The emerging Christianity movement - Richard Rohr (Main Forum)

by Helen , The other side of Australia, Friday, March 12, 2010, 12:31 (140 days ago)

The Emerging Christianity movement

RICHARD ROHR

Revolution below the radar

In a recent article, Daniel O’Leary explained the idea of ‘Emerging Church’ as ‘an ecumenical

consensus of those who have rediscovered the charism of contemplation’. Here, one of the

movement’s champions explains how he sees ‘Emerging Christianity’ as the work of the Holy Spirit

Perhaps the terms “Emerging

Church”, or “Emerging Christianity” are new to you and seem strange, or vague? Is this the product of yet another reforming zeal? The terms are being used in different ways today, some of which are tremendously exciting and others of which miss the point. But it is my belief that something very important is happening around us, and within us. This “something”, I would argue, is a revolutionary change in Christian consciousness itself. It is a change of mind and a change of heart that has been a long time coming, but which I believe indicates our new receptivity towards the Holy Spirit. In the last 50 years, several significant developments have taken place, both within and alongside the various Christian Churches, which foster this movement. Emerging Christianity is a movement in all the Churches more than a structural reform of any one Church. Movements are the energy-building stages of things, before they start to take on characteristics of monuments, museums or machines. The question for us is: “can we keep this consciousness at the dynamic movement level?”

Spiritual globalisation is allowing Churches worldwide to benefit from these breakthroughs at approximately the same time, which of itself, I believe, is a new kind of Reformation. No one is controlling, or limit - ing this movement. We are all just trying to listen together. It might be helpful to identify 10 historical developments that I see are propelling Emerging Christianity:

∙ The recovery of the older and essential contemplative tradition, starting with Thomas Merton in the 1950s, and now spreading to all denominations. We now see that contemplation is another word for nondual consciousness.

∙ The critical biblical scholarship on a broad ecumenical level, especially honest scholarship about Jesus, that leads us far beyond the liberal reductionism and the conservative fundamentalism that divides so many Churches today.

∙ A new global sense of Christianity that is able to see the denominational divisions in a larger context. Many of the things we

historically fought about are either resolved, boring or non-essential. We have all been both victims and beneficiaries of these very specific histories and cultures, and can find unity in that.

∙ A recognition of the unnecessary limits that church protocols and historical idiosyncrasies have put on the reading and living of the Gospels for each of our denominations. This basically means a new ability to distinguish the essentials from the incidentals in church practice and teaching.

∙ A broad awareness that Jesus was clearly teaching non-violence, simplicity of lifestyle, peacemaking, love of Creation, and egostripping by offering a radical social critique to the perennial systems of domination, money and power.

∙ A common-sense and growing recognition that Jesus was clearly concerned about the specific healing and transformation of real persons and human society, on earth as it is to be in heaven, and not just intellectual belief in doctrines and moral stances, which ask almost nothing of us in terms of real change.

∙ The charismatic movement telling us that experiential Christianity is both possible and desirable, and which also leads us to a more Trinitarian theology – opening up the mystical and the prayer levels of Christianity.

∙ A developing spirituality and theology of non-violence, which allows us to pursue things in a “third way” beyond the old fight-or-

flight dualism.

∙ The new structures of community and solidarity – including recovery groups, prayer groups, study groups, contemplative gatherings, lectio divina, the “New Monasticism”, Catholic Worker houses of hospitality, mission groups for the poor and alienated – mostly being lay-led. The emphasis is on “mediating institutions” of many stripes and shapes instead of just parish churches, yet this is not “anti” the local church either. It just recognises that the typical local parish cannot answerall of our needs.

∙ A new appreciation for the many gifts and ministries described in 1 Corinthians 12, that makes “every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4: 3), instead of just concentrating on a top tier of leadership where gender and power issues dominate. With many gifts and many ministries, your legitimisation comes from actual competence, suffering the issues, and willingness to serve, and not just from ordination. This convergence of hopeful and liberating Christian themes is happening on all continents, in all denominations, at all levels. Emerging Christianity is both longing for and moving towards a following of Jesus that has much more to do with an actual daily lifestyle than with believing things. We do not want to solidify into another word-anddocument institution, but we want to stay, if at all possible, at the crucial movement and- lifestyle stage where all the vital energy is contained. We are grateful and content to let our historic Churches and denominations take care of the substructures and the superstructures of Christianity. They have trained us well, grounded us and sent us on this foreign mission. We will keep one foot in our Mother Churches, but we have something else that we must do and other places where we must place our other foot. Everything flowing out from Emerging Christianity needs to have non-dualistic thinking: a non-oppositional, contemplative mind and heart. If we settle for our old patterns of dualistic, oppositional thought, this emerging phenomenon will be just one more of the thousands of reformations in Christianity that have characterised the past 500 years. It will quickly and surely subdivide into liberal or conservative, Catholic or Protestant, intellectual or emotional, gay or straight, liturgical or Pentecostal, feminist or patriarchal, activist or contemplative, just like the other reforms have, instead of embodying the wonderful holism of Jesus, a fully contemplative way of being active and involved in our suffering world. If this at all names your experience, you are already an Emerging Christian.

■The Center for Action and Contemplation is organising two international conferences on Emerging Christianity. For more information, the website www.ac-uk.org will soon be active; or write to AC-UK, 51 Bainton Road, Oxford OX2 7AG.

14 | THE TABLET | 6 February 2010

This is a lifeboat thrown over the side of the Titanic!!!

Helen