Dave Tomlinson
This book is proof that I am the late emerger: it was published in
1995, long before I had begun to think about most of the topics it
discusses: but it sums up rather well the state of my thinking about
two years ago. Tomlinson was a big cheese in the British House
Church/New Church movement, at its zenith in the late 80s and early
90s perhaps: this book represents his decisive move away from that way
of viewing things, into a new, more tentative, dare I say humble, way
of looking at the world and the gospel.
With the benefit of 15 years' hindsight, much of the narrative is
dated now. Those were the days in the UK of evangelical resurgance -
there was a strong sense that evangelical Christianity had seen off
its rivals and arrested the decline in church membership. Chapter two,
indeed, is called 'we've never had it so good'. The Evangelical
Alliance was at the height of its powers, Spring Harvest was the place
to be, and the Charismatics were no longer a fringe - as evidenced by
widespread interest in the Toronto Blessing.
How dated that all sounds now. The counterveiling concern of the time
was the growing phenomenon of the New Age. Where has that gone? I
suppose the sillier bits have died a natural death, and the rest has
become mainstream.
Tomlinson's thinking - radical at the time - has some way to go before
entering the mainstream, even now, I think: though it is very much in
line with several threads of the emerging church conversation: albeit
from a refreshingly British perspective. He talks of how, even at the
height of that rosy glow of cosy evangelicals in the early 1990s,
people were beginning to see cracks and problems; a growing
dissociation between the rhetoric and the realities of life.
He talks of a growing chasm between Evangelical 'culture' and that of
the rest of society. The former tend to assume that this is all the
fault of the latter - but there are so many ways in which this is not
so. He talks of new understandings of personal intellectual
development, of the fear of becoming 'wooly liberals', the impact of
postmodernsim and a new appraisal of what truth is all about.
That leads to a chapter on how we understand the bible - surely a
totemic Evangelical issue - with a rather wonderful swift dismissal of
inerrancy as a waste of time. The account is, however, far from
negative, full of fresh vision (for the time) of how the message of
Christ can be relevant for many in the 21st century. This hopefulness
is surely attractive.
I'm glad I bothered to read this book, 'old' as it is. This is a
great reminder of the wide range of threads feedings the present
conversation: and my own late engagement with it.
Tomlinson has a later book, which I've quoted from here, but not yet
reviewed. Some relections on it will follow soon.
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