The Great Emergence - Part 1

It seems I am taking part in a global, organic synchro-read of "The Great Emergence"  by Phyllis Tickle

I'm intrigued by, if a little dubious of, the central premise of the first part of the book... that every 500 years or so there happens a "Great" moment in cultural shift (in this case related to the Abramic Religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam)... let me clarify, I'm not actually dubious of Tickle's observations of either the paradigm shift, it's causes or the cycle she writes of, simply that I'm not convinced by a sense that because there have been important shifts roughly every 500 years, the timing is significant & not coincidental... I guess one can get into the argument of scientific verification - that patterns observed can only truly be seen as universal when they become predictable - i.e. if we are experiencing a semi-millenial shift now and therefore we predict that one will occur 500 years hence, and it does, then "we" can begin to be more sure of the significance of the timing (yeah I know none of us will be around then ;-) ) So, I guess to begin with I'm happy to say, yes, we can see "Great" shifts happening at almost regular intervals in history, but I'm not yet convinced that there is a mechanistic and predictable rhythm to them.

Back to the plot... Tickle uses the analogy of a cable... with three sections - a protective (waterproof) covering, a mesh sleeve and a Core (consisting of three intertwined threads)...

The Covering = The Story of community - the shared history of the "social unity" or the "ethos"

The Mesh = The world view - the common agreement or interpretation of the Story - the consensus of how the world works

The Core =

1) Spirituality - the experiences and values of the individual

2) Corporeality - the evidence - outward signs -  of the existence of the community/religion/society

3) Morality - the objective enactment or application of the values

Tickle suggests that every 500 years or so the Covering - the story comes under such stress that not only is it ruptured but so is the Mesh - the world view - when she says they "take a simultaneous blow"... this reminds me of the relationship between meaning and perspective transformation  - in relation to the work of Jack Mezirow "Transformative Dimensions of Adult Learning") that we often have to reflect on and transform our awareness of meaning (schema) i.e. we look at how we live and realise it doesn't work, so we reform our meaning structures to form new schemes - but, there comes a point when our reflection not only challenges the way we respond to our perspective - the way we believe the world exists - but the perspectives themselves.  In these terms one could say that the Covering takes blows on a regular basis - the story we tell/share gets challenged and reformed - but significantly less regularly does the impact affect not only the story about how we live in the world, but also our common understanding of the world itself... when this happens we get thrown into a "Great" shift... and we have to explore deeper the factors through which our Perspectives take shape i.e. our spirituality - the experiences and values that emerge in our individual lives and in our relationships with each other and our context.

What is clear is that we are undergoing some/several major shifts which are seriously challenging our perspectives of life... one thing we should be careful of is assuming that a global perspective transformation will necessarily lead to a global meaning consensus... each culture/context/country may well experience the perspective shift - the "Great Emergence" but even a common shift will cause a different scheme for living to emerge in a different context/community... if there's one thing post-modernity (for want of a better label) should teach us it is a respect for contextual schema!

More to come.

Technorati Tags: Books: Culture: Emerging Church: Great Emergence: Post-Modernity: theology

Comments

[barry taylor]

Perhaps Phyllis' idea of the 'great emergence' is best understood as an umbrella term reflecting shifts that are occurring contextually around the globe. I agree with you on the contextual issue and think that it is always too easy to bring everything into a neatly packaged schema--a global meaning consensus would seem to be unlikely, a remnant of a different era and not the shift she is alluding to perhaps? If the shift heralds anything I think it will be particularity over universality--this is the great challenge of the great emergence to traditional faiths like Christianity. I am looking forward to reading more of your comments.

[Mark]

Thanks Barry... Indeed! I don't mean to suggest that Phyllis is suggesting a uniform expression/Story will emerge from "The Great Emergence" in fact I think she makes that clear that that idea is a myth as she goes on to discuss the "Great Reformation" i.e. that contrary to some reformed thought even that shift had a plurality of expression/story (more on that when I post on the second section)... and I too think that this current shift asks questions of hegemony itself and not just who holds the power narrative... but I think it's interesting to hear people say things like "post-modernity is a western phenomena" and I wonder if this is because people are looking at the schema and describing it as the cultural shift itself (not sure if I'm making sense here... I don't have the language!) i.e. this is what the cultural emergence looks like in the west, it doesn't look like that in (for example) the global south and therefore it isn't happening there... I agree that this world view could be a hangover from a modern paradigm (seeing absolutes not contextual expression) but then I also wonder if that is my caricature of western modernity coming into play ;)