This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

Reflections on Liquidity and Ecclesiology

I've been rummaging among some of the Emerging Church, Liquid Church (or other prevailing trademark), websites. I came away sympathetic but unmoved.

Not because I don't think the Em Churchers are sincere, or that they aren't deeply reflecting on mission and ecclesiology, nor that they've succumbed to uber-relevancy. I do believe they are sincere. It is evident that they are reflecting deeply on church and witness. And though I might question their enthusiastic embrace of the mislabeled "postmodern" milieu, they nonetheless appear to be endorsing it in something of a critical way.

I am sympathetic. There is a bunch of silliness in modern Protestantism. Witness the commercialization of the so-called contemporary Christian music scene. There are a bunch of serious abuses. The priestly sexual abuse of young adolescent boys in the Roman Catholic Church and its coverup. The supression of and attempts to obliterate historic Christian doctrines and practices in some mainline churches. There is doubtless the tendency toward, if not full, institutionalization of ecclesiology in all expressions of the Christian faith. One cannot be blamed for looking for a legitimate remedy.

But I am unpersuaded that the rejection of much of historic Christianity by the Em Churchers is as reflective as their embrace of "postmodernity" and of its tenets.

First, though it has become accepted to refer to our era as postmodernity, I am hardpressed to understand how postmodernity is so far removed from modernity as to be able to see that it (postmodernism), indeed, has succeeded modernity. That is to say, the label "post" assumes a vantage point by which to judge that modernity has ended, and something else has taken its place. This isn't just semantics. One of the essential tenets of postmodernity is the locatedness of perceiving and understanding. But if postmodernity is so located, how can it summon the resources from within its own metanarrative to measure its distance from that which it assumes it has replaced?

I don't have a viable alternative, for my own preference in culture labeling (late modernity) assumes a similar ability to discern that modernity's progress and tenure is nearing an end. But this does not eliminate the difficulty of assuming that modernity is over or in its death throes.

Secondly, one of the tenets of postmodernity bought into by the Em Churchers is the primary nature of reality being "liquidity" (or, relativity). Or, more crassly, the only constant is change. A corollary of this tenet is the very same progressivism that modernity asserted. Em Churchers assume that the past is passe, that the past is mostly one of failure and mistake, that the present knows so much more than the past. So an ancient-future church can sift through the Tradition and pick and choose that which it judges to be timeless . . . but it judges this on what grounds? Icons? Yes. The theology of the icon? No. Parts of the liturgy? Absolutely. The whole liturgy? No, because it stifles individual expression. Community? Yes. But the ecclesiology which asserts that there is no salvation outside the Church? No.

But on what grounds does the Em Church make these judgments? How can the Em Church escape the same criticisms it makes of the "modern," "solid" churches? Aren't such judgments as arbitrary and self-justifying as the ones the Em Churchers criticize? If not, why? And if they have a solid and unvarying standard of judgment, doesn't this undercut their claim to fluid morphing?

Nor can the Em Churchers claim that their standard is the Gospel. Not because this claim isn't true on its face. I do assume that they mean to utilize the Gospel as an unvarying standard. But so did/does the historic Church. The question the Em Churchers can't answer is why their judgments should supersede those of the historic Church, because to make such a claim is to undercut their own raison d'etre, to cut off their own legs from underneath them.

I also think, and this is perhaps not as substantive a critique as the ones I've given, though it's no less pertinent, that the Em Churchers' evaluation of the historic Church as institutionalized, non-missionally oriented, culturally irrelevant, and so forth, is far too superficial and doesn't deal adequately with the historical record.

For example, take the criticism of the Divine Liturgy as too rigid, too blind to the meeting of needs, and so forth. This criticism fails to take into account the extremely participatory nature of Orthodox worship, and assumes that established form cannot meet the needs of the present because it cannot change its external appearance to meet the worshipper where he or she is at. But it is precisely the established form that is best able to meet the needs of an ever-changing congregation by its very stability and time-testedness. Though the Em Churchers' promotion of an ever-changing worship form seems self-evidently to meet the needs of an ever-changing congregation, I have yet to see any self-reflection that perhaps a moving target combined with a moving "projectile" makes for doubly improbable contact.

Also, the Em Churchers, coming largely from a Protestant background, fail to take into account the sacramentality of the Divine Liturgy. The Divine Liturgy is not merely a human creation, and this is why it can continue to meet the needs of worshippers throughout the centuries.

But more importantly the Em Churchers make an assumption about worship that they do not seem to have derived from Scripture: that the purpose of worship is to meet needs. Rather, if the purpose of worship is to worship and adore the Trinity, then it seems that the Divine Liturgy follows, especially the attendant sacramental theology. The historical record shows that this, indeed, is what happened. Since the purpose of worship was God-focused, the Liturgy inevitably took a stabilized form, and developed ever more "fancy" expression. Why use gold and costly materials to make the worship accoutrements? Because it was God we are worshipping, and not engaging in a pragmatic spiritual therapy. Why construct special buildings for worship? I concur that on one level it's pragmatic--more converts needed more space. But I rather suppose, given what the historical record says, that it was deemed appropriate to give God his own special place of worship and adoration. A place where his praise and glorification could receive the best of human efforts and gifts.

My hope and prayer is that the Em Churchers' flirting with the historic Church will lead, as it did in my own journey, to an embrace of the historic Church which is alive and well--and meeting needs--today.

Posted by Clifton at January 15, 2004 05:00 AM | TrackBack