A couple of posts ago I posted some videos of conversations between Phyllis Tickle and Peter Rollins. To further augment those conversations, I am reading Tickle’s book the Great Emergence and Rollins’ book The Fidelity of Betrayal at the same time. Both are wonderful books, very different, but beautifully conversant.
For the next couple of weeks I will post some reflections on the Great Emergence and on The Fidelity of Betrayal to engage with some of the questions they ask, that can also be found in the videos. I encourage you to check out either or both books and to add some thoughts to the conversation.
The Great Emergence a Historical Look
At the heart of Tickle’s writing is a look through history that shows discernible patterns of change and upheaval that occur about every 500 years. The implications of this pattern, are of course, that we are currently in the midst of such an upheaval. That is a big assertion, and on the last post there was question as to whether or not there is enough data to warrant such an assertion. So that is where we will begin the conversation.
Tickle looks back through the church and notes that over the past two thousand years the church has undergone great upheaval in these discernable patterns. She quotes Anglican Bishop Mark Dryer who quips that what we are going through right now as Cristians is understandable because every 500 years or so the church decides to have a massive rummage sale.
So when have these rummage sales of upheaval taken place. Going back 500 years we find of course the Reformation. The Reformation served to transform the church in massive ways, leading to the birth of Protestantism and the change of Catholicism. 500 years before the Reformation was the Great Schism which separated the Orthodox Church and the Roman Church. 5oo years before that we find Pope Gregory the Great and what is often noted as the fall of the Roman Empire. While Rome fell, however, Pope Gregory I transformed the church through monasticism and set a foundation that allowed the church to persevere and then flourish through the Dark Ages.This was also the time of the Council of Chalcedon which lead to the split with the Oriental Orthodox (Coptic, Egyptian, Armenian) Church.
Is that enough of a pattern for us? If not, Tickle notes that we can go back before the birth of the church and find that these patterns happened for the Jews as well. 500 years before Gregory the Great was of course the coming of Christ a seminal event of world history that reshaped how we record our history. Also there was for the Jews the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD that scattered the diaspora. 500 years before that was the Babylonian Captivity that decimated Solomon’s Temple and scattered God’s people. 500 years before that was the end of the age of judges and the establishment of the Davidic monarchy.
So we can definitely patterns of change that are both external and internal for God’s people every 500 years or so. These changes occur because of differing theologies within the church and the force of history around the church. The best insight Tickle offers of these changes, however, is there results. She lists three.
1) When they occur a new more vital form of Christiany emerges.
2) The organized expression of Christianity that has been dominant up to that point is reconstituted to a more pure and less ossified version of itself.
3) Every time the incrustations of overly established Christianity have broken open, the faith has spread and been spread dramatically into new regions.
So this is where we begin. Before we talk about what is happening in the world around us today and in the church, let’s look back together.
What do you think about this idea of patterned upheaval in the church?
What have we gained as the church through these previous changes?
How are we the product of these upheavals?
January 7, 2009 at 12:14 pm
On the pattern of upheaval: I think the 500 year argument is arbitrary and superfluous. What is added to our response of changes in Christianity by noting an apparent pattern?
What seems to be more important and interesting is what events caused these changes, how the Church faithfully (and not so faithfully) responded to these events, and how the Church is closer to being the Body of Christ and closer to the Kingdom of God than before?
If the Church buys into the 500 year thing, it means that for the next 400+ years, the Church won’t take reform, renewal, or transformaiton as seriously on a universal level.
By focusing on the what, why, how rather than the when, we can apply the lessons learned from to past to both large and small scale emurgance and maybe we can have daily emurgance that is great rather than just bi-millennial great emurgances.
January 7, 2009 at 2:47 pm
I don’t think the observance of the pattern Tickle mentions is meant to do anything other than inform our understandings of what is happening now. She rightly talks the process of changes in the church. We like to think of changes, like the Reformation, and give them a date or time or location, but nothing is that simple.
Nor does she state that this can only happen every 500 years, just that it seems to reach a breaking point that often, not just in the church, but in culture in general. I would actually expect that with the rate of change in the world today we would expect to see change take place even faster in the future.
But to focus on the how, why, and what, I think what is going on in the church now is of the nature of what has happened in these other times. I believe there is a change in the nature of what being the church is, how we express ourselves in worship, what leadership structures will look like, and how and who will carry the gospel to unreached places.
I think this will show itself in the emergence of the church in areas such as China and the 10/40 window that missiologists talk about that covers most of the Middle East. I am hopeful that the death of Christendom as a dominant force will open up doors for emergence in these areas that Christendom never could.
January 8, 2009 at 7:06 pm
Could the upheaval come from within the Church itself if the Church is is the dominant presence in a culture? If so, could this be the issue we are facing now? If not, what is the source of our current upheaval?
January 10, 2009 at 12:00 am
Sheesh….I got your note in a forward….the only way I can find to get back to you is a blog post comment…..my first one….the Tickle book is really interesting….the basic metaphor about the cable is valuable I think….at any rate….send me an email so I have an address to write back…I looked all over the Church website…the only people on the contact page are the administrator and the web master…what is up with that???????