What are the fundamental Anglimergent questions?

[Tim Mathis]

What are the questions that initiated this conversation, and what questions continue to direct us?

My ideas?

What is worth continuing in the Anglican Tradition?

What needs to be reconstituted?

What is worth throwing out?

Who is God?

How do we even talk about God?

How do we experience God?

Where do we fit in to our larger culture?

What does the kingdom of God look like?

How do we bring the kingdom of God into our community?

[Steve Hollinghurst]

tim
for me those questions are about direction...begin with the kingdom questions and those at the end of the list. only then ask the anglican questions at the start. and yes good questions...in the right order ;o)

[Tim Mathis]

thanks Steve, I think you're right - a funny thing happened on the way to ordination for me a few weeks ago. I had an examining priest ask me a question about how committed I am to the Episcopal Church, noting that some emergents see it as 'a means to an end'. I'm still not exactly sure what he was getting at, but I think I agree, if he was suggesting what you're suggesting - that for me the Kingdom of God comes prior to the ongoing life of the institution.

[Steve Hollinghurst]

indeed the kingdom has to come before the institution, but i can also love the institution and be passionate about playing my part in it's call to enable the comming of the kingdom. the latter is something the instituion can righlty expect from me, but putting the insitution before the kindgom not. i doubt TEC would want that of you either....but that doesn't stop it ending up that way!

[Edward Green]

I would guess at its heart the Anglican tradition has the idea of being reformed and catholic. In continuity with the past, and drawing from the richness of the tradition, but also engaging with the future and present, willing to change and be transformed.

That strikes me as a pretty good reason to be an Anglimergent.

[Mike Croghan]

Good question, and good questions - and agree 100% with Steve's ordering.

Very interesting question, too, from your examiner, Tim. And Steve's thoughts on it have me thinking, too - I suspect this is really what puts me in a different place from many folks here, and certainly from someone who should be pursuing ordination: I truly do not love the institution. I don't even like it much. I deeply love a good many of the people who compose it. I deeply love the Anglican (and reformed and catholic) traditions that the institution seeks, sometimes, to guard and cultivate. I even love the potential it has for, as Steve says, enabling the kingdom, and sometimes even think that capability is greater than its simultaneous potential for stifling and inhibiting the kingdom. I do not wish to separate myself from it. But love it? No. Definitely not.

Hmm. Sorry for the self-centered rumination.

[Steve Hollinghurst]

mike
no apologies needed, the issue many face with a radical vision is am i a worker in the institution or a prophet outside it, part of that raises tensions on this issue. i think we need both. in many ways i do love the institution, but it also frustrates me immensly. like many i am in it but usually on its edges. i don't love the way institutionalism, sets in, but i think i could say i loved the insitution but aslo desperatley want it to change.

[Tim Mathis]

I've found that the most lively discussions on Anglimergent historically center around 'the institution'. It's probably the source of the most pain and potential for we emergent types.

Do I love it? No, probably not in its present state. i love it more if I think of it as 'the tradition' or 'the body of Christ in Anglican expression' or 'the semipermeable membrane that allows us to live out our mission' (Karen Ward's terminology). I envy folks like Mike, who operate outside of it in an Anglican mold, but ultimately these people are my adopted family. 'Anglican, whether I like it or not.'

The way I see it, at a fundamental level, when we start 'protecting the tradition/institution', what happens is we start to kill it - we push it towards inauthenticity and stasis rather than allowing it to live as 'the Anglican expression of the Kingdom of God'.

But now I'm all sidetracked - it does indeed seem that one of the most contentious questions of Anglimergence is 'whither the institution?'

[Mike Croghan]

I have to admit it's become more of a burning question for me lately - which, frankly, pisses me off. Most of me wants very much not to give a crap about that question. I don't want to feel like I might need to take a proactive role in influencing "whither the institution". If I'm invited to help out in a particular context, well, sure. (This has actually happened with my local Lutheran synod - but DC-area Anglicans seem largely uninterested in "emergence", with the occasional exception of folks at the National Cathedral.)

In particular, though I have the highest regard for the folks gathering soon at St. Gregory's in SF to plan an Anglimergent presence at General Convention, I really don't want it to be my business to work on maneuvering emergence onto the radar screen of the institutional powers that be. This is something that needs to, well, "emerge" organically, I think. I'm not interested in trying to catalyze change in contexts where folks aren't actually hungry for that change. I'm afraid it's futile, I'm afraid it's unkind, and I'm afraid my own lingering bitterness toward the institution makes me probably too ready to say, "Hey, if the Cap'ns can't see the iceberg, then let the ridiculous thing sink." (I'm also not claiming that the folks at St. Gregory's are unrealistic or naive or anything like that - just confessing my powerful aversion to the whole undertaking.)

It also seems powerfully arrogant for me to try to change the institution when I don't have a direct stake in such change. It just seems like "none of my business". But I know I'm an arrogant cuss either way.

But what I've been reflecting on since December is this: it is literally impossible to separate the institution from my friends and loved ones who are living and working within it. So what about that? Hmm.

Tim, I feel the same way, largely, I think. "Anglican" is an indelible part of my identity, and Anglicans/Episcopalians/the folks from my home church are definitely my family. But, you know, different people have different experiences with their families. Based on those experiences, some people move just down the street and come home for dinner every Sunday; others move to the next state but come home for every holiday; others move to the opposite coast, call home only when necessary, and take care not to lend Mom and Dad any money.

But anyway, back to your list of questions. Here's another one or three (these are second-order questions, after the core questions): How do we organize our communities? Who leads what, and how is this decided? What do we do together, how do we do it, and how is that decided?

[Tim Mathis]

I love the way you've extended the family metaphor Mike. Very true, very true. I've adopted an Anglican family b/c I left behind an Evangelical one that I don't have the heart or desire or ability to convert. Maybe I'm Anglimergent b/c my baggage is too heavy to be emergent in the tradition of my youth...

Which makes me an inside/outsider with Episcopalians - many of whom, I'm finding here on the West Coast are actually hungry for change. I'm wondering if it would be possible for me to be an Episcopalian on the East Coast/outside of the PNW context where there is some degree of felt need for re-evaluation (similar to what I picked up in NZ Anglicanism)? I'm not sure.

My sense is that the only real way forward for this thing 'emergence' is to get people to ask the questions we've been talking about here, and to answer them honestly. Catalyzing change, I think, is just that.

One question I'd definitely add to the list is "What do the answers to the rest of our questions require us to do?"

I always enjoy your thoughts Mike.

tm

[Revnelli]

Hi,
Bearing in mind the comments already made, I want to say that I am suspicious of the "kingdom" questions - especially when we seem to be giving an "objective" answer. I see too many people defining the "kingdom" as just another way of imposing their own agenda on others. So my suggestion for the key praxis question is "simply"
1) How do we do church in our culture?

I think there are two questions which follow this
2) How do we do theology in our culture?
3) What are the valid theological question for PostModern times?

I think our answers to all three questions will be significantly informed by our anglimergent heritage. And I don't believe that divergent answers are an issue - maybe process - and what that process does to us - is more important than product.

Neil

[Steve Hollinghurst]

Neil
OK interesting take, tell us more on your critique of Kingdom questions (aware i am one of the folks asking them) for me church of itself is an irrelevance without the kingdom focus just a bunch of folks flatering their egos. so think we can't answer how we do church unless we ask the Kingdom questions? but kind of anticipating you see this differentley and want to hear more

[Revnelli]

My issue with kingdom questions is firstly that they can sound very propositional/ objective. I don't know what the 'kingdom' means, except that I have heard people (ok - evangelicals :-) ) talking about "kingdom values" and a "kingdom agenda" as if they have a particular insight into what God has in mind (Thus in "thy kingdom come, thy will be done", 'kingdom' and 'will' are synonyms). I have a concern that some of those using the term have an agenda in mind and the term 'kingdom' is used as a shorthand for that agenda.

I am also very aware of how 'kingdom' language sounds in my context. For liberals/post-liberals who have been sensitised to power language, terms such as Lord and King are used with discretion.

I sense that this may be a matter of teminology, I suspect that when Steve talks of 'a kingdom focus', I would be happy to translate to the 'gospel', noting maybe that the two are connected as being parts of "the good news of the kingdom of God". The nature of the "gospel" is also very much up for debate (eg 'social' gospel vs 'proclaimation' gospel), but my sense is that that debate is out in the open, whist there is still an implication in the term 'kingdom' that there is only one legitimate version.

For me, the focus lies with the community, the church, the family (taking Mike's point) of those who are struggling to follow Christ. The institution is not in focus, it is the group of people who are the focus, just as in my biological family I don't worry too much about social critiques of the nuclear family as an institution. I just try and make it work.

I agree that the church needs a focus, but I think I want to suggest that that focus needs to be in terms of process . It is the nature of the community that matters - who we are, not what we do. The Statement on the 'about' page speaks volumes to this -

"Anglimergent is a generous and generative friendship among diverse Anglicans, engaging emerging church and mission.
Our aim to become and remain friends, and in so doing to incarnate a deeply Anglican ecclesiology (way of being church)......."