A generous orthodoxy?

[methodius]

For about 18 months now I have been puzzled by talk of the "emerging church". I discovered it through my Blogger profile, where I'd listed one of my interests as missiology, and clicked on it to see who else was interested in the topic (unfortunately that feature of Blogger no longer works, unlike LiveJournal). I found to my surprise that many

Comments

[thormonger]

I think it's largely a matter of being able to be "Orthodox" on their own terms, rather than the Church's. Several months ago, I had someone suggest that Angel and I try to find an "emergent church" as an "acceptable" compromise. It wouldn't be, as Angel hates the look and feel of Orthodoxy, and I would want to be under the authority of the Orthodox Church. I think especially now, it would grate on me more to be stuck in a pseudo-Orthodox church somewhere.

Emerging church and Orthodoxy

[methodius]

No, I didn't say that the emerging church movement was Orthodox, or even pseudo-Orthodox (that would suggest that they are trying to be Orthodox, which I'm sure most of them are not). Nor would I suggest that you try to find a home there rather than in Orthodoxy.

But it seems to me that many of the things that some people in the emerging church movement are looking for have been in Orthodoxy all along, and that what I heard Brian McLaren say last night was quite compatible with Orthodoxy. That doesn't mean that Brian McLaren is Orthodox either -- there might be many things he does or says that I would disagree with them. But what I heard him say last night was compatible with Orthodox theology, and so I think Orthodox Christians should be talking to the emerging church people.

[canonjohn]

I used McClaren's book (A Generous Orthodoxy) in one of my classes. The students did not respond very well to it...the generous impression was that McClaren was doing a "cafeteria" type thing...choosing what was appealing from a variety of traditions with little sense of coherence. My own sense is that people are hungry and are beginning to discover Christianity beyond fundamentalism. It will be interesting to see where this leads them.
John

Eclecticism

[methodius]

Yes, I think one of the characteristics of the "emerging church" movement is eclecticism, which I think is also a characteristic of the postmodernity that they want to relate to. Modernity rejected tradition, which was do fundamental to premodern society. Post modernity accepts tradition, but in an eclectic way. Some postmodernists talk of the importance of being "holistic", but in some respects eclecticism is the opposite of holism: holism is seeing that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, while eclecticism is an obsession with collecting as many parts as possible, magpie like, without seeing how they fit together.

I've written more about that in the final chapter of my thesis, which I posted here, Notes from underground: Orthodox mission in the 21st century, if you are interested.