The Great Emergence

Phyllis Tickle wrote an informative book some years ago entitled, “The Great Emergence,” in which she indicates that society at large is going through a seismic shift in ethos, a shift which she posits has taken place every 500 years or so and which, inextricably, includes a shift in religion. (For a brief interview of her thoughts.)

Going backward in Christian history, Tickle labels the Protestant Reformation (1500’s), the Great Schism (1000’s), the Decline and Fall (500’s), the Great Transformation (0’s), as indicators of the kind of socio-religious shifts that have taken place even further back in history, and which we, in the present time, are going through.  Each period lasts roughly a century as old patterns take on new forms, and new patterns emerge.  Tickle’s theory provides at least a way of understanding what might be happening now.  

Protestantism was the result of the last great shake-up and, Tickle argues, it will necessarily remain but with a reshaped identity, even as dramatically new expressions of Christianity are born.  Meanwhile, in the midst of these 100 years of change, we are hard-pressed to predict the resultant form of Christianity.  But, as I have said in my previous blogs, God will have a people.  And just as the Catholic Church did not cease to exist after the Protestant Reformation, neither will the Protestant Church disappear as a result of this new period of emergence.  Tickle identifies at least a dozen new expressions of Christian life that are arising, even as denominations are necessarily adapting to the changing landscape. 

Tickle makes the interesting suggestion that those over sixty years of age, and those under forty, are most able to live into whatever form of Christianity is emerging, while those in between have greater need, or investment in, the institutions of denominationalism.  While I’m not sure I agree, I confess at the age of sixty-three that I am open to new expressions of faith as I have grown frustrated by the inflexibility of institutional religion.  For too long (500 years?), the church has invested too much in real estate and not enough in mission.  For too long, the church has thereby grown to be hierarchical when where we need to grow is horizontal.  For too long (and I am a product of this), the church has been weighted toward clerical authority rather than lay empowerment.  The next emergence will certainly reflect new priorities and ways of creating community.

Whatever “emerges” will still be flawed, as any human endeavor is, but will hopefully breathe new life into the witness of God in the world.  There is an anti-institutional flavor to this Great Emergence, but in time it, too, will bear institutional encumbrances.  Protestantism has become weighed down by its structures, but as it reforms (and using Tickle’s words, “trims, trims, trims”) in this time of emergence, perhaps it can offer wisdom so that whatever new Christianity emerges will not repeat the same mistakes Protestants have made.  God will have a people, and I want to be a part of that emerging community, even as I hold on to the remnants of what is best in my own tradition.  Perhaps John Wesley’s emphasis on the grace of God and missional engagement with a hurting world can continue to provide helpful counsel for the Great Emergence.