Ultimate and Penultimate: The Day of the Lord and the Greater Hope

Back in December I was asked to teach a class at a local Church of Christ about the Greater Hope, the belief that all of humanity will, ultimately, be reconciled to God. 

At the start of the class I shared a bit of my story in regards to the Greater Hope. Like a lot of people, I was introduced to the Scottish author and pastor George MacDonald (1824-1905) through a deep dive into C.S. Lewis. MacDonald's Unspoken Sermons was my first exposure to the Greater Hope, and it proved decisive for me.

After my class a few attendees remained behind for some continued conversation. One of the issues we discussed, which was also raised in the class itself, was the motivational impact of the Greater Hope. This is a common concern. Specifically, if everyone, eventually, is reconciled to God doesn't that demotivate our evangelistic and missionary efforts? If everyone will be saved in the end, why express any concern about or devote any energy into reaching the lost? 

Also, doesn't the Greater Hope deflate our moral urgency? Might I, for example, choose to live a dissolute life in this world, banking on the knowledge that it'll all get sorted out after I die? Seems like a great bargain! I can have my cake and eat it to. 

Finally, what about justice for victims? Doesn't the Greater Hope diminish the tears of the oppressed by asserting that the perpetrators get blessed in the end? 

In response, one of the things to observe here is that, when we remove behavioral consequences from the Christian imagination, damnation for the lost and blessed reward for the saved, a lot of Christians struggle to make sense of things like gospel proclamation, mission, and righteousness. Crudely put, if no one is going to get punished then what's the point? 

As should be obvious, this is a very immature way to view the motivations that should be at work in mature Christian living. Sure, when we're children extrinsic consequences are necessary for moral development. But as we get older, our behavioral controls should become internalized as our motivations become less extrinsic (sticks and carrots) and more intrinsic, reflective of my values and identity. I don't avoid X because I fear getting caught and spanked (i.e., extrinsic motivation). I avoid X because X is incompatible with the person I want to become (i.e., intrinsic motivation). But here's the thing I want to point out: For some peculiar reason, Christians struggle to envision the spiritual life as being driven by intrinsic motivations. Once you remove the sticks and carrots many Christians become wholly confused. They cannot imagine life with God without a extrinsic reward/punishment system, and remain stuck with a Kindergarten vision of Christian formation and mission. 

That said, a legitimate point remains about motivation. If there truly were no consequences that would create a motivational vacuum. But a consequenceless future is not what the Greater Hope envisions, at least not as I envision it. The Bible is clear that all of humanity will be judged on the Day of the Lord. Our lives will be weighed in the balance. We all will face the Great Accounting. Judgment Day. The Great Assize. In the language of 1 Corinthians 3, on that Day "the fire will test the quality of each person’s work." Everyone faces the music.

In short, there will be consequences. 

Given this, here's how I sort out the relationship between Day of the Lord and the Greater Hope in light of human motivation. 

Our most pressing concern is God's eschatological judgment upon humanity. The Day of the Lord is our most proximate concern. This judgment is impinging upon our lives, hangs over us. In the language of John the Baptist, the axe is at the root. 

Because of this, the Day of the Lord--as our impinging, pressing, and most proximate concern--should dominate our consciousness and conversation. How we stand in relation to God's judgment is really the only thing we should be talking about. Right now, it's the thing that matters. Phrased differently, this is the season for prophetic speech: "Repent! Weep and wail! Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord!"

Now, what happens after the Day of the Lord? If the Day of the Lord is our proximate concern, what about our ultimate destiny? Looking past judgment, to the far horizon, that is the concern of the Greater Hope. Consequences are coming, but can wrath and rejection be God's final words to his beloved creation? The Greater Hope dares to declare that, ultimately, God will be Alpha and Omega for all of humanity. God is both our Origin and our Destiny.  

In short, the Greater Hope and the Day of the Lord relate to each other as ultimate (the last thing) to penultimate (the next to last thing). Knowing this, I think we can all agree that skipping to the end, jumping over the penultimate to get to the ultimate, can create some confusions and distortions. If you hop over the Day of the Lord to the Greater Hope this is sure going to sound like a Get Out of Jail Free card in the Monopoly game of life. However, you can't get to the ultimate without going through the penultimate. You can't skip a step. 

This is why some of the church fathers expressed concern about speaking too often and openly about the Greater Hope. Too much talk about the Happy Ending skips our most pressing, proximate concern, God's eschatological judgment upon my life and yours. Evil is at large in the world, and I contribute my share, and the wrath of God waxes hot. The tears of the oppressed have not gone unnoticed. This issue, the moral status of the world, is our most pressing concern. So, let's keep our eye on the ball.

Still, the human mind is inquisitive! Today has its demands, yes, but we wonder about tomorrow. Some of us look to the far horizon to ask question about our ultimate destiny, about what it means in the end that God will be "all in all" (1 Cor. 15.28), or about what it will look like when Christ "reconciles all things to himself" (Col. 1.20).  What ray of hope is shining through here? And for many of us, these sorts of questions about our ultimate destiny are critical and urgent inquiries. Faith seeks understanding! Consequently, there are times and places when we should discuss the Greater Hope. True, we're skipping an eschatological step here, and a legitimate worry can be expressed that we're ignoring some pressing moral and social issues to speculate about last things. I hear that concern, that too much focus upon the ultimate can diminish the urgency of the penultimate. Still, there is a time and a place for a discussion about the Greater Hope.

That said, are there many Christians who can handle this eschatological balancing in how they talk and think about last things? Probably not. But it is possible to keep the penultimate and the ultimate in their proper order and perspective while being contextually alert to when it is productive to talk about one or the other.   

Psalm 41

"Blessed is the one who is considerate of the poor"

The preferential option for the poor. If you've never heard of it, this is the central tenet of liberation theology from the Catholic tradition. The preferential option for the poor is the contention that God takes the side of the poor against the rich.

If you read the Bible cover to cover, the evidence for the preferential option is, in my estimation, overwhelming. And we find an example of it here in Psalm 41: "Blessed is the one who is considerate of the poor; the Lord will save him in a day of adversity." Our treatment of the poor determines the degree to which we can count upon the Lord's aid and favor. Our treatment of the poor determines our eschatological destiny. 


Jesus couldn't be any clearer.

On Curses and Condemnation: The Narrative Resolution of the Deuteronomic Plotline

A couple of months ago, in the comments to my series on Paul's gospel, I made a point about how to think about Paul's language concerning how we, in relation to the Law, come under curse and condemnation. I'd like to spotlight that point in this post.

A lot of us, especially progressive Christians, struggle with the language of curse, condemnation, and God's judgment/wrath in discussing salvation. All those negative words stack up and bring into view a retributive God. Resisting that vision, we ignore all this language in Scripture. In psychology there's something called "motivating forgetting." Seen among trauma victims, motivated forgetting involves blocking out and suppressing unwanted memories. A lot of progressive Christians display a type of motivated forgetting when it comes to the Bible, actively suppressing from consciousness that the Bible actually does speak of God's wrath, and that Jesus saved us from the curse with its associated condemnation. 

So, how are we think about all this?

The key is to pay attention to the story Paul is telling in his letters. When Paul describes the curse of the law he's calling attention to the covenant Israel made with God at Mount Sinai. In making that covenant with God, Israel agreed to suffer the consequences of disobedience. Here are those curses from Deuteronomy 28:
However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you:

You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.

Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed.

The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.

You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out....
It only gets worse from there if you want to read the rest of that chapter. 

As you know, Israel and Judah do fall into disobedience and the curses are enacted, culminating in the curse of exile:
Then the Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods—gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your ancestors have known. Among those nations you will find no repose, no resting place for the sole of your foot. There the Lord will give you an anxious mind, eyes weary with longing, and a despairing heart. You will live in constant suspense, filled with dread both night and day, never sure of your life. (Deut. 28.64-66)
We see all this play out 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles. And while the exiles return home in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, I believe N.T. Wright is correct that, when the New Testament opens, there remained the pervasive sense in Second Temple Judaism, in light of Roman occupation, that the exile still continued. 

In short, the Deuteronomic Curses remained in effect and unresolved. Israel's story was stuck.

Now, it is true that both Jesus and Paul shifted the conversation about the exile away from immanent political concerns, the Roman occupation specifically. Both Jesus and Paul spiritualize the Kingdom of God and envision emancipation as more eschatological than political. Not that Jesus and Paul evacuate the gospel of social and political import. This is simply the observation that, for both Jesus and Paul, the Roman occupation wasn't the pressing spiritual predicament. 

Still, from a narrative standpoint, the story of Israel, given her exilic predicament, needed to be resolved and carried forward. The Deuteronomic plotline demanded a resolution. And according to Paul, Jesus brings the Deuteronomic story to its climax and fulfillment. Jesus, as Israel's representative, assumes upon himself the Deuteronomic Curse. More, where Israel had failed, Jesus fulfills the righteous requirements of the Law thereby bringing into the story of Israel the Deuteronomic Blessings:
If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations on earth. All these blessings will come on you and accompany you if you obey the Lord your God:

You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.

The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.

Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed.

You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out... (Deut. 28.1-6)
Again, both Jesus and Paul shift these blessings into a spiritual and eschatological register. And yet, the point to be observed here is that, by bringing the Deuteronomic story to its conclusion, blessings now enter the story of Israel. We call these blessings "salvation."

In short, when we read the Bible we tend to read it narcissistically, believing that my particular sins bring me under my particular curse and that God is particularly sending me to hell. Me, me, me! Everything is about me! But this self-obsessed reading misunderstands Paul. Paul is telling a story. More specifically, he's trying to finish a story, to get a story unstuck. Paul's concerns about wrath, curse, judgment, and condemnation aren't about you. His concerns are covenantal and narrative. His concerns are about the story of Israel being stuck in the mud. Given this, read Paul narratively rather than narcissistically

To be sure, our particular story is caught up in the Greater Story, but the point of Paul declaring "there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" is that he's talking about a Story where condemnation and curse have been removed and replaced with blessings. In the end, it's the Story that is rescued. And we, for our particular part, get to join that Story and enjoy its benefits.

Why the Emerging Church Movement Failed: Part 5, Going Woke

This is my last post in this series. Again, do check out the Emerged podcast hosted by Tony Jones and Tripp Fuller, their oral history of the emerging church movement (webpage here, Apple podcast here, and Spotify here).

As the emerging church movement grew, many within the movement began to gravitate toward social justice concerns and activism. Issues of "justice" and "oppression" began to dominate. Liberationist readings of the Bible, taking a cue from Catholic liberation theology, were increasingly common, using Scripture to call out oppression and center the voices of victims.

As time went on, Twitter became more and more of a force. At the peak of emerging church conversation, in the mid-2000s, blogging was starting to take off, and while blog comment sections were fractious and unruly, they could be monitored and controlled by their hosts. After 2006, Twitter de-centralized the emerging church conversation. The discourse could no longer be controlled by the leaders of the movement. 

Trouble was brewing on this front. The leaders of the emerging church movement were largely white males. So when Twitter unleashed the social justice impulses that were beginning to dominate the movement, something predictable, in retrospect, happened: the emerging church began getting called out and canceled. 

From a social justice perspective, exemplified by the work of Rachel Held Evans (as a Millennial "second generation" member of the emerging church conversation), the movement in the mid-2000s was focused on gender justice in the church. Younger than the leaders of the original emerging church network, Rachel quickly became a social media phenomenon among those interested in reforming evangelicalism. Rachel began to demonstrate the power of Twitter in calling out and taking on leading evangelicals. Rachel's fights with Al Mohler, John Piper, Mark Driscoll, and Doug Wilson became legendary.  

Soon, however, emerging church voices began to be called out by people of color, even Rachel's as a white woman. And then, soon after that, by queer folks. Events in the culture pushed the conversation deeper into the social justice movement. Trayvon Martin was killed in 2012. The Obergefell ruling came down in 2015. #MeToo happened in 2017. The word "intersectionality" started showing up. Talk of "centering" POC voices and calls for white people to "check your privilege" became ubiquitous. Allies were told to stop talking, asked to listen, and to hand their platforms over to women of color and queer folk. Emerging church leaders began to describe themselves as "activists" in their bios. (They still do.) Largely white and male conference lineups were called out and cancelled. To this day, conferences hosted by voices once associated with the emerging church conversation reflect the impact of these years, when deconstruction fused with social media activism, featuring largely female, queer, and "spiritual but not religious" speaking lineups.

Basically, though we didn't have the word for it then, one of the reasons the emerging church movement failed is because it went woke.

In this, I'm merely being descriptive. Depending upon how you viewed the emerging church, then and now, going woke might be exactly what needed to happen. Certain voices needed to get marginalized and others centered. Conversely, you might read what happened as another sad example of social justice warriors turning the knives on their own. For example, in 2015 I described what I called the "purity culture" of progressive Christianity, observations later echoed about the "new puritanism" exemplified in callout and cancel culture. During this season, white emerging church voices were increasingly tagged as "problematic." For example, I was a progressive ally and was called "satan" on Twitter. Not from my right, but from my left

It was a disorienting time. After my progressive purity culture post, Rachel and I had some conversations about water she was taking on from her left. Rachel was deeply embroiled in her fight with the evangelical establishment over patriarchal gender roles. She was surprised to suddenly find herself being criticized from her left for being a white women and for ignoring the LGBTQ community. Rachel quickly found her footing in this rapidly shifting landscape to became a better ally in the estimation of many of her POC and queer critics.

But how did going woke contribute to the failure of the emerging church? In three ways.

First, when the issues switched from gender roles to sexuality a split emerged within the emerging church. Many of the churches sympathetic to the emerging church were willing to make moves toward egalitarianism, but were not quite ready to jump to the full inclusion of LGBTQ folks. Pastors who had successfully led their evangelical churches into more inclusive views concerning gender roles discovered that their churches weren't quite ready for the LGBTQ conversation. Facing this resistance, many pastors went into a holding pattern and didn't force the issue. Other pastors felt called to leave their churches. Other pastors pushed and were fired. Some churches split.

A couple of things need to be said here. First, the conversation about sexuality took nearly everyone by surprise, not just the emerging church. Many forget that, in 2008, Barack Obama couldn't publicly endorse gay marriage. But within the span of a few years, traditional and mainstream views on sex and marriage had become equated with hate and bigotry, a sin on par with racism. Unaffiliated with local churches and denominational structures, authors and social media voices in the emerging church movement could keep pace with the rapidly changing moral landscape to take their isolated stands on their social media platforms. The only voice that mattered was their own. Churches, however, change more slowly, and the rapid moral flip-flop left many faith communities behind. 

The second thing to note here is that this wasn't (and isn't) a problem with evangelicalism. For example, the issue of LGBTQ inclusion has cracked both the United Methodist and the global Anglican communions. It also appears to be pushing the Catholic church to the edge of schism. So, to say that LGBTQ issues cracked the emerging church conversation shouldn't be surprising. LGBTQ issues cracked global Christianity.  

The second way going woke caused the emerging church to fail was that, when social justice Twitter pushed the white male leadership of the emerging church off the stage, many of the voices who filled the void were not associated with the vision and networks that started the movement. When the voices of the early emergent church conversation were marginalized for being too white and too male, the movement lost both its history and forward momentum. In many ways, the emergent church faded to gave way to what we now call "progressive Christianity," with its emphasis on woke, social justice activism. People who once labeled themselves as "emergent" now grab labels like "progressive" or "activist." 

The final way becoming woke caused the emerging church movement to fail has to do with what I describe as "the mystical-to-moral shift" in Hunting Magic Eels. Specifically, when Christianity becomes reduced to social justice activism then politics, rather than God, becomes the binding agent of the community. Recall, the root of the word "religion" means "to bind." Religion is what binds a group together. Among the progressive Christian crowd, social justice politics has become the new religion, the new faith that binds the group together. Churches are replaced with spiritual seekers who are social justice warriors.

For example, take a look at any progressive Christian conference. The table is open to any spiritual seeker, from pagan to Christian to atheist, as long as you share the social justice faith. "All are welcome" the conference invites, but you better not show up wearing a MAGA hat. Simply put, among progressive Christians social justice is required but God is optional

And again, I'm just being descriptive here. You might feel that this history and trajectory is exactly what should have happened to the emerging church, and what must continue to happen to Christianity going forward. But you also might lament how social justice impulses, once again, caused people to cannibalize their own given the inexorable logic of its own purity culture. Personally, as someone who now describes themselves as a "post-progressive Christian," I work to retain a social justice emphasis, supported by a liberationist hermeneutic, while resisting the impulse to reduce God, church, salvation, and faith to political activism. This seems obvious to me, but you'd be surprised to find how rare this impulse is and how difficult it can be to maintain this balance in a faith community.

But no matter how you view what happened to the emerging church, as either good or bad, as the necessary and proper marginalization of white male voices or the failure to join together in centering social justices concerns in evangelical spaces, when those attracted to the emerging church embraced social justice as a new religion, a faith defined by progressive politics and activism, both God and the church were quickly left behind. 

Why the Emerging Church Movement Failed: Part 4, Theology That Got a Little Too Weird

Beyond deconstruction, one of the other reasons the emerging church movement failed, in my estimation, was that the emerging church conversation eventually gravitated, after it became very online, toward unconventional theological perspectives that impaired wider acceptance, especially among evangelical churches. 

At the time, these theological perspectives were exciting and mind-blowing for many people. Seismic, even. But the ideas tended to be esoteric and theory-heavy, appealing mainly to theological nerds with graduate degrees. At the time, the epithet "theobro" was leveled at this online demographic, though this tag could be leveled at the "young, restless and reformed" crew as much as at the emerging church crowd. A "theobro" was generally a white guy with a graduate degree who liked to argue about theology on social media. From the mid-2000s on, as the emerging church began showing up in online spaces, there were a lot of theobros debating online. I count myself among this group, given how much I enjoyed arguing about theology after I had launched my own blog.

Let me give two examples of unconventional theological positions that were debated back then, positions which, I think, got in the way of the movement taking root in more churches. These were Girardian views of the atonement and process theology.

To start, the atonement was debated a lot during the emerging church conversation, especially after blogging came on the scene. I've described these online conflicts as "the atonement wars." The doctrine under the gun was penal substitutionary atonement. The emerging church made penal substitutionary atonement famous. Or, rather, infamous. The emerging church made penal substitutionary atonement "a thing."

There were two related concerns. First, there was the whole "sinners in the hands of an angry God" framing of atonement, the wrath of God needing to be "satisfied." Second, there was the notion that God required blood--the actual killing of a human being--to be "satisfied." This matrix of ideas proved so troublesome, problematic, and toxic to the deconstructing evangelicals in the emerging church that they began searching for what are called "non-violent" views of the atonement, where the violence we see in the crucifixion of Jesus isn't due to the actions of God. Two views rose to prominence at the time, Christus Victor and RenƩ Girard's scapegoat theory. Christus Victor blamed Satan for the death of Jesus. RenƩ Girard's scapegoat theory blamed human beings.

You might not have heard of RenƩ Girard. Like the emerging church, Girard's name has slipped from view. And I think the reason for that is that Girard's view of the atonement became the regulating theory of the atonement for many within the emerging church movement. Consequently, when the emerging church vanished so did Girard's scapegoat theory. They rose and fell together.

In retrospect, it is not hard to see why. For many within the emerging church, Girard's view of the atonement was a life-altering, Copernican revolution. The impact of Girard's ideas was so transformative a zealous, cult-like intensity swirled around him and his ideas. Among the true-believers, Girard had cracked the code. Here was the Master Idea that revealed all knowledge. Girard's theory was the theological Rosetta Stone that unlocked the secret meanings of the Bible, and especially the death of Jesus.

And yet, herein lurked a problem.

Let me say that I'm a huge fan of RenĆ© Girard. I was an early adopter. In the first years of this blog I did a series on Mark Heim's book Saved from Sacrifice, still one of the best introductions to a Girardian reading of the Bible. I loved, and still love, James Alison's Girardian books, like Raising Abel. I used Girard in my first book, Unclean, and, as a consequence, got invited to speak at Girardian conferences. 

And yet, in trying to share these ideas with my own church, I quickly bumped into a problem. You have to do a lot of explaining to get the ideas across. And I do mean a lot of explaining. Girard's ideas are very theory-heavy. Personally, I think Girard is worth the trip, but most people don't like being told that they need to listen to a vey long and speculative theological lecture before they can "really understand" the crucifixion of Jesus. Plus, it strikes people as wildly implausible that, for almost 2,000 years, the church fundamentally misunderstood the death of Jesus until some French dude cracked the code in the 1970s. 

Here's my point. When Girard's scapegoat theory became a dominant, if not the dominant, view of the atonement among the emerging church crowd, the movement stubbed its theological toe, limiting its ability to communicate the gospel to normal, everyday folk. No one wants to be told that you need to learn about "memetic desire" to properly understand Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. 

Process theology is another example of some of theology that began to influence the emerging church conversation.

For example, if you know Tripp Fuller and his popular podcast Homebrewed Christianity, the podcast that hosted so much of the emerging church conversation once blogging and podcasting became a thing, you also know that Tripp is a proponent of process theology, and that the podcasts, titles, and events associated with Homebrewed Christianity promote process theology. 

As I briefly mentioned in Part 1, many within the emerging church were dealing with issues of theodicy. The problem of evil was the most acute theological problem to solve, the trigger of so much deconstruction. Consequently, many were attracted to open, relational, and process perspectives concerning God's "omnipotence." By rethinking God's "power," responsibility for the pain and suffering of the world could be shifted away from God. This shift lessens the theological burden of "the problem of evil" that weighed, and still weighs, so heavily upon so many.

Open, relational, and process perspectives are rich and fascinating theological resources--I love them--especially in conversations about theodicy. For many, these perspectives are literally faith-saving, the only way they can view God's power and remain a Christian. So, in my estimation, good work is being done here. And yet, we encounter a problem similar to the one we observed with Girardian scapegoat theology. Open, relational, and process perspectives are also theory-heavy. The metaphysical fireworks can be exciting, but they get in the way of broad appeal. Plus, there's the nagging issue of heresy. 

Listen, I think people have got to do what they got to do, theologically speaking, to hang on to faith. And if reaching for some heterodox ideas keeps you in the orbit of Jesus Christ, well, there are worse fates in life. As a psychologist, I think theology has as much to do with coping as with creedal orthodoxy. Sometimes you have to rearrange your mental furniture to make sense of the world, and over-policing these re-configurations in the name of "correct doctrine" often betrays a pastoral cluelessness. Plus, God isn't going to send anyone to hell for having a few squirrelly ideas. 

Also, many of the open, relational and process thinkers insist that their views are creedally orthodox, and work to demonstrate this. But this effort only goes to make my point: If your views are always fighting skirmishes to beat back the charge of heresy, your view isn't going to become mainstream. Too much theological headwind. 

There were other theological trends within the emerging church movement we could also highlight. We could talk, for example, about social trinitarianism and the influence of JĆ¼rgen Moltmann, or the popularity of non-dualistic thinking from people like Richard Rohr. (For example, we could do an autopsy of how Michael Gunger took the very popular and emergent-adjacent podcast The Liturgists down the non-dualistic, spiritual-not-religious path.) But our examples of Girardian atonement theory and process theology suffice to make the point. One of the reasons, albeit likely a small one, the emerging church movement failed, in my estimation, was due to the unconventional and esoteric theology that came to influence the movement. From the mid-2000s on, a lot of the foment and energy of the emerging church conversation involved sharing, propagating, and debating these theological ideas online. And while that conversation snapped, crackled and popped among a certain demographic, these debates were very niche and never really had a chance of winning over large numbers of regular folk in the pews, especially normal evangelical folks. 

Simply put, the emerging church failed because much of theology that came to dominate the conversation got a little too weird. 

As a series reminder, do check out the Emerged podcast hosted by Tony Jones and Tripp Fuller, their oral history of the emerging church movement (webpage here, Apple podcast here, and Spotify here).

Why the Emerging Church Movement Failed: Part 3, When Evangelism Became Deconstruction

As a series reminder, do check out the Emerged podcast hosted by Tony Jones and Tripp Fuller, their oral history of the emerging church movement (webpage here, Apple podcast here, and Spotify here).

So, why did the emerging church movement struggle to establish churches? Why did it become a largely online and conference-centric movement only to disappear into the ether? 

What happened to the church in the emerging church?

To be fair, some churches were planted and continue to thrive. And as I pointed out in the first post, many evangelical churches were shaped by the emerging church movement and continue to reflect its enduring legacy. So, the emerging church movement didn't vanish without leaving any ecclesial trace. 

Still, beyond these lingering impacts, the "emerging church" largely vanished. Why?

Recall, one of the central features of the emerging church movement was its engagement with post-modernity. At the start of the movement, this engagement had an evangelistic and missional thrust: How can we reach our post-modern culture where suspicions of meta-narratives and institutional authority are prevalent? Simply put: How do we evangelize in a post-modern culture?

However, very quickly it became apparent that many of the leaders within the emerging church weren't really thinking about evangelizing a post-modern culture but were, instead, proclaiming a post-modern Christianity. An example here would be the trajectory of the work of Peter Rollins. At the start, Peter's work in his book How (Not) to Speak of God was a very helpful intervention in helping us talk and think about God in a post-modern context. (I loved that book.) But as Peter's work progressed deeper into Christian a/theism it became what he called, "pyrotheology," a call for the wholesale deconstruction and demolition of Christian faith. A "burn the house down" approach to faith. All metaphysical convictions had to be jettisoned.  

As I described in Part 1, the emerging church conversation began by trying to help GenX and Millennial Christins live with doubt, and even leverage those doubts toward good outcomes. But "learning to live with doubt" eventually morphed into what we today call "deconstruction," the active tearing down of previously held convictions and beliefs.

To be sure, as I've shared many times, deconstruction is a healthy and vital process in our faith development. We all have to leave behind beliefs which are broken, unhealthy, or immature. But it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that it's very hard to plant and grow thriving churches around a bunch of people who are deconstructing. This isn't rocket science. There has to be some positive belief and conviction at the heart of your church. A church built upon negation isn't going to be around very long. Feel free to evangelize people into nothingness. Go ahead and burn it all down. But while people might buy books or pay money to come to a conference centered on deconstruction, as general rule people don't show up on Sunday mornings to worship a void.

In hindsight, the outcome was predictable. When evangelism was replaced with deconstruction within the emerging church movement any attempted ecclesiology was going to fail. You can't build churches upon deconstruction. 

What deconstruction can and did create were spiritual seekers. In fact, many leaders and followers of the emerging church movement would today be much more comfortable describing themselves as a "spiritual seeker" than as a Christian. But when "Christians" became "spiritual seekers" nothing interesting or distinctive was going to be left of the movement. Spiritual seekers are dime a dozen. 

So, that's another part of why the emerging church movement failed. The emerging church deconstructed itself out of existence to dissipate into the haze of our "spiritual but not religious" culture.

Psalm 40

"I delight to do your will"

There's a squabble between the Psalms and the book of Leviticus. You see the fight break out here in Psalm 40: "You do not ask for a whole burnt offering or a sin offering." Really? Is that so? Then what is the book of Leviticus all about?

This theme comes up repeatedly in the Psalms, this marginalizing, if not outright dismissal, of the sacrificial system detailed in Leviticus. 

The historical backdrop here is Israel's experience of exile. How was Israel to be faithful to Torah without the temple? Either because it was far away or had been destroyed? As we know, during the exile the synagogue system emerged to step into the void left by the loss of the temple. Given this, we can see how a shift of emphasis away from the rites and rituals of Leviticus would emerge. 

But this historical context noted, the deeper concern of the Psalms, the timeless truth that was true even when temple existed, concerns the inner life of the person, our heart. Rites and rituals describe external behaviors, but they fail to capture the inner drama of our relationship to God. True devotion isn't dutiful compliance to a list of regulations. True devotion is an open, responsive, and faithful heart. Consequently, throughout the Old Testament, Israel's failures are blamed upon stoney, calloused, hard, and unresponsive hearts. What God wants is a heart that sings "I delight to do your will." And the key word here is "delight," the joy and pleasure of life with God. 

Why the Emerging Church Movement Failed: Part 2, Searching for Sunday

As Tony Jones and Tripp Fuller share in the Emerged podcast, their oral history of the emerging church movement, the movement began among church leaders and church planters. So, initially at least, the emerging church movement was focused upon churches. Churches associated with the movement, like Doug Pagitt's Solomon's Porch, were planted. And yet, as time went on, a broad, church-based network never really emerged. 

I mentioned in the last post how the peak of the emerging church conversation coincided with the golden age of blogging, the early to mid-2000s. (Twitter would show up in 2006 and do its part to fracture the movement, but more on that later in this series.) During these years, much of the energy associated with the emerging church conversation was taking place on social media rather than in church pews. So much so, that, in retrospect, I would argue that the emerging church movement eventually became a social media phenomenon. To be sure, an influential and impactful social media phenomenon, but a social media phenomenon nonetheless. 

For the first time in human history, people could connect and talk to each other about theological ideas online. This allowed Christians with minority viewpoints within their churches and faith traditions to find each other. That experience was thrilling. People were "connecting" online, and all that "connecting" was experienced as a movement. Especially when all these people would gather together under the same roof for a conference. But at the end of the day, those few hundred people at the conference, when they went back to their churches, remained in the minority. In short, while many people felt "seen" by the emerging church conversation, theological misfits finding an online community, the movement never captured entire churches at scale. In short, one of the reasons the emerging church failed was ecclesiological: the movement became overly dependent upon social media, books, conferences, and festivals.  

Consider, as one example, how many of the early leaders in the emerging church conversation, who were pastors, left their churches to become authors and conference speakers. As a result, the emerging church movement became increasingly focused upon individual voices, many of whom were no longer connected to a local church. Very little of the ferment and energy of the emerging church conversation that was taking place online was making its way into local churches. The metrics of growth were books sales, online followers, speaking gigs, and conference attendees. Actual churches were left behind.

Now, why did this happen? Why did the emerging church get pushed out of the pews and onto social media?

Well, to be fair to some of those pastors who left their churches to become public speakers and authors, many were pushed out of their churches. And many church members who identified with the movement eventually felt called or impelled to leave their evangelical churches. 

Recall, the emerging church was largely an evangelical phenomenon. And in the early years of the movement the emerging church could lean upon evangelical support networks and structures. At the start, as I shared in the last post, the emerging church movement presented itself as a missiological movement, as an evangelical attempt to reach a post-modern culture. As long as the emerging church kept its focus upon cultural analysis--how to evangelize GenXers and Millennials--it was a welcome and necessary conversation among evangelicals. If the kids wanted smells and bells, well, let's do that. If they wanted a more relevant and authentic Christian experience, let's give them that. And if they needed to carry more doubt and uncertainty, let's teach them to embrace their questions. The goal seemed to be evangelistic: Let's figure out a way to reach this post-modern culture. Books like Blue Like Jazz and Velvet Elvis, which exemplified this approach, became huge best-sellers. 

Soon, however, leaders within the emerging church movement began to endorse (or explore) doctrinal positions which ran afoul of evangelical orthodoxy. Rob Bell got farewelled for publishing Love Wins, questioning beliefs about hell. Rachel Held Evans fired her shot with A Year of Biblical Womanhood, pushing for egalitarian gender roles in evangelical churches. Soon, LGBTQ issues would become the focus. Evangelicalism Inc. circled the wagons and expelled the heretics. Suddenly, the structures and networks of evangelical support dried up. And without a robust network of churches to fall back on, the emerging church got pushed online. Pastors became authors and speakers. And while conferences could encourage the faithful, a conference, which is at root a money-making endeavor, isn't a church. 

(Plus, as we'll see, those conference lineups started getting called out and canceled once Twitter became weaponized.)

Without churches of their own, the emerging church movement fractured and stalled. Some left churches altogether. "Emerging" became "ex-evangelical." Some sought a home in the mainline. Some tried to start their own churches. Many of these emerging church plants, however, stumbled and failed. Read Rachel Held Evans' evocative Searching for Sunday for one such story about how all this looked.

Basically, the emerging church failed because it failed ecclesiologically. It never was able to establish a broad network of churches after support from the evangelical establishment evaporated. But all of this raises a question. Why did the emerging church movement struggle so much in establishing churches of its own? Why were so many in the emerging church movement left wandering and adrift "searching for Sunday"? 

We'll turn to that issue next. 

And do check out the Emerged podcast hosted by Tony Jones and Tripp Fuller, their oral history of the emerging church movement (webpage here, Apple podcast here, and Spotify here).

Why the Emerging Church Movement Failed: Part 1, What Was the Emerging Church?

I've been following the Emerged podcast hosted by Tony Jones and Tripp Fuller (webpage here, Apple podcast here, and Spotify here). For those who lived through the years of the emerging church movement (mid-1990s to around 2010 or so) the podcast is a very enjoyable and nostalgic listen. 

For those who remember, witnessed, or participated in (directly or tangentially) the emerging church movement, those were heady, exciting days, which coincided with the golden age of blogging and the dawn of Twitter. Everyday, it seemed, something was going on in the ferment of the emerging church conversation. And yet, today none of my students have heard of the emerging church. They've never read Blue Like Jazz or Velvet Elvis. They've never heard of Brian McLaren, Rachel Held Evans, or Phyllis Tickle. Here's how the Emerged podcast sets up their oral history:

For a decade at the beginning of the 21st century, a small group of pastors, missionaries, and theologians set out to change the church. They were mostly GenXers, mostly men, mostly white, mostly evangelical. They planted churches and wrote books and ran conferences. They were quoted in the New York Times and Time Magazine, and they landed on the cover of Christianity Today and the Christian Century.

And then, almost as quickly as it appeared, the emerging church movement disappeared.
What was the emerging church? And where did it go?

If you have no idea what the emerging church movement is or was, you might want to peruse the Emerged podcast website where they have a helpful timeline along with representative books. And, obviously, listen to the podcast itself. But here I will share a few a few impressionistic descriptions to try to catch everyone up.

As I viewed it, the emerging church was a reform movement within evangelicalism that had epistemic, liturgical, and aesthetic aspects. 

Epistemically, the emerging church was an attempt to engage with post-modernism. An early example of this was Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christian, published in 2001. With the demise of meta-narratives, many GenXers were struggling with the positivistic faith claims of their evangelical heritage. Some wanted to embrace science while still holding onto the Bible (see Rachel Held Evans' first memoir Evolving in Monkey Town, retitled as Faith Unraveled). 

Many were also struggling with doctrinal positions held by many evangelical churches. Doctrines such as penal substitutionary atonement, double predestination, eternal conscious torment, and gender complementarianism were debated everyday online. (Debates about LGTBQ folks would emerge later.) Many also wanted to connect their faith to social justice issues and started exploring things like liberation theology. A lot of people were struggling with theodicy and were looking at things like open theism or process theology. But one of the biggest issues, given the influence of post-modernism, was how to deal with doubt in the faith journey. If certainty, via an infallible and inerrant meta-narrative, was denied us, could we hold our convictions as Christians with more openness and epistemic humility? Could doubt actually be a good thing, a epistemic virtue, in the lives of Christians? 

In short, while my students haven't heard of the emerging church, they have heard of "deconstruction." And in many ways, the emerging church, given its engagement with post-modernity, put "deconstruction" on the map. In this regard, the epistemic influence of the emerging church remains very much with us. 

Liturgically, many in the emerging church movement experienced a thinness in evangelical worship and spiritual formation. Sensing the richness available within the liturgical traditions, the emerging church started reaching for liturgy, the liturgical calendar, and spiritual practices. At the time, people called this "smells and bells." Evangelicals started celebrating Advent and Lent. They lit candles and hung icons. They embraced contemplative prayer and walked labyrinths. As with "deconstruction," we can still see here the continuing influence of the emerging church. If you're an evangelical and you celebrate Ash Wednesday or practice contemplative prayer, much of that is due to the emerging church blending evangelicalism with liturgical traditions.

Lastly, there was an aesthetic component. Wanting to look and sound more "relevant" and "authentic," in contrast with their Boomer parents, GenX pastors started wearing skinny jeans and sporting tattoos. Pews were replaced with couches. Churches started adopting a coffee shop vibe. Drinking alcohol, historically taboo in evangelical spaces, became de rigueur. Talking theology over beers was very emerging church.

And, once again, we can see the influence of the emerging church movement here. While pastors wearing skinny jeans became a joke, pastors do now dress much more informally. Many churches still embrace a coffee-shop aesthetic and vibe. Drinking alcohol is much more accepted. 

This tour of the emerging church movement is very selective and isn't intended to be comprehensive. But I've highlighted what I took to be the epistemic, liturgical and aesthetic aspects of the emerging church movement to show how, even if, like my students, you've never heard of the movement you've likely witnessed or experienced some of its impact and legacy. Not to say all these developments were wholly due to the emerging church, but the movement definitely contributed to these trends.

Still, that brings us to our second question. Where did the emerging church movement go? Why did the emerging church disappear so quickly? 

In the coming posts I'll share my thoughts about why the emerging church movement failed.

"God is...": Part 3, God is Love

"God is love."

For my part, this is the great claim of the Christian faith. "God is love" is the confession, despite the shipwreck that is the church, that keeps me on the team. These three words define my faith.

This is a claim--love not as an adjective of Divinity but Divinity itself--that is distinctive to Christianity among world religions up to the modern age. And no faith developed after Christianity can fail to reckon with its revolutionary vision. As Tom Holland has shown in his book Dominion, the Christian message about the centrality of love has wholly unmade and reshaped the world. Due to Christianity, love is both the moral and existential reference point of human life. For both theist and atheist, love is what makes a good and meaningful life.

The discussion of love in 1 John is rich. Love is ontology ("God is love"), Christology ("This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son"), epistemology ("The one who loves knows God"), grace ("We love because he first loved us"), and moral vision ("Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister").

And also a lot of mysticism!
"Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God."
 
"Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them."
Knowing God. Living in God. God living in us. Love creates this mystical union and life.

"God Is...": Part 2, God is Light

One of the most astonishing passages in the New Testament, in my estimation, comes from 1 John 1:5: 

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light, and there is absolutely no darkness in him.

Here's why I think this passage is so surprising. Ask any Christian about the content of the gospel, the message at the heart of the Good News, and I expect no one responds with "God is light." And yet, that's how 1 John summarizes the content of Jesus' message ("the message we heard from him"): "God is light." 

Jesus comes to us in the Incarnation with a message, to tell us that God is light.

That's crazy, mystical stuff.

And I'm not just cherry picking a single verse. This contrast between light and darkness is one of the main images in the Johannine texts. Some selective passages from the Gospel of John:

In him was life, and that life was the light of men. That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it.

"This is the judgment: The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil."

“I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows me will never walk in the darkness but will have the light of life.”

"I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me would not remain in darkness."
As I noted above, 1 John 1:5 is a slight modification of this theme. In the gospel of John, Jesus is the light. In 1 John we read that Jesus' message about God was that "God is light."

What is the import of the message that "God is light"? I'll confess: I think about "God is light" a lot. In contemplative prayer, I mainly see and experience God as light. I don't think the primary meaning here is moral, though there are moral implications. I think the meaning of "God is light" is primarily metaphysical and concerns the nature of God. 

Of course, we need to avoid literalism here. As the mystical tradition claims, God is the "Uncreated Light." So our experience of created light is only analogically related to God. As the psalmist says of God, "In your Light we see light." 

But again, what does this mean? We just have, in our experience of light, a cloud of associations. Brilliance. Radiance. Illumination. Luminosity. Clarity. But what might any of these associations mean in relation to God's nature and being? That is a question I ponder a lot.

Regardless, 1 John 1:5 is a startling, mystical claim. Jesus' message was "God is light."

Psalm 39

"O Lord, make me know my end
and what is the measure of my days;
let me know how fleeting I am!"

Much of Psalm 39 echos Ecclesiastes. In verse 11 of the poem we even hear the word "hebel," which is so central to the thoughts of Qoheleth: "every human being is only a vapor [hebel]."

Human life is vaporous and fleeting. And reflecting on this fact, according to Scripture, is the path to wisdom. 

Why?

Lots can be said here, but I think one of those things is that it is important to know exactly what you are. We can be self-forgetful, even delusional, in our perceptions of ourselves. We can forget what we are. Or think we are something different from what we are.

And what are we? We are creatures. We are haunted by finitude. We don't have unlimited energy or capacity. We don't have unlimited time. We have needs. We are vulnerable to damage, harm, injury, death and disease. We are not bulletproof. We are fragile and breakable. We come up against our limits. We cannot hold ourselves in existence.

Knowing this about yourself, knowing what you are, creates capacities. Capacities for self-care and self-compassion. Compassion, also, for others. Knowing you're a creature, that life is fleeting, also creates capacities for investment and intentionality. Each day is precious, so lean in and be present. 

Knowing you are a creature also means understanding that loss and grief are the shadows cast by joy and love. Creatures know they walk this dappled path. 

And lastly, knowing you are a creature means embracing your dependency. As creatures, we are not the source of our own being. We are held in our Creator's hands. The foolish forget this, or delusionally deny it. The wise walk humbly with their God.

"God Is...": Part 1, God is Spirit

There are three "God is..." statements in the Johannine corpus, the Gospel of John and the epistles 1, 2, and 3 John.

God is spirit.

God is light.

God is love.

Spirit, light, and love. These are some pretty deep and mystical confessions. And it's not surprising these statements are found in the Johannine texts, given their distinctive spirituality. 

The claim that God is spirit, pneuma, comes from the Gospel of John, in Jesus' conversation with the Samaritan woman. The woman asks Jesus, "Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” In response, Jesus says that a time is coming where "you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem" because "God is spirit." Consequently, the true worshippers of God will worship God "in spirit and truth." 

The mystical notion here is that God can't be physically located, neither found here or there, on this mountain or that mountain. This seems rudimentary to us, but it would have been quite the revelation for peoples whose worship of the gods was tied to physical locations. A transcending of paganism is taking place here. We take it as a truism that God is omnipresent, at large in the world. But this would have been a big paradigm shift for peoples whose cultic practices associated the worship of God or the gods with temples and shrines.

Even more, there is a wildness, unpredictability, and uncontrollability about this new reality. Just a chapter earlier in John, in describing those who have been "born of the spirit," Jesus says, "The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the spirit." This mystical birth--being "born again" in the spirit--extracts the spiritual life from institutional and cultic control. Nicodemus, who represents the ruling Jewish elites, has difficulty imagining how the spirit moves--like the invisible force of the wind--beyond the known and established boundaries demarcating the activity of God.

To be sure, all this is catnip for our "spiritual but not religious" world. And yet, as Bible scholars all know, and will tell you, the Johannine texts are among the most mystical and spiritual texts in the New Testament, even proto-Gnostic. I think this mystical aspect remains important to remember as the institutional forces that seek to tame, corral, control, delimit, capture, and localize God remain at work in the world. One is put in mind of Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor. Yes, there are temptations to a "spiritual but not religious" posture. But religion itself has its own temptations, abuses, and lusts for control. 

Contemplative Elitism: Part 3, Enlightenment is Not Salvation

New readers might think from this series that I don't practice contemplative prayer or engage with other spiritual disciplines. But I do! I love and embrace the contemplative Christian tradition. I wrote a whole chapter about the riches of the contemplative tradition in Hunting Magic Eels. And I wholly agree with Karl Rahner's belief: "The devout Christian of the future will either be a ‘mystic’—someone who has ‘experienced something’—or will cease to be anything at all."

Given this, one might wonder why I'm poking at contemplation within Christianity. Well, for my own benefit. I'm monitoring temptations and concerns in my own spiritual walk as I engage with contemplation and mysticism.

Here has been my biggest concern about contemplative practices within Christianity: Enlightenment is not salvation.

Let me share a story to illustrate this.

As you know, I'm a prison chaplain. Related to this, it was once shared with me how a popular contemplative author and teacher struggled, by his own admission, to get a message about "non-dualistic thinking" across to prison audiences. Inside prisons the thinking was too "dualistic," in his experience, too black and white for the message. Perhaps this was due to a lack of formal education among the incarcerated, or some issue related to cognitive styles. But whatever the issue, prison populations weren't "getting it." 

When I heard this story a lot of my personal concerns about "contemplative elitism" crystalized and came into focus. Simply put, if salvation is reaching some sort of contemplative enlightenment, like embracing non-dualistic thinking, then the men I work with in prison are left behind, not capable enough (in the estimation of the non-dualistic teacher) to ascend the mystical ladder toward God. 

I have similar concerns with things like Spiral Dynamics, which is faddish in some Christian circles, the theory that human thought is evolving and transcending primitive modes of thinking. In this view, dualistic thinking is rudimentary and primitive, caveman thinking, and non-dualistic thinking is advanced, sophisticated, and mature thinking. And here's the thing, there really are huge problems with dualistic thinking. Spiritually, morally, and psychologically. People do get stuck in rigid, dichotomous binaries in viewing themselves, the world, and God. And yet, I squirm to think that achieving or reaching some stage of superior cognition is the ultimate goal of the Christian faith. Because enlightenment, as I said, isn't salvation.

What I mean is that salvation, in the Christian imagination, isn't the result of human striving and effort, not even contemplative effort. Salvation isn't a cognitive or contemplative accomplishment, some "breakthrough" we make after a long struggle and deep soul work. Salvation isn't our achievement. 

This is my deep worry about contemplation, in my own life, how its pursuit can smuggle in its own version of a "works-based" righteousness, some path that we have to climb upward toward God as an accomplishment. 

To be sure, contemplative practices and spiritual disciplines are vital for spiritual formation, deepening the virtues, maturing faith, and sanctification. But if we're not careful--well, if I'm not careful, so I'll speak for myself here--we can be tempted to think that salvation is a form of enlightenment open only to the few, to a spiritually enlightened elite. 

So, yes, let's engage with contemplation. Please don't hear me saying otherwise. But let's not be tempted to think that it is our job to contemplatively climb to toward God when it is God, in Christ, who came down to us, to the dualistic and non-dualistic thinkers alike.