Europe and America

In so many things, the more we know, the more realise we don't know. I have sooo much more to read.

I've been trying to understand the emerging patterns of church for about eighteen months, I guess, but I've been blogging for less than that - and somewhat sporadically. I'm aware that much of what I have read comes from North America. I guess there are a few reasons for that:

1. in this, as in so much else, a high proportion of the literature (in which I would include the blogsphere, and I suppose other media too - podcasts, Noomas, and so on) comes from the US. So, indeed, does a great deal of Evangelical thought.
2. in doing a literature search, one often tends to find a seam of related material; getting one's hooks into a different set of mutually self-referential writings depends a bit on luck and dogged determination.
3. it could also be that that is where the "action" is - though I have all sorts of reasons for doubting that.

The trouble is, so much of what I read from America doesn't feel like it's addressing my situation, sitting, as I do, most of the time, in Oxford. So much of what I read is by way of a protest - against the mega-church mentality, against church-as-big-business, against simplistic theology and hermeneutics, against an evangelical church aligned with a particular political party, and so on - and those are just not issues which really affect me. In my country, the Christian centre of gravity has long been somewhat to the left of the ruling parties, on most issues, churches are widely seen as struggling at the margins (though still populated by hypocrites, and having leaders whose word carries too much weight in national debates), and so on. There is a vast spectrum of belief and practice - from the most outspoken radical reformed folks through to the most socially active and liberally inclusive. Not only do you find different fellowships within the same denomination holding such widely different perspectives, you can find individuals within single local churches who hold such seemingly irreconcilable positions, too.

As a result, when I try to explain to Christian friends about the emerging literature I've been reading, I am often met with blank looks which seem to say "what's new there?". Justice for the poor? Yea: I think I had my first fair-trade tea about 30 years ago. Environmental concern? I feel sure that Spring Harvest had as its theme "Whose Earth? God's Earth" some 15 years ago. Self-organising local fellowships with plurality in leadership, open relations with like-minded folks? Yea; the one I belong to is about 50 years old; the one I grew up in, more like 100. And so on.

I don't for a moment want to suggest that everything is rosy: this is England where the impact we (as the whole family of people called Christians) are having for the Kingdom is diminishing by the day. And when I read stuff by Peter Rollins, I realise quite how "out there" things can yet become. I'd say that what I have been reading is certainly affecting my thinking, and so my practice, and gradually giving me courage to try new things with my church fellowship, too.

Every time I think I've got to "the edge" of the reading, I find something else to look at. Just last week, my friend Anna pointed my at Richard Rohr: she who had been to an emerging Jesuit Ash Wednesday service... I shall go on looking at literature which speaks to other people's situations: it is always instructive. Will I find some which speaks to mine? Who knows.

May we never stop learning.