I don’t know that we’re far enough into this thing called emergence Christianity to proffer any definitive statements in the other direction, so I tender these suggestions humbly and tentatively.

First, while Pentecostals have, as I said, excelled at listening to the voice of God open the scriptures, particularly to individuals, the emergent church has worked at listening to God’s voice in corporate environments.  As my own community of faith, Solomon’s Porch in South Minneapolis, the weekly sermon is both prepared and presented communally, with contributions from those of us with PhDs to those us with GEDs.  Every member of the community is considered an “expert,” albeit one is an expert in Greek or Hebrew and the other in lawn mower repair.

Yet there is a presupposition that all voices are valid and important.  To put it another way, each individual believer is equally capable of being used by God’s Spirit and a vehicle of God’s truth.  God’s ability to use an individual to speak truth the community is neither enhanced nor hindered by number of letters after one’s name, how much is in one’s bank account, or which set of genitalia one has.

It seems to me that this egalitarian sense of God’s activity among humans, this “communal hermeneutic” would resonate among Pentecostals and would even hearken back to the early days of your movement.

[Read more...]

It’s on this very point that I’d like to suggest that emergents can learn from Pentecostals how to talk about the Spirit of God.  In yesterday’s theology session on the emergent church, there was much talk about the need for emergents to develop a “robust pneumatology.”  I agree, in part.  For I think that emergents have a robust pneumatology, but I don’t think that we’re very good at talking about it.

As I argue in The New Christians, I think that most American Christians are “binitarians.”  That is, while they profess a belief in all three persons of the Trinity, their practice of the faith betrays that the Father matters to them, and so does the Son, but the Spirit is an afterthought.  As reflected in hymnody and praise songs, sermon titles and prayers, the Spirit gets far less than one-third of the time in the spotlight in most churches.

I think that emergents know, in our guts, that the Holy Spirit needs to make a comeback in our churches.  But we’ll need some brothers and sisters in Christ to show us the way.  I ask you who are Pentecostal and Charismatic to help us in that way.  Give us guidance in putting words on and legs to that pneumatology that lies latent within our movement.  I do believe that you will find willing dialogue partners in this endeavor.

[Read more...]

In any version of Christianity, certain things bind the persons who affiliate with that variety together.  For some, it is ethnic heritage, and for others, a certain confessional stance.  Most emanate from a particular individual, or, in the case of Pentecostalism, a particular event.

The emergent movement has no such genesis, and no such confessional glue.  Within emergent, you’ll find Southern Baptist preachers and lesbian Episcopal priests, Missouri Synod Lutherans and Quakers.  For what binds emergents is not unlike what binds Pentecostals – it’s an ethos, a posture.  In fact, I might describe it as a posture of openness to the movement of God’s Spirit in the world.

Thus, you could walk into a United Methodist Church with the an organist and choir and a minister in alb and stole, and stroll down the street to a Vineyard assembly with a rock band and a preacher wearing shorts, and each could self-identify as emergent.  Why is that?  What in God’s name do these churches have in common?

[Read more...]

Getting one’s arms around the emergent church is no mean feat – indeed, I believe that the same may be said about Pentecostalism.  In a sense, the genesis of the emergent movement was the disenfranchisement of GenX evangelicals in the 1990s.  But in another sense, of course, the Bride of Christ is always emerging.  It is, as Brian McLaren has written, better referred to as “the church emerging” than “the emerging church.”

Further, those of us involved in the emergence Christianity have a particular antipathy toward rubrics, labels, and categorizations.  They seem to us convenient ways of boxing someone in, which all too often leads to writing someone off.

Please allow me a tangent: Was Thomas Aquinas a “liberal” or a “conservative”?  Well, we might at first paint him a conservative, for he rescued orthodox Christianity from a particularly stagnant period by recovering – i.e., conserving – scripture and tradition.  But how did he do that?  By entering into a thoroughgoing dialogue with the Aristotelian philosophy of medieval Islam.  I daresay that if a theologian today were to admit that he or she was dipping into the wells of Muslim philosophy in order undergird Christian theology, that theologian would be condemned as having slipped off the slippery slope.

My point is that the question, Was Thomas a conservative or a liberal? is nonsensical, because “liberalism” and “conservatism” are modern categories, linked to modern (read, analytic) philosophical presuppositions.  If I can make the point even more strongly, they are not theological categories.  Thomas was not a liberal or a conservative, Paul was not a liberal or a conservative, Jesus was not a liberal or a conservative.  And, if I may be so bold, I am not a liberal or a conservative.  Those non-theological categories become less helpful each day.  I suggest we stop using them.  OK, end of tangent.

[Read more...]

Good evening and thank you.  I want to begin by thanking the executive committee of the Society for inviting me, and thank Kim Alexander in particular.  When Kim invited me over a year ago, little did she know the time and energy she would have to put forth defending that invitation.  I am especially thankful that the committee in general, and Kim and Arlene Sanchez-Walsh in particular, took a stand for academic independence, freedom, and integrity.

I also want to thank a few others.  I reckon myself to be a bit of a populist theologian – it’s why I spend more time writing blog posts than I do on completing my dissertation.  So, one of the ways that I prepare for a gathering like this is to ask the blogosphere and the twitterverse what they think, and the responses are almost always enlightening and edifying.  On this topic in particular, that online community has been particularly helpful, filling in some of the many gaps in my knowledge of Pentecostalism.  Some people in this room have been kind enough to chime in on those discussions, including one who heartily recommended Amos Yong’s book, which I have truly enjoyed.  My thanks to Baker Books for rushing me a review copy of that title.

[Read more...]