewhat reluctant to be critical because there is so much of value in the book. But…

Before going there, however, I want to encourage everyone to read the book. It is an important one for every kind of Christian, especially those who are reform-minded or concerned about developments in church and culture. It is not an easy read, and it will stretch your vocabulary (a good thing in my “book”).

One of the more significant flaws I feel the book has is this: I could never quite get clear on just who Tickle mainly had in mind as part of the emergence. At times, it seems she is referring to virtually all Christians who are seeking new forms of Christian expression and/or belief, but at others, particularly in the last chapter, she does seem to narrow participants in the Great Emergence to those labeled either “emerging” or “emergent” specifically. This would be a much smaller set of people than she, at other places, seems to include as emerging (but without such a label put on either by themselves or others). So the apparently dual use of the terms, without explanation that I could find, made for some confusion.

Similarly, I could not get clear on what she means by the “gathering center.” It is certainly not a conceptual thing in her description, other than broadly Christian, as much as it involves values/style/orientation to authority and culture. Given who all she seems to include as part of that center, it seems the only thing these Christians all share is interest in and/or action toward a different approach than all that has gone before, as to Christian community and expression. But that would be true of individuals and groups in any part of her quadrant or later modified diagrams. She goes into detail about various reforms and the various “locations” (in relation to her diagrams) of Christian groups and orientations. But still, just how she means “center” seems to elude me.

I’d also like the book to give deeper answers, or at least probe deeper on how emerging Christians DO deal with questions of authority. She brings up repeatedly the need among emerging Christians (seemingly in the broadest sense of emerging) to find what constitutes authority. Yes, it may be in a lot of flux, but I tend to think more can be identified and explained about some coalescing new concepts of authority, beyond her few comments near the end that it is in some combination of Scripture and community.

There are two final areas I’ll comment on in which I felt Tickle left out things of significance that would have helped fill out the picture she was trying to paint. One is the issue of consciousness studies and how they specifically impact this emergence, this change in worldviews; and specifically impact cosmology of life and the soul/spirit. In fact, cosmology, whether of the physical universe or of spiritual beingness, was little touched on. One might appropriately let this slide except that this IS a big-picture book, and it seems fitting to go to the things that are the biggest of all.

Directly related to this, she did comment very briefly a couple times on the phenomenon of being “spiritual but not religious,” but seemed to connect it primarily with alienated Christians. People like Robert Fuller, in a book with that phrase as title, find data to indicate that is a self-designation or fair description for 15-20% of Americans. Only a portion of them, perhaps even a minority, consider themselves to have ever been Christian.

A similar oversight is having almost no discussion of how broad “New Age” concepts, Buddhism and other Eastern thought have indirectly, if not directly, impacted Christianity, and continue to, toward reform and a willingness to seek common ground spiritually with those outside specifically Christian categories and practices. In all these sources, as well as a sizable and growing group of religiously open scientists (including medical professionals and social scientists) who are often neither New Age/Eastern nor Christians, there is a particular, intense focus on learning about the nature of consciousness. I think Tickle may incorporate this under what she refers to as considering what it means to be human, but again it’s just thrown out with little elaboration.

The final omission (or under-coverage) I’ll mention is making only passing references to re-formation of doctrine/theology specifically. Only at the end does she merely mention the “…coming conflict between traditional Christian and emergence theology…” (p. 161). She does touch on a few of the aspects of what that does and will involve, but only ever-so-briefly. I realize her aim was an overview, but it did lead to the impression, for me, that she might not realize just how crucial a role theological understandings and formulations will continue to be.

I’ve done a relatively small amount of reading of noted “Emergents” (her “orthonomy” oriented members within the larger grouping of them and “emergings,” who are more “theonomy” focused). In that reading, along with material about them and the movement, my sense is that their underpinnings of authority and of specific theology are actually distinctly NOT Evangelical in any typical sense (while perhaps Dan Kimball and others as “emerging” ARE). However, many Emergent leaders seem to be reluctant to be cut off, or perceived as cut off from Evangelicalism. (Similarly, theological radicals like Pinnock or social/political ones like Campolo seem to want to stay “in the fold,” even when threatened with banning, shunning, or pressure to conform.)

The Emergents have no other “home” or mooring point and seem to resist getting into the position of starting a new sect or distinct “movement,” not attached at least loosely to conservative Protestant Christianity (or whatever Tickle’s “center” is, which she herself says originated primarily within the quadrant she labels “conservative”). I’d have loved to have seen Tickle jump into and discuss this issue in some depth…. Maybe some of you will do so, I hope.

A final point on theological underpinnings. Here I will speak primarily in relation to Brian McLaren, whose thinking I know better than other Emergent or emerging Christians, having read a few of his books, heard him speak and interact in a group setting, etc. He does seem to be perhaps the theologically most informed and sophisticated of the main leaders of both “wings” of the emerging movement. In what I have read of his work, plus a smattering here and there of related authors, I have not found what I think would be logical, suitable, and important: a serious look into what is sometimes called “the myth of beginnings” of Christianity.

It is somewhat related to and overlapping with the “quest for the historical Jesus,” which Tickle does speak about some. But in some regards, it is foundational to that very quest, and thus at least as important, perhaps more so in that the historical Jesus research itself has gone about as far as is productive, for now. It is also foundational to the points of emphasis of McLaren and others about the nature of the Kingdom and the core message and ethos of Jesus.

I realize this may not be clear or meaningful to some readers and I can’t take the space here to go into it other than to say that a good segment of biblical scholarship for a couple decades at least, has properly broadened its pursuits in an interdisciplinary manner, into probing for better understandings of the nature and formative, growth processes of the earliest groups of Jesus followers and how they ultimately became Jewish Christian groups, or started as mixed Jewish/Gentile groups (as via Paul, et al). The entire picture of what has guided Christian development theologically, and elements of the foundational assumptions orthodoxy still operates from, tends to be radically modified when an historically, sociologically, literarily focused study is made of what is often called “Christian origins.” If nothing else is, this is germane, in a vital way, to The Great Emergence. It’s time for both scholars and lay people to stop sticking their heads in the sand in relation to it. Tickle seems to have set things up to discuss it, but then missed the grand opportunity, perhaps out of ignorance regarding it.

Rating: 3 / 5