Renewals and Emergence

Institutions state, “They know where I stand.”
Movements say, “Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?”
-Henry Strunk

Renewals are both a reaction and a rediscovery. They are a reaction to deadness and lack of spiritual fervor, and the rediscovery of a forgotten emphasis: salvation, holiness, the Holy Spirit, tongues, healing, etc. Renewals also produce fruit or side effects, or what (until I come up with a better term) I will call attitudes.

One common attitude of a fresh renewal is eclecticism (See Let’em Eat Cake, 12/11/09). Renewals see themselves as the focal point of unity for the church, and are accepting of different forms of religious expression. The other attitude is inclusivism (See More Thoughts on Renewals,01/31/10). Inclusivism refers to the renewal’s treatment of unbelievers or seekers. Although past renewals have not analyzed it this way, inclusivism reverses the traditional steps of believe, behave, belong; to belong, behave, believe. I saw this work in the early days of the Charismatic movement. Young people came to our meetings and were immediately accepted. Peer pressure and teaching conditioned behavior, and belief was the result. I don’t remember that we ever compromised biblical morality in the process. The presence of God and the love of their fellows changed minds and lives. There was a power at work.

But it is a fact that renewals consistently reverse these attitudes within 20 or 30 years. Disillusionment over failed unity and persecution create an esoteric mind-set, and the need to define who “belongs” breeds exclusivism. This is a consistent pattern.

Eclecticism and inclusivism in renewals have always been treated as afterthoughts, something to be examined by Christian historians years after the fact. But something different is happening in the emergent movement. These two attitudes are not on the shelf. They are in the forefront of emergent literature. They are being self-consciously studied and examined. That is something new. The movement, for all its haziness and dangers, is defining itself by those two concepts, something I don’t believe any previous renewal has done.

If emergence can pull this off—really define eclecticism and inclusivism, and find ways to sustain them, then we are on the verge of a Reformation that could last beyond the normal life span of renewals. A whole new way of thinking could come forth. This is already manifested in the emergent description of their detractors as “necessary ballast” in the church—a case of including one’s potential adversaries in a greater scheme.

If, however, the gathering reaction to emergent attitudes begins to “get under the skin” of the movement, it will wear out in the next fifty years and become another persecuted True Church. Even worse, it could find ways to enforce eclectic and inclusive attitudes—a tragic paradox. Personally, I’m more hopeful than that.