If you read the Cloud of Unknowing, "cloud" is a metaphor for what veils God from direct access to human rationality. Makeesha offers a comment to this post regarding the apparent fizzling out of Emergent Village and perhaps even the somewhat abstract emergent conversation as a form of Christianity. Some compared Emergent to the Reformation at its apparent zenith of activity. However a review of many if not most of the various cohorts indicates a lack of activity for many months if not the past two years.
To be frank, if any of us make comparisons to the Reformation, as Phyllis Tickle has done, we are in for a major disappointment. Why would anyone want a Reformation like that to occur again? How would it be possible given the completely alien social and religious structures of the West now compared to Europe in the 16th Century? Is such a desire for revolution an effort to conform the world to a specific image of reality or truth? Or is it part of a complex of selfish desires to be part of "something big" that will make history textbooks some day beyond a mere footnote? These two desires are quite selfish and will lead to disappointment since the ideals will always be far off from the possibilities inherent in a lived reality.
What I do think this sort of sentiment offers is a slice of for us to observe that "larger than life" social movements are important in religious experience. Feeling part of a larger tradition is an important aspect of being "rooted" and without these roots, religion and social embeddedness feel anemic and constricting. Without traditions shaping community there is something missing in the way that people are nourished. Religion and tradition go hand in hand and the larger the tradition a religious grouping can feel a connection with, the more sustainable is that religious group for the long term – not in the sense of bureaucracy, but in the sense of continual nourishment.
Something happening in American religion, and especially among Protestant Christians, is a progressive move away from a certain traditional awareness among parishioners. Those who no longer feel nourished by this progressively diluted traditional awareness, other than the awareness of bureaucracy in the organization itself, have felt a need not simply to abandon the church tradition, although that is certainly one reaction many have found necessary. Rather, they have felt a need to supplement their current tradition by creating their own communities of those of other traditions who essentially feel the same way.
Emergent began 10 years ago as a "conversation." However, the contribution of American philosophy is to land conversation in pragmatic action. It is never enough to talk about change no matter how engaging that conversation is. That cloud of conversation must descend somewhere in the form of new streams of tradition, new forms of community, and if it is to be a "revolution" people need to be "revolutionary." To be revolutionary is to change what people accept as normal in order to change social and political realities in often disruptive and uncomfortable ways. As I have written in other places, postmodernism suffers from social anemia as a discourse. It is critique and method without any real content. It is a good starting place, but has nowhere to go.
This does not mean that all communities and discussions that have begun in the past 10 years are at a stage of decline or are fizzling out. However, if we are honest it is clear that many sadly have. I think if those who have now "emerged" from the traditional structures that were not nourishing enough and have even begun to shape their own traditions, perhaps this is where pragmatism can help if there are uncertainties about where to go. The question might be in this world of neo-suburbanite and uptown urban cosmopolitanism of design and good aesthetic taste with good coffee, micro-brews, and the occasional cigar, where does the revolution go if it is to be "revolutionary"? Nourished by the conversation, who can we feed? Or, to be truly radical, what is standing in the way of people's needs that Jesus would like to see us meet on his behalf and how can we subvert or break down those barriers? If the conversation is leaving some people disappointed, perhaps it's time to stop talking and start doing something to make all those great words change the part of the world where you will have the greatest influence and impact. Then it's up to us if we are willing to take the next step and change that reality ourselves. If we wait for people to do it for us, it will fizzle out as the spirit of postmodern discourse has all but left philosophy.
Related posts:
[...] say. Others have responded in the comments as well as on blogs (Mike, Jonathan, Makeesha 1 and 2, Drew, Carol, Jonny). And some say that as one of the 24 who met to re-envision Emergent, I [...]
[...] Drew Tatusko – the emergent cloud must land [...]
[...] I do not fault any of this. What I do take issue with are those who are cynical because the revolution apparently "sold out" when there was never a chance for a revolution to happen. The idea never did and never will fit the social circumstances of those who are engaged in the conversation. An alternative community of any kind is not revolutionary, it is simply different. None of this is inherently bad, as long as we are honest about the limits of what this is all about. [...]