I’ve read this book over the last two days. It’s meant to be a defining book of the emergent church and what it believes and stands for. If you don’t know about this church, the author defines emergent churches as ‘the specifically new forms of church life rising from the modern, American church of the 20th century’ (pXIX).  It’s a movement that arose in the late ’90s as a response to postmodernism. I bought and read this book after reading an excerpt from a website which made me want to read more. So – what did I think?

Firstly – Tony Jones writes very well. His writing is not clunky but smooth, inviting, warm and generous. For me this is always an important first start. You could be writing on the most important topic ever but if you can’t write well, who is going to read what you’ve done?

Secondly – church movements usually arise as a response to a deficit in mainstream churches; there is something lacking that new movements make up for (for example, the Mormons arose in part out of Joseph Smith’s dissatisfaction with predestination).

The emergents have partly arisen (as well as through postmodernism) out of dissatisfaction with USA fundamentalists and to a lesser extent, evangelicals. Tony Jones says that some think the ‘theologian and the biblical scholar have lost all touch with reality and instead busy themselves with the latest technical innovations in ‘how to do church’…if the emergent church has anything rare, or even unique, it’s this nexus of theory and praxis, of innovative theology and innnovative practice’ (pXIX).

Jones argues that Christians aren’t concerned with denominations anymore and the limitations those denominations place on flexibility in worship and doctrine, as well as their priority on professional clergy, buildings, bureaucracies and constant bickering between liberal and evangelical Christians. People are tired of denominations and want to seek out new forms of church.

Without going on too long, I found some of Tony Jones’ comments and critiques on traditional churches spot on the mark (eg we evangelicals can neglect core ethical issues that confront people every day at work [p17]; we are too individualistic which means we neglect being able to talk about systemic social issues like abortion etc [17]; we avoid talking about how to live practically as Christians while we are waiting for Christ to return [17-18]; sometimes we white Christians just need to shut up and listen to other people and especially minorities more [p28]; we have a habit of packing Christianity in modernistic ways in a post-modern world).

I also enjoyed how he described the emergent church and its characteristics through use of story and narrative (itself a postmodern way of doing things). There was the story of the ‘postmodern negro’ blogger, and Frank the truck driver, who both found acceptance at emergent churches and a place where they could be real and worship Jesus.

Jones describes emergents as people who seek to have open conversation and discussion about theology, whilst having a generous orthodoxy in doing so. They teach theology with humility; as a result it is often a bit difficult to pin them down on a statement of faith. In fact, they would not necessarily liked to be pinned down as this assumes they have all the answers to the Bible. This is an arrogant claim for anyone to make, they would argue. 

At the back of the book is an appendix with a response to Don Carson and others who have criticised the emergent church. In the emergent response, it seems clear that emergents are more evangelical than we give them credit for: Christ is the only way to God, they believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, and the creeds that mark out the Anglican faith (although I din’t necessarily find this in Jones’ book). The response was also generous and humble in its tone.   

Tony Jones makes the comparison of the emergent church with the development of LINUX software; emergent churches are an open network where theology and church practice can be openly modified by users.

I found a lot in this book I liked. I think that the extremist conservatism of the USA is not so much of a problem in Australia. A lot of Tony Jones’ comments about fundamentalists are very sharp, which probably reflects how many kooks there are over in the US that he has had to deal with. His criticisms of fundamentalism and evangelicalicalism I felt were sometimes harsh and smelt of stereotyping. Sometimes, however, they were very close to the bone.  

I found I could at least half of Tony Jones’ emergent boxes (emergent church characteristics are placed in boxes and distributed through the book) , as most Sydney Anglicans could. Some of the boxes were – generosity in conversation with those we have differences with; a Trinitarian view of God which highlights our ability to be relational (God was in himself before we ever were); church should be just as beautiful and as messy as life; God’s spirit is responsible for good in this world; a hope-filled eschatology; not being afraid of paradox in the Bible (ie not avoiding the hard bits)…and I could go on.

I did feel uneasy about the flexible theology thing. I could understand that what we stubbornly hold onto in our theological positions today may well be stupid and obsolete in 100 years (like slavery in the USA was understood to be biblical by so many 200 years ago). Jones also argues that we can emphasise different angles of the gospel depending on our cultural context. I would have liked him to give an example of how this would work (eg the atonement – as far as I could see there is only one line of reference to the emergent view of the atonement, on pps 147 and 148).

Although it is never expressly stated, I think the emergents would be hesitant to give their unanimous support to reformed theology. Their argument would be that reformed theology was carved out of the cultural context of the 15th and 16th centuries – today, a new theology needs to be carved out of the context of postmodernism. However, they would not use reformed theology as a springboard necessarily. A reformed foundationalism is not required – only continuing conversation and dialogue about future theology under teh guide of the Holy Spirit. Also, the doctrine of scripture is not reformed really as evangelicals would recognize it. Talk of ’salvation’ is not really discussed in the book.

However – I was delighted to read this book. I agreed with a lot of it. I’d like to talk more with him on the bits I didn’t quite get. Although in Sydney we are not as fundamentalist as those people Jones gets stuck into – and so the power of his critique of fundamentalism was sometimes a bit harsh for me –  I thought this is a book well worth reading for a young minister about to start a future as a church builder and leader. It was good to dialogue with this book, even if I didn’t get everything and certainly didn’t agree with everything.

My next book to read in response to this one is ‘The Courage to be Protestant’ by David F. Wells.