"It's often been suggested that the doctrinally aberrant Emergent church is a reaction to fundamentalism. This may be true for some individuals, but could it be that the Emergent church's doctrinal aberrations are more the result of an entire generation who grew up in doctrinally anemic seeker-sensitive churches?"What do you think?
Based on the sociological data through the 90's despite that seeker sensitive churches garnered a lot of attention, they did not provide an overwhelming majority of church attenders. I'm not sure that its right to say that "an entire generation" grew up in those churches.
ReplyDeleteAlso, if one were to arrive at his conclusion, wouldn't one have to trace the reason those folks ended up in the seeker sensitive churches to begin with? History didn't happen in a vacuum, and seeker sensitive churches didn't just pop up without cause either. Not to say that there's a cause and effect relationship, but the seeker sensitive congregation explosion seems to have happened in conjunction with the steady decline of the mainline denominations from the 50's through even today. It would be easy to blame theologically weak seeker sensitive churches, but then one would have to wonder why people seem to have flocked out of mainline churches, and why the two trends at the least seem to be correlated.
Could one trace the steady decline in mainline denominations to their generally weak theology. And couldn't one count the weak theology of the mainline denominations as a reaction against fundamentalists?
I'm not saying he's right or wrong. However, I think that the sweeping generalization sounds good, but doesn't deal with all of the facts. I think that the issue of the emergent church is a much more complicated issue than it appears to be. Although I would agree to some extent that weak theologied seeker sensitive churches have probably helped pave the way to the emergent church, i don't think that if we were to trace the roots of the emergent church back it would merely stop at seeker sensitive churches.
I also think that the introduction of liberation theology into American Christianity hasn't received enough credit in helping the emergent cause. Liberation theology (despite its roots in catholicism) has in some form been embraced by many, and seems to play a pretty large role in emergent ideology. I guess I could go on, but I wont.
Like I said, I think this is very complicated, the origins of the Emergent church. I think its impossible to try to summarize the origins of a movement like this one, in one sentence, while pointing at a previous movement as if that movement didn't have its own root cause. My 2 cents.
Bob makes some valid points. I am of the opinion that "new" movements tend to be reactionary rather than a logical progression. In other words the pendulum swings in the opposite direction. Let me use an analogy...
ReplyDeleteAugusta National is one of the most exclusive golf courses in the world. Every golfer wants to play... except there are a few who say it is wrong to withhold it from everyone. So they make a public version of Augusta for $20 with a cart. It draws the crowd, but it doesn’t ultimately satisfy and people want more… Public Pebble Beach, Public St. Andrews, etc. Fundamentalism (exclusive, high expectations) led to the Seeker-Sensitive Movement. Seeker-sensitive created a very consumer driven church culture that is never satisfied by an endless supply of programs.
I would argue that the reaction to (pendulum swing away from) the Seeker-Sensitive Movement is the “missional church” movement where the congregation is now ‘doing church’ as they live/work/go to school, etc. and live out the gospel away from the church building. The building then becomes the worship, equipping and sending facility- not the epicenter of gospel activity.
Just an opinion. I’d love to have it shred to bits.