Review: Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church

[I wrote this review on holiday, months ago, but somehow forgot to post it. I think I still agree with myself.... maybe.]




Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church:
Understanding a Movement and Its Implications
D. A. Carson



I wanted to read this book, despite hearing bad things about it in other reviews: it's not healthy to read only one point of view. The pace of things is such that it is already rather dated, perhaps, despite being just three years old.

This book reminded me of all the reasons why I am deeply suspicious of academic theology. It's not that I am anti-academic: I make my living in that profession, after all. It might be because, as a scientist, I tend to distrust research in the humanities. But largely, I think, it is because theology seems to be calculated to take real, organic belief, and make it into something which can be the pursuit only of those with a lifetime of study and a PhD in the subject. [footnote: this doesn't apply to, say, Peter Rollins, who blows my mind, though I fear he knows far too much Philosophy. And reading Alistair McGrath or Tom Wright usually convinces me that theologians are useful for something, too...]

I have much respect for Carson, nevertheless: The Inclusive Language Debate, a plea for realism was a great and timely reflection on the very real challenges of trying to translate a text like the bible from its original language into a dynamic modern one. But in writing about the emerging church, he seems, more often than not to be tilting at windmills.

His task is a hard one, of course: the 'emerging conversation' is a sufficiently broad tent, as it were, that he is trying to do something which is somehow the metaphorical opposite of shooting fish in a barrel. So he picks on a few writers (McLaren, in particular) and tries to take them apart. Of course, I am reading his words at least a couple of years after they were written: things have, I guess, moved on in the conversation rather, so that some of his tilting seems terribly mis-placed.

For tilting it is. Far too much time is taken over a critique of postmodernism: Carson's criticism seems to be that emerging church thinkers invoke it without understanding it. He takes a whole chapter to explain how he understands it, without showing much evidence of taking on board what they mean by the term. He may be right in saying that sees postmodernism (as a variously defined intellectual movement) as having reached, or passed, its apex. But he is so taken up with postmodern epistemology that other big strands in postmodern thinking (such as, for example, the inseparability of medium and message) are not mentioned. The result is an extended argument which seems to say “you guys don't know what you're talking about; I do”, without any genuine attempt to understand what those authors do mean by their terminology.

Several of his criticisms do resonate for me, as questions or issues to which I yet have to find an answer:

1. There is a 'protest' element in the emergent discussion: it springs very evidently from those who have received their 'Christian education' in quite a conservative evangelical corner of the faith. This is very far from the norm for Christendom at large, and so to want to believe that the conversation is ushering in a new way of conceiving Christian faith, rather than a new perspective on evangelical thought, is a big step indeed: one might even say it entails a little hubris.
2. In a discussion about learning from, and embracing the wisdom of, other systems of faith, it doesn't do to loose sight of the context in which the New Testament was written – really quite pluralistic. New Testament writers do not display a generous orthodoxy towards proponents of idol worship, pantheism, or even, in a sense, Judaism: we should be very cautious in doing so.
3. More generally, though I am very open to finding new ways to read the scriptures as we have received them, and to contextualizing them better, I'm not sure I've discerned a workable exegetical principle in the emerging conversation: it seems too easy to dismiss the bits of scripture that we don't like.

[the obvious caveat is that I'm the late emerger: I still have a lot to read, and a lot to experience]

That western society is in a rapid state of change is unquestionable. In particular, mass peer-to-peer communication is an innovation unparalleled certainly since the invention of the printing press, and perhaps earlier. Meanwhile, we are fragmented as never before. We travel as never before. The prosperity of many is far greater than ever before: the poverty of those on the margins is sadly all too familiar. Whether or not we associate the term postmodern with the profound sea-change we observe, or whether it needs another word, is rather irrelevant. It will portend changes in our conversation about God – if the emerging response is not close to its final form, it is nevertheless most evidently part of it. I'm disappointed to find thoughtful leadership in the world of theology not reflecting such wisdom in this book.

And yet, what is evident is that Carson simply doesn't “get it”. It's as if he has written a “modern” response to a “postmodern” conversation (I put those words in quotes, since I think that is how McLaren would use them, but Carson says he should not). And that points me to my final concern: I think I do “get it”- but I belong to a different generation from Carson. How can I make sure that we are talking about something which will emerge as open and evident to careful and thoughtful people, and not something which is ultimately a new gnosis, accessible only to those who have their own secret insight?

I'm sorry to say that I concluded that the book missed the point. The author is too taken up with his own understanding of philosophy and theology to hear what is being said by those he seeks to critique. And that's a shame. The writing of McLaren and others needs to be subjected to searching analysis: this book falls short of doing so.