Comments on: on meta-denominationalism: emergence through convergence

By: emergent christians missed the memo that their movement is dead. –

emergent christians missed the memo that their movement is dead. – — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 04:19:12 +0000

[...] where differences coexist among theological similarities. It is, as I have described it, a meta-denominational movement. It has become this even as people from numerous denominations have joined together with a shared [...]

By: Ted Seeber

Ted Seeber — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:14:22 +0000

The original metadenominationalism was Catholicism. That's *exactly* what Iraeneus was writing about 1900 years ago, and what Pope Paul VI was writing in Lumen Gentium, and what Pope John Paul II wrote about in Crossing The Threshold of Hope.

Emergence is just Vatican II for Evangelicals.

By: Ted Seeber

Ted Seeber — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 19:14:22 +0000

Emergence is just Vatican II for Evangelicals.

By: Trey

Trey — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:03:02 +0000

I think the "post" made for a clever marketing tool--which raises all sorts of questions anyway. Any perceived "death" of emergence is going to kill some publishers, but I digress...

I think the "emergence through convergence" is something worth embracing. I'm (somewhat) embarrassed to say I once tried to point at this phenomenon through the metaphor of "Lost".

The analogy breaks down on any number of levels, but the idea that a group of people could/would have to form community out of something as random as a plane crash is not dissimilar to the religious structures of modernity--denominational allegiances prevailed (save in the occasional mixed marriage of Methodist-Baptist, Lutheran-Presbyterian, etc.)

This held until the me-generation boom of mega-churches where congreagations in urban and suburban areas homogenized. Though some emergent congregations could be accused of attracting niche followers, it was/is most often on hegemony of ideals, not class or (necessarily) geography.

As institutional allegiances breakdown, the "convergence" across all manner of media, social networking, global expansion/contraction is still being born. As such, folks like me tend to view chance encounters and meaningful faith encounters as canon, a realm that only a few of the people I go to church with inhabit.

I'm not sure the thorough-going implications of each of these movements (or the latent ripples of one, if it be one) but i'm grateful for the way you've articulated it here. It's the air we breathe, and I for one think it promising!

By: Jim Marks

Jim Marks — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 19:23:42 +0000

Ok, yeah, I think that's a problem. Whether culture at large uses "post-modern" in a way that is "correct" or not isn't something we can control by confusing the dialog by making a decision to use language in a different way from the people to whom we're speaking.
Philosophical dialog at large is far too broad and sprawling for us to try to step in and reform the use of and definition of terms.

By: Drew Tatusko

Drew Tatusko — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 19:16:20 +0000

class is definitely part of it since as people become more affluent they tend to become more theologically liberal. one way to phrase it is that there are not a whole lot of poor or oppressed people who have time to be post-moderns even if we in the educated affluent parts of the world call it something postmodern. marx and nietzche as well as kierkegaard were fully modern and we often forget that. very few "postmodern" thinkers would call themselves postmodern. derrida did not apply the label to himself. heidegger certainly did not. baudrillard is one of the few.

unfortunately, not a lot of theology deals with class as something constitutive of theology and belief in the US. to your point, while the publishing industry has marketed out difference among conservatives, the problem is another sociological terms called pillarization. with this each denomination and each church forms a pillar of belief that essentially cordons off different groups form each other based on membership roles. what the fluid boundaries of info. tech have dome with the emergent conversation is to help people related to others beyond these boundaries to realize that basically what wuthnow argued about denominations is true – people from different denominations have very similar religious experiences despite what the old traditional boundaries tell us. and i do think this is related to class as much as anything.

By: Drew Tatusko

Drew Tatusko — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 19:06:04 +0000

people at large including the emergent conversation. i linked to a couple of posts that cover my thoughts on that in more depth. Thanks!

By: Andrew Tinker

Andrew Tinker — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:17:30 +0000

Actually, to take Drew's point further, postmodernism is not limited to philosophy, and is adapted in highly specific ways for different intellectual concerns. Textual criticism and metaphysics are two different disciplines, for example, which are impacted differently by postmodernity. Political science, another discipline, may look at it as the trend for people to move beyond commitments to social movements, such as post-feminism as a way for young women to enjoy individual freedoms fought for by feminism without having to participate in any meaningful struggle to hold onto those freedoms. So it becomes a discussion of the individual vs the collective. As opposed to metaphysics, where it is a discussion of transcendent forms (as I understand it from Derrida and Kevin Hart, Drew, though you've clearly read much more theory about it than I have), or religion where it may concern certainty vs uncertainty. It's an often confusing term.

I do wonder though, Drew, if meta-denominationalism is also a result of the Christian publishing industry and the media representations of Christians from conservatives as all believing one thing, holding one truth. Like so many church goers raising their children as Dobson would, regardless of denomination, or something like that. Living over in the UK, I'm wondering how sociologists consider social class in the U.S., where it seems everyone considers themselves to be middle class.

By: Jim Marks

Jim Marks — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 17:53:19 +0000

I agree that many people in the emerging conversation don't really understand post-modern philosophy or what the implications of it are, and therefore espouse all kinds of things that have nothing to do with it.

When you say "what we call post-modern" do you mean 'we' the emerging conversation, or 'we' people at large?

By: Drew Tatusko

Drew Tatusko — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 17:44:31 +0000

i think i have argued not to use it because i have seen it a) used to refer to things that i would argue are not postmodern, b) after reading about it for many years, i am convinced that what we call postmodern is really a form of modernism and nothing more. that is to say, i think that continued reliance on the term as an identifier has already muddled the conversation because no one has a clear idea, in my judgment, of what it actually is they are referring to. or people use it to refer to something that has no referent which is about the most postmodern thing in the conversation! ironically enough…