Christianity? And intellectual or accesible?

There is an interesting discussion between Ben Edson and Richard Sudworth on whether the Emerging Church is too intellectually focussed to the point of inhibiting its Missional DNA... the original post refers to Pete Rollins forthcoming Blah... now here is an example of the two elements in synthesis... I am reading Pete's book at the moment, it is no doubt written from the heart and mind of an intellectual... but I hasten to add not inaccessible to a non-academic reader... whilst reading Chapter 4 I came across a far more intellectual equivalent of a conversation I have had a number of times over the last few months...

My version... Question - So how can you believe that Christianity has got it right and other religions have got it wrong... Answer - I don't... what I do believe is that ALL religions are inadequate, incapable of grasping divine truth/of re-connecting with God (Religion from 'Re-Ligio' meaning 're-connect')... the good news is that recognising our attempts and their ultimate failure God chose to step into the here and now... into the world... wiping away the need for human religiosity (striving for perfection or for THE right way) and instead embracing us where we are... in all our weakness and vulnerability... we are loved and held by God despite not because of our Religion!

Pete's version... Question - "Why would you affiliate myself with the Christian Religion if I did not believe that it revealed God?"... Answer - "...far from being a reason to reject Christianity, this is precisely one of the reasons I embrace it, for in Jesus I see not merely an individual who acted as a catalyst for a new religious movement, but as a subversive prophet who signalled the end of all religious movements.  To be part of the Christian religion is to simultaneously hold that religion lightly... Jesus employed a deeply de-constructive approach to religion which both affirmed and critiqued the movement that began in his lifetime.  Christianity, following this de-constructive and subversive element in the life of Jesus, is then a religion which critiques its own religiosity."

One great (Pete's) and one not so great (Mine) minds think (almost) alike :-)

Technorati Tags: Emerging Church: Mission: Spirituality

Comments

[Existential Punk]

Mark, i love what Pete said, but your's is equally great! Don't short circuit you gift of actually hitting a wider audience in the way you said those words. I liked what you said and will chew on it and hopefully use those words in some way in my own context. Thanks and don't be so hard on yourself! Pete wouldn't want you to either. i think he'd like what you said.

[Phil Rankin]

The discussion on the other blog is very interesting and something I have struggled with for a while.I would perhaps broaden the whole discussion out because I think the whole Church, for a wide variety of reasons, is quite inaccessible.There are some things - like your work Mark - that is endeavouring to overcome this by connecting with a constituency that has been pushed away by this inaccessibility.But we must be aware that not everyone is the same.To use intellectual language in a pub might miss the target, while to use pub language with University lecturers might miss the target.For me I think the ultimate quetion is that, no matter what the 'audience' is or the context, is the language or method being used making any difference to me and to my audience?

[imagine!]

Mark: I've posted another comment on this topic following on from your thoughts. I'm not sure you've understood what I'm actually saying here...

[Matt Stone]

Too intellectual. Yes and no.

Yes, in that I don't think half of the stuff we get caught up in matters in the mission field. Have you ever tried asking a new ager or wiccan what they think of pomo or deconstruction? I promise you'll find it's a good acid test!

No, in that EC credibility in cultural exegesis is still to be established in the wider Christian movement and some deep work is still required to overcome that hurdle.

So, no easy answers from me!

[cheryl]

it matters in the mission field i'm part of, matt... it's all a question of perspective and context!

[philjohnson]

One can be both cogent in quality of comprehension/analysis and be lucid at a level that is readable or understandable by people who lack the cognitive skills or rigour that occurs in the rarefied summits of academia.

As a model for communication one can always look at C S Lewis who had a happy knack of writing so the non-academic could understand what he was arguing.

It is also the case that any cultural dialogue can occur on many levels simultaneously. So again it is appropriate for both an academic engagement and also a non-academic engagement, rather than either/or.

The twin temptations to avoid are these:
a). Regarding academic discourses as the sole ones of importance (intellectual snobbery)
b). Dismissing academic discourses as too "high-brow" and therefore irrelevant (anti-intellectual despising of giftedness in scholarship).

Finally, my plea is that EC discourses acquire greater depth of cultural awareness (which can happen at both a popular and academic level), and breadth of engagement particular where alternate spiritualities are reshaping postmodernity. There is at present too much concentration of selected morsels of pop culture, and also of selected philosophical trends, with a simultaneous neglect or avoidance of grappling with the esoteric paradigms that have taken deep root in postmodernity.

Postmodernity involves much more than some awareness of the deconstruction of narratives of power and deconstructing evangelicalism as spiritual autobiography. There are international networks of Christians in missions in the urban west who are begging for sustained dialogue with representatives of EC, but these networks are not being invited in or included in the conversations that involve many EC people in Europe, North America and Oceania.

[Mark Berry]

Phil, Of course I agree with you, that it is not an either or... in fact that we need both (that was my point in the comment on Bens Blog).

Two comments though... when you say things like "simultaneous neglect or avoidance of grappling with the esoteric paradigms that have taken deep root in postmodernity." without explaning what you mean by "esoteric paradigms" it is a) difficult to know what you mean and b) comes across as quite arrogant (going back to the original debate - if you have a point to make either say it in common parlance or explain exactly what you mean)... One criticism I have heard of a number of Blogs from outside of the UK/US is that they are not conversations but sermons/lectures and that they are so long and so filled with academic terminology - read jargon that it puts people off from reading and/or engaging with them... perhaps leading to missing the points being made entirely... if you are not being heard the answer is not to shout, get angry or say it again and again, but to say it a way that is a)heard and b)understood.

The second comment refers to your final paragraph... a)who are these people/networks, b)why do they need to be invited? (how can someone be invited if they do not make it known who they are/that they want to engage) c)If they jump into conversations with a patronising and/or arrogant attitude then they will (rightly) be ignored!

I'm sorry to say there are a number of Blogs that I read that others in the UK do ignore, when I ask them why the answer returns "Because they think they know it all, they don't recognise that we have to learn our own lessons in our own culture, they are arrogant and tend lecture rather than dialouge. etc."
TBH I am getting fed up of sitting in the middle!

[philjohnson]

Mark

I'm sorry if the comments seemed obscure or create bad impressions. Blog facilities come with in-built limitations and misperceptions do arise.

Of course my shorthand mention of "esoteric paradigms" needs amplifying. The term esoteric covers a wide range of spiritual practices and ideas, many of which are common in western Europe and the UK. The paradigms come with differen strands like those that are gnostic, those that are magical, those that are emphasizing certain kinds of mysticism, those that reflect a combination of western and eastern practices.

In postmodernity these sources have had quite some influence on the way a lot of people now see reality and how they approach spirituality beyond the walls of the church. There is an academic side to it and there is a grass roots side to it.

It is reflected in the way some people view their life and experiences of suffering through karma and rebirth. It is reflected in the way some dance cultures now fuse music, activism and spirituality in a fusion of technology and magical practices. It can be seen in a number of meditative and yogic practices. It percolates in some of the alternate spiritual festivals. It is reflected in courses that attract students to Bathspa Uni, or to religious studies programs in other UK universities.

In the UK John Drane and Chris Partridge are pointing to these trends for the benefit of Christians. As conversations ensue hopefully more thoughts and discussions will unfold over what they're saying.

My previous comment here was not placed as some sort of personal promo to my blog.

grace and peace.

[Mark Berry]

Thanks Phil for clarifying... my response was meant more generally than your comment, but I appreciate your reply. Firstly, yes there is in the UK a growing awareness of the issues to which you refer, however I don't think that we can place the same emphasis on these spiritualities here in the UK as you can on the other side of the world... in fact our most 'spiritual' festivals are rapidly loosing that dimension, e.g. Glastonbury, in the face of consumerism. What I see in the UK is much more emphasis on 'wholeness'/Holistic health rather than anything more systematic, some research into Clubbing has begun to question anything other than stylistic/superficial echos of spirituality. Sometimes, I think, we are quick to read 'Religion' into 'Spirituality'. I'm not denying the change in the spiritual landscape, but it seems to me that it is far less 'out-there' in UK culture, perhaps it is more post-modern i.e. less about belief sytems and more about 'me' ... the current buzz phrase talks about the 'spirituality of well-being'... ALL religions, new and old tend to be viewed with suspicion, and spiritual ideas e.g. Karma are held very lightly by the vast majority of the population... though they are more open to lifestyle elements like Feng Shui.

I repeat the plea of my former comment... please keep talking to us... we need to hear from people like you... but, let us draw our own conclusions etc. from our own culture... I think John Drane is fantastic however I do not agree with everything he says, and sometimes I find he draws conclusions that do not reflect what is actually going on on the streets, in the towns and cities of the UK. I once heard him declare that 9/11 had killed post-modernism and turned the west back to the enlightenment. There has also been much debate/doubt over Partridge's 're-enchantment of culture' and whether it says more about Religious wishful thinking. I guess it depends on where you get your data from.

Out of interest; there has been some interesting (sometimes conflicting) research done in the UK, the most famous are Hay and Hunt 2000 and Heelas and Woodhead (both point to an increase in reported 'spiritual experience' but little desire to 'follow' a Religion or Belief System. Lately Phil Rankin and Bob Mayo (and team) have conducted seperate research into Spirituality and Young People (both questioned the link between spiritual experience or awareness and belief system/religion. Rankin points to the need to question continuosly but no desire for cohesion (Phil R... please feel free to correct me or expand) and Mayo's research seems to question even that, challenging the Church to remove it's rose timted spectacles! Though like Phil R they recognise an inherrent sense of the spiritual but say this has no link whatsoever to Religions/Spiritualities new or old.

[Mark Berry]

Re-reading my first reply to you Phil, I think I may have reacted a bit stroppily, I apologise. It was a result of a number of coversations over the last couple of weeks. Part of the problem is that whilst (my observation) there may be more resonance between the UK and Australasia than between The UK and US, we still have very different cultures and stories... I guess sometimes that gets forgotten in reading/writing and commenting on Blogs (from all 'sides'). I don't want to get into the whole 'Dekhomai' situation, but it is easy to drop a comment onto a blog without grasping the whole of the purpose of the Blog/the picture.

[Phil Rankin]

To expand on what Mark was saying, I’ve read Generation Y and been in contact with Bob and Sylvia so perhaps I can put the whole picture together. (We are actually working with London Institute for Contemporary Christianity to ‘paint this picture’ together, probably in September) For Generation Y Bob and team separate spirituality into transformative and formative spirituality and while I do not like this separation it is an interesting distinction. Young people, in different ways and at different times depending on a whole range of factors, are asking spiritual questions - is there a God, why I am here, what’s my purpose, what’s the point in my life - Bob and team call this formative. For me, to ask these questions is what it is to be spiritual. Perhaps I detected a stronger desire or willingness to reflect on these things than in Generation Y, but this formative spirituality is there in both cases. Generation Y argues that this formative does not translate into transformative, and I reflect this in the phrase ‘young people desire to connect lifestyle and belief’. Again, I detected more desire to move to the transformative than appears evident in Generation Y. I think the methodologies have a very significant impact here.
Basically, none of this translates into young people leaving religion and getting into spirituality. There is still a willingness and openness to spiritual questions/reflections (See things like the Monastery from something of what I mean here although I must say I do wonder if this will last forever? See Steve Bruce and secularism arguments.) but this is within the context of incredible negativity to anything that smells of religion. Too often this is seen just as Christianity but for young people it is also includes practices adults generally consider to be ‘spirituality’ e.g. Buddhism, tree-hugging, future readings etc. For young people there is little or no distinction between religion and spirituality as practice. I would argue that the idea U.K. young people are ‘into’ spirituality (as life-changing practices – candles, crystals, tarot etc) is largely false, but there is an openness to reflect in community on spiritual questions.

To put this in a larger context, adults and young people (that’s age 14-25) in the U.K. are not the same. I think all Heelas and Woodhead have done is present the possibility of a spiritual revolution rather than actually show that there has been one. The only revolution in the U.K. that I observe is that people have left religion/Church and predominantly gone to nothing. Phil J is probably correct to say that “In postmodernity these sources [a wide range of spiritual practices and ideas] have had quite some influence on the way a lot of people now see reality” but I do not think that this necessarily translates into “how they approach spirituality beyond the walls of the church.” By that I mean people are open to the idea of karma, what goes around comes around for instance, but this does not translate into any action or any particular interest in Buddhism, Hinduism, candles, astrology etc.
One thing I heard recently (I don’t know where!) which relates to Mark’s original blog is that Church is too interested in answering questions that no one is asking. An example…a good deal of youth evangelism has been about ‘proving’ God exists but most young people already think there is ‘something’ out there. Continuous theological explanations for questions that people outside Church are neither interested in nor understand is part of what makes the whole thing inaccessible. And assuming that people are in any way interested in spirituality/religion other than some (often small) awareness of spiritual questions is not only to make God inaccessible, it is totally missing where people are at.

[Phil Rankin]

Following up on Mark's last comment and my (overly!) long last comment, I know the U.K. and U.S.A. contexts pretty well but I wouldn't confidently say that about Australasia. Phil J, would you be willing to present some thoughts on that situation? If you feel this is not the place, perhaps you could suggest some things to read websites, blogs, books etc so that I might fill in some of the gaps?

[Mark Berry]

Thanks both Phil's for your comments... please keep going, you have both increased the IQ of this blog considerably ;-)