Emerging Church - Julie Clawson

Emerging in Hope

Posted on January 31, 2013July 12, 2025

Following the Emergence Christianity gathering a few weeks ago, there have been numerous conversations on blogs, podcasts, and Facebook around the nature of the conversation and who exactly gets to define it. I don’t want to rehash the arguments here nor do I have time for the ill-informed “the emerging church is dead” comments. The world has changed and the church (whether it likes it or not) is changing with it as it has always done. Yes, there were those who claimed the label “emerging” because it was the latest fad and there are those still trying to apply it like a veneer to a dying institution, but what is happening around the world is far larger than any one manifestation of the phenomenon.

But responding to change is never easy. When it is obvious that the way things have been done are no longer working one has the option of simply staking one’s claim in the past or adapting to the new situation. Yet to adapt implies the uncertainty of change and that can lead to fear. Fear of the unknown, yes, but also fear that in making changes we will just be repeating the same mistakes that have come before.

In the midst of all these discussions on emergence, I came across this passage in Anselm Min’s The Solidarity of Others in a Divided World that helped clarify the situation for me –

William James once spoke of two attitudes toward truth and error. One attitude is that of the sceptic, who is driven by an obsessive fear of falling into error and does not want to believe in anything except of sufficient evidence. The other is the attitude of the pragmatist, who is more driven by the hope of finding truth than by the fear of falling into error and is therefore willing to risk even believing in error in order to find truth. Deconstruction is more like the sceptic than the pragmatist. It is fundamentally fearful of all determinate embodiments of human sociality in history because of the terror of the same. It may offer prayers and tears for the coming of the wholly other and its messianic justice, but it does not want to dirty its hands by working at establishing determinate institutions of religion and politics. In the name of differance it flees, in neognostic fashion, from the historical determinacy of matter, body, senses, objectivity, and sociality; from the world of presence, identity, and totality; and takes refuge in the dream of the impossible. (44)

While I would not be so quick to dismiss the need for deconstruction, I see the danger of getting caught up in its cycle of fear. It is one thing to diagnose the problems in the church and its disconnect from the realities of the world, but while voicing such might be a necessary part of a healing process or the claiming of permission to seek freedom, it can be easy to let fear confine us to the refuge of this dream of the impossible.

We have seen the pain and the problems in the church and we want something better. Yet the idea of imperfect people imperfectly trying to put flesh to the idea of moving forward in hope is scary. They will mess things up, they will create broken systems, and they will fail in their attempts to embody the dreams and ideals of the emerging ethos. Inevitably, structures and institutions will develop as the pragmatists seek to build rather than just dream. And because such things have terrorized in the past they in and of themselves are feared. It then becomes easier to attack those who try to actually do something than it is to take that step into the unknown.

I like to dream and to deconstruct, but I need to have hope. I need to have some solid ground upon which to place my feet as I journey towards that hope. I need to see ideas assume flesh and exist in social actualities. I’m not all that good at making it happen, but at heart I am a pragmatist. I cannot just say that a better world is possible, I need to live it. Even if that means I might fail or (what’s even scarier) never stop journeying towards hope always in the process of deconstructing and building.

I am emerging not just out of something but into something. I am done with talk for the sake of talk (or even for the sake of hearing if my voice resonates with others); I need to do something that affirms hope. That is how I am moving forward these days.

Emerging Christianity, Soularize, and the Future

Posted on October 23, 2011July 11, 2025

I spent this past week hanging out with the awesome folk at Soularize 2011 – a three-day learning party in (not so) sunny San Diego. This year’s Soularize marked both its tenth anniversary as well as its final chapter. Ten years ago the first Soularize (put on by Spencer Burke of TheOoze.com) was hosted by none other than Mark Driscoll at his Mars Hill church in Seattle. That fact right there is evidence that a lot has changed in this past decade. But a lot more has changed since then, the world has shifted and along with it this emerging conversation.

Ten years ago I had never heard of the emerging church. Oh, I was reading postmodern philosophy and asking all sorts of questions that were getting me in trouble, but I had no idea that there were other Christians discussing these sorts of ideas. I had just finished my first round of grad-school having studied Intercultural Studies and Missions at Wheaton College. I often had made my classmates (and a few of my professors) uncomfortable by asking why missions concepts like contextualization of the Gospel, socio-linguistic relativity, and intercultural difference could not also be applied to our own American culture. If it was okay to have the Gospel make sense culturally in some third world country, why couldn’t it make sense to all people in the United States?

But this was the era when “purpose driven” churches were cutting edge and where in a post-9/11 flag-draped America, homogeneity trumped authenticity. Facebook and Twitter were still years away, so it was a lot harder to discover that you weren’t the only one asking the crazy questions. Even so, it was early in 2002 when someone recommended to my husband and me that we might enjoy reading a book by this guy Brian McLaren. As others have often mentioned, what I discovered in A New Kind of Christian wasn’t completely new, but more of an affirmation that there were others exploring the same sorts of questions about faith as I was. And knowing that one is not alone holds a special power. Knowing that I didn’t have to ignore those nagging questions or divorce my intellect from my faith saved my faith. Instead of a hollow and confining static system, it had been transformed into a living reality.

Knowing that there were others out there meant I had to find them – which is where The Ooze enters in. I found that community online, and more specifically its message boards. I created a profile with a fake name (MaraJade) and a false avatar and jumped in with both feet. Over the next few years the evolution of my faith played out on those boards. I eventually added my real name as virtual friendships morphed into physical ones, but it was there that I began to re-imagine theology, and church, and what it even meant to be a Christian. While it was not always the safest place to explore such questions in a public forum, it was the only place where such dialogue could even occur. It is amusing now to think as The Ooze shuts down that all these old conversations, these snapshots of a faith in transition, will now be archived at Fuller Seminary. I pity the sociologist of religion who will sift through them someday for her dissertation.

But as the conversation grew, territories were claimed and lines began to be drawn. Certain groups declared that there was a range of acceptable questions (generally permitting the re-imagining of worship practices but not theological stances) and they (loudly) denounced the rest of us. Others set up camp as either for the Ooze or for Emergent Village – competing for publishing contracts, conference speaking spots, and (of course) advertising dollars. Those of us involved in both observed that tension and felt like we were being made to choose sides. Looking back, it seems so silly that in a conversation about deconstructing the systems of modernism in favor of re-imaging a wholistic and healthy way to be the church such petty fights would ever be waged, but I guess that is the way of man (and I intentionally used the masculine there). For me the conversation was holy in whatever guise it took.

I never made it to a Soularize until this year and I regret that. But there was still something intriguing to enter into that space ten years on and discover where the past decade has taken the conversation. In a struggling economy the trappings of financial success have long since lost the power to sway the conversation. Petty differences have given way to collaboration as those who believe that re-imagining church for a postmodern world is more than just the latest trend to follow. The angst of needing to constantly deconstruct where we all have been has mellowed into a loosely held space where dreams and critique coexist. The urgency to fix the world has passed while the passion to hope for a better world remains.

In short, the emerging conversation I encountered at Soularize this year was one of hope. While it might not burn as brightly as it once did, a bonfire requires too much empty energy to sustain itself. What we have left is a smoldering movement – not in the negative sense of having been reduced to ashes, but of the sort of long-burning coals that warm homes and bake bread. And there are still new people joining the conversation – asking their own questions and desperately attempting to cling to their faith in meaningful ways. But how they enter in looks different now that there are those of us who have matured in this conversation for the past ten years or more there to welcome them in.

Groups like Soularize and The Ooze may be winding down, but that is because the conversation has shifted. We no longer just need space for questions; we need space to build as well. Learning parties are no longer just about questions, they are also about formulating responses with our lives. I am grateful for this last Soularize for serving as a transition in that shift. And I am looking forward to what lies ahead.

Recommended Reading – Graven Ideologies

Posted on June 21, 2007July 8, 2025

Back when I was a student at Wheaton College before I had ever heard of this thing called the Emerging Church (back before Emergent even existed I think) I began to encounter the philosophical roots of postmodernism. I was intrigued and in an attempt to find out more about this way of discussing and perceiving truth and reality I signed up for a class called “Christianity and Postmodernism” taught by Bruce Benson. Needless to say I was in over my head as I struggled to comprehend new ideas and unfamiliar terms. I somehow managed to stumble through the class with a passing grade (and that includes the utterly nervewracking oral exams that I to this day have no clue what I actually talked about).

A few years later Benson published his lecture notes from that class as the book Graven Ideologies. (btw- I am so not one of the students listed from that class that he acknowledges as helping him refine his thoughts and all that…). Anyway, after recently reading Peter Rollin’s How (not) to Speak of God I knew that I had heard the idea of conceptual idolatry discussed before and remembered that class. So to make a long story short, I finally got around to reading Graven Ideologies. It’s amazing how much more sense it all made now that I’ve been a part of this emerging/postmodern discussion for a number of years.

But my point here is not to point out how stupid I was a few years ago (or now), but to highly recommend this book. For those of you who are fans of Rollins’ book and/or find yourself forced into endless discussions on the nature of truth Benson’s book is a must read. It is an accessible introduction to the main ideas and writers of postmodern philosophy that interprets their implications for Christian faith. It is all about sounding out idols in our conceptions of and language about God. As with Rollins’ book, it asks how we can ever manage to actually speak of God without falling into blasphemy, but goes a lot further in how it answers that question. I fully admit to feeling too lazy to write a detailed review of the book at the moment, so I’ll send anyone who is interested here. But this book is now high on my list of recommended must reads for anyone who wishes to think through postmodernism and its influence on the theological discussions of the emerging church.

Why read the philosophical background and discuss these ideas at all? Besides being fascinating and intellectually provoking, it has everything to do with how we practice our faith. I want to leave you with two quotes from Benson’s epilogue regarding that. Basically we explore these ideas and sound out the conceptual idols in our faith so that we can have a right relationship with God and participate in true worship.

p.226 – “…one recognizes that everything one ‘knows’ about God still falls short: we do not own the truth. While we point to the truth, we are not that truth, nor is it something we possess. At most, God provides glimpses of his truth. Yet to say that we have glimpses is to say that we indeed see. God has not left us blind. We have a glimpse of the Word made flesh. And as Jesus attests, “If you know me, you will know my Father also” (Jn 14:7). Scripture is clear that we can know God and his truth in a real sense. Yet we know him in the sense of a personal relationship, not in the sense of grasping his eidos. There is true sight, but it is not an exhaustive seeing.”

p.240 “… praise results precisely when the limits of predication regarding God are recognized. That recognition leads to a simultaneous revelation: we “see” both how limited we are and how unlimited God is. It is in this moment of revelation that true praise can take place. Note that, properly speaking, praise isn’t usually something that we can make happen. Instead praise is something that happens to us. And it doesn’t really happen very often. Why not? The answer is that we don’t really recognize our own limits most of the time. We may acknowledge them intellectually, but actually experiencing them – having them placed in front of our face -is rare. Thus true worship, in which we have a keen sense of God’s worth, takes place relatively infrequently.”