Why I am Emergent

When I’m with Emergent types, I often get asked “Why are you Episcopalian” which I have many answers (including this one I gave to Bruce Reyes-Chow) to and most respect. But when I’m with Episcopalians I often get a turned up eye and a weird look when I say I’m interested in the Emerging Church. Of course, being Episcopalian most are too polite to say anything but it has lead me to think some about why I’m “emerging” and why other Episcopalians might be put off by it.

First, I think many Episcopalians see this as peculiar is largely because they really don’t know what it is. If they’ve even heard of it, most think it’s some weird evangelical thing (because, let’s face it, at some point it really was just a bunch of evangelicals, mainly). Or they might imagine it some some naive bunch of idealists with pie in the sky dreams, understanding nothing. Some might be threatened by the severe egalitarian ethic (though I don’t think I’ve encountered this – as much as the Episcopal church has priests and bishops and such, I rarely experience a feeling that they are spiritually privileged and I am very much for an educated, professional clergy.)

At the heart of it, as much as we hardly understand what is Emerging as Emergents, we are even less understood by those who stand outside our conversation. We thus become whatever is projected onto us, like any other group that little is known about except some experience here or there or some rumor they might have heard.

But why am I Emergent? What is going on that so interests me? Why should I split my precious time trying to serve my church and my Church? Why should I try to build ragtag communities of people who have no more in common than wanting to be a in Christ’s community?

And that’s exactly it. There is such a pure, driving purpose in the people in the Emergent community to be a community, to be neighbors to one another. We disagree but what I see over and over again is this sincere desire for dialogue and communion with one another. That excites me and inspires me. That really speaks to one of the reasons I became a Christian – Christ’s table was that great message that came to me when I struggled again and again with “What is in Jesus’s teachings that is not in the Prophets?”

Another factor, less important but still vital, is the openness to question -everything-. And I mean that. The Church forgets too quickly when it talks of tradition and theology that so much of this arose in the Constantinian captivity, the Church as handmaiden of the state. Even if one ascribes a special place to what the first of our people did it is hard to give such pride of place to the Church in Exile (which is how I’d describe the church up until very recently, and for many churches I’d say they are still captives.) Some people have problems with this, and I understand why, but even when I don’t agree with their conclusions or suggestions (and I often don’t, I rather like my high church services for instance) I love that they ask, I love that the dogma of certainty hasn’t hardened their hearts.

So that’s why I’m Emergent and Emerging, why are you (or why not!)?