A New Era in Christianity… Really?

Church historians, theologians, pastors and lay people can all tell you the church is changing. Most of them will also tell you the church is in trouble. Many of them have theories about exactly what is the nature of that trouble and from whence it comes. Some even venture to suggest a remedy. Having read several analyses of our current cultural shifts and their effects on the church, Phyllis Tickle’s analysis leaves me asking… really?

In her book, The Great Emergence, Tickle begins by suggesting the church is in the process of having a massive rummage sale, jettisoning large parts of its theology and practice, and from which will emerge a new Christianity. Tickle believes the church embarks on such a rummage sale every 500 years and that we are presently in the midst of a fifth reforming. The first of these reformings took place from within Judaism, through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and subsequent formation of the early church, which separated from the Jewish mother faith within the century. Nothing quite compares to this first formation. Tickle dates the second reforming in the sixth century with the fall of the Roman Empire and Gregory the Great providing for the perseveration of authentic Christianity from pagan influence in the monasteries. The third reshuffling she dates at the Great Schism (1054) which separated Western (Latin) Christianity from Eastern (Orthodox) Christianity and established two patriarchs. The most recent rummage sale and the most familiar to most Western Christians is the Reformation in the 15^th century.

Each of these reformings of the faith, Tickle points out, took years to develop and often occurred over the course of a century. After each church rummage sale, the church mostly settled down for 250 years until the next set of rumblings began to signal the church was beginning its process of preparing to clean house again. Tickle says in each of these historic turning points the central issue for the church has been: “Where now is our authority?” (p. 72). Tickle believes this is the key question with which the church is now wrestling in the present reforming of the church, which Tickle terms the “Great Emergence.” Corollary questions being asked in the Great Emergence are: “What is the humanness of the human?” by which I believe Tickle is asking the psychological question “What is the essence of who I am?” or “What does it mean to be human?” The second corollary question being addressed in the Great emergence is clearer: “What is the relation of all religions to one another?” Tickle then turns her attention to detailing all of the factors that have led up to the demise of the present church in the twentieth century with the resulting arrival of the emergent church.

Beginning with the great discoveries in biology and physics Tickle outlines the many changes in our society from the mid 1800s to the present, focusing on their impact on Christianity. She is particularly interested in challenges brought to the church from the scientific community and the changes to family brought on largely by women’s changing role through the last century. Tickle proposes the great piece of rummage being jettisoned through these cultural shifts is “sola scriptura” or “scripture alone,” one of the three watch words of the Reformation. Tickle argues the central question of any reforming, “Where now is our authority?”, was answered in the reformation by the affirmation that scripture was the source of authority for the Christian. She further argues that the church came to understand “scripture alone” was to be interpreted literalistically, meaning the text was to be understood by a simple reading alone. Tickle believes that the cultural challenges to this central affirmation of the reformation are what are now causing the ferment in the church and the resulting emergent Christianity that is arising. She says, “When it is all resolved – and it most surely will be – the Reformations’ understand of Scripture as it had been taught by Protestantism for almost five centuries will be dead.”

I struggle with Tickles oversimplification of the respect for scripture expressed in “sola scriptura.” Certainly the reformers did wrestle with the question of where one was to find authority in the Christian life. However, rejection of the authority of the church and of the Pope specifically, was as much about distrust of hierarchical rule as it was the rediscovery of the wonder of scripture. Luther and the reformers were enamored with the power of the scripture for determining faith. But Tickle argues that once scripture was designated as the ultimate authority (after the 30 Years War and the 80 Years War) the church returned to a state of peace. Many theologians, I believe, would argue that setting scripture as the ultimate authority was instead the beginning of chaos in the church as each individual was allowed to interpret for him/herself. Moreover I believe Tickle sets up a straw man in suggesting that literalistic interpretation of scripture was the norm for the whole church. Even the early reformers could not agree on what Jesus meant when he said, “This is my body.” To suggest that literalistic interpretation of scripture is now the central reason for the next great reforming of the church is a great over simplification of what is happening in today’s world culture socially, economically, religiously and technologically.

I began my reading of Tickle’s book with great hope as I had been intrigued by my exposure to bits and pieces of her theory in a lecture a few years ago. By the third chapter, however, I began to be uneasy with what appeared to me to be an over organization of the history of the church. Does it not seem odd that every 500 years, like clockwork, the church would experience a whole sale reconstruction? Additionally it appears that Tickle is stretching to call either the Great Schism or Gregory’s move to the monasteries a complete re- forming of the church. Finally I struggle to find significant parallels between what is happening today in the church and the major upheavals of the Reformation. I would be more tempted to compare today’s religious questing to the Great Awakening in this country in the late 1700s. I find her arguments interesting as one piece of the puzzle but not nearly compelling enough to be considered the meta-narrative for understanding the church today.