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]

Neil
thanks that's really helpful. i guess for me Kingdom is the mission focus in that final statement. i get totally why 'kingdom' can imply King and all the power language. i guess for me it's so rooted in Jesus and signs of the kingdom his continual use of the phrase 'the kingdom of God is like' and the way he contunally subverts the power language so that the Kingdom is the place where the weak lead, the humble are exalted and the enemy is loved. But taken from all that and just used as a phrase i can well see that it could send out the wrong message.

in this of course it is linked to gospel and is a vision for the world as God wants it to be, in that sense i guess it is an agenda but hopefully not one where i get to make the world my way! for me the point is world transformation so what happens amongst the christian community is not enough. for me calling people into that life as well as being transfromed by it is part of that gospel. so i think evangelsim and social action go hand in hand, but i use that 'e' word tentatively there is so much crass, awful, bullying stuff out there under that name that i can imagine linked into the power language version of 'kingdom focus' that i do not want to endorse!

[Kieran Conroy]

A little new here, but wanted to also respond to your thoughts on kingdom. I agree its strongly loaded for a lot of people, particularly in a post-colonial world where "kingdom building" of church and crown went hand in hand as recently as 60 years ago for empires many parts of the world- and where, in a democratic society, the Episcopal Church in particular broke away from a king at its birth!

When one goes to the source, however, the words of Jesus I agree with you other replyer- the Kingdom is definately the reverse of those things, and anyone who tries imposing a kingdom otherwise is setting themselves up on the wrong side of Jesus! "Kingdom" theology has also been used recently in many Catholic circles, questioning the difference between GOD's work and the institutional Church. For some post Vatican II folks, its even offered hope that God's Kingdom includes salvation outside of the Church which, while V II declared possible, the Vatican has clamped down pretty hard on anyone trying to explore in details. Still, for many in the circles I run in, including alot of McLaren's writings as well, God's Kingdom is a mysterious Becoming in our midst, something bigger, and more liberative than anything any of us can pin down or control. In many ways, it gets at the heart of Emergent, I think.

I like how you mentioned "process" and "community." Are there "translations" we can come up with for Kingdom that are more liberative, more participatory, democratic, and empowering of those on the underside- those Jesus made clear will be elevated when the "kingdom comes" (even as it is already Becoming among us)?

I like "Becoming" of God, its very process-theology sounding. Emergent itself is a great word, sees God's new stirrings coming up from the ground like "emergent" plants in a rainforest, bursting into life when a space clears for new growth (where the Emergent Village folks coined the term). Growth of God. "Stirring of God," evoking God's generative movement over our world today, just as El* stirred the waters in the Beginning.

* I use "El" as a pronoun beyond male or female, drawn from one of the earliest names of God, after good Anglican Madeline L'Engle's habit. Incidently it also sounds like "she" in French!

[Revnelli]

Thanks Kieran, I'm between two places on the question of language. I don't think we can re-claim words which have strong cultural overtones (in whatever direction) that we don't want - language is living and it's meanings are decided by the majority or by powerful voices in culture. Yet I'm not comfortable with starting anew - it's the trad in me. I look for old words whose meaning fits, or can be fitted, the sense I need. So I like to process orientated approach of the "becoming of God", but I'd want to find something in the traditional vocabluary and extend its meaning.
Thus Gospel works for me - maybe as a shorthand for "the good news of the kingdom of God".

and FWIW I try to manage without a personal pronoun for God. The repetition of God can sound a bit clunky, but in that I think it makes a point similar to the Hebrew tradition of writing G*d (or equivalent) - and thus places God in a category of God's own.

[Kieran Conroy]

Revnelli-

Good thoughts. I know language is so hard to wrestle with sometimes. I have many close friends reclaiming the title "pagan" as a way to connect with what they see to be a sense of "indigenous" European heritage- but the term itself carries millennia of complicated history and negative baggage. For many, they see claiming it as a sort of liberationist view (much as those in the queer community claim that term). When I try describing their faith in academic or social settings, however, I invariably have people worry I'm insulting someone. And its also a sensitive term to many non-European indigenous groups, who don't want to come near it after its colonial uses.

I like your idea of trying to reclaim traditional terms that might fit Christianity better. The rich thing about the greco-roman context and languages are the fact they contained a mix of democratic and imperial systems- and the church itself is birthed in that mix.

The word church itself might provide some insights- namely the ekklesia or public assembly which the term comes out of. Its one of the most democratic bodies in the ancient world (albeit one that generally only included property-holding men in the first Greek assemblies), and the church's own choice of it probably directly connects to the radically egalitarian aspects we know existed on some level in its earliest days.

Perhaps ekklesia-derived associations might make a good replacement for the larger Kingdom for speaking to those who wrestle with it. An ekklesia as an assembly of God, a GATHERING of God.

I like that one- it doesn't limit God's welcome the way now familiar church-language does- and hints at the simultaneous escatological and now-happening Gathering in of humanity and Creation intended by Christ's Gospel. It can, like the Kingdom mean a community or activity... and it still has some sense of extension across space- people gather, or are gathered in from many places. We can envision God Gathering all of Creation, not just human beings, into the vision of a new heaven and a new Earth we see the birth-pangs of now.

Its also the name of one of my emerging communities up in Salem- so I might get their advice on this. :)

[Deanne Gibbs-Brown]

FWIW: Speaking of words that are "loaded" with negative history, I personally have more trouble with 'church,' (because it represents both recent and historical authoritarian top down control of community and spiritual journey). When I hear "do church," I ask "Am I required to "do church?" I am much more interested in building community. Journeying with others.... My personal favorite is" first century community" or practice. Which recalls us to a community operating in a counter cultural process. Even a community dependent on each other for survival, as well as spiritual nurture. Then I can easily move forward to the "ancient practices" language and actions drawn from the monastic movement of about 500 CE. While I am Anglican/Episcopalian practically from birth, I am also a proponent of the ministry and "priesthood" (ouch! loaded word) of every person seeking/following God in Jesus.

Now how many of the words in that paragraph does everyone trip over? and why? We only hammer out the language by considering/hearing each other's perspectives.

[Steve Hollinghurst]

the langauge issues are interesting. language as we use it and understand is always evolving. our problem is that whilst expressions of faith also evolve they are roooted in a long tradition.

as part of my job i train people in the UK in cross-cultural misisona nd chruch planting but seeking to enable that to emerge from a multi-cultural, multi-faith and post-modern society. i find increasingly i am telling folks their aim is to build chrsitian community cause the word church means, even for these folks who are on the whole radicals not wedded at all to insitution, a building and ministers and the tradtional sunday pattern. so when we talk of say starting churhc in night club culture they immediately think 'tradtioanl church' and they try to think how to trandslate it, and find you can't. when i get them to think christian community they start to think what might emerge form the context. so in that sense i see the sense of the different language

however i see something else also happenign that i think is not so good when we stop useing the word church. people start getting confused with 'church as it was in christendom' and 'church as the expression fo christian community expressed in the foundoigng of faith'. the Christendom model was quite frankly an expression fo chruch that had in truth incresingly failed to be what theologically the term church means, hence the ekklesia comment from keiron, also of course the concept of church isn;t just about our word for ekklesia, the imagery of thre body of christ and the bride of christ actually contribute a lot more to the understanding of church than the ekklesia as a the gathering, which focus us on church worshio and meetings too much and not enough on being chrisrt in the world and being trasnfomed in relationship to christ in this world in the world that is becoming. the danger is when we say 'let's stop calling it church' people start thinking we need ot do soemthing new when the problem is that we need to get back to being (and not doing!) church properly. if the word churhc has got bad baggage it's cause christendom turned into a political instutition desgined to enforce religious power in society and sheppherd a population all assumed to be christian. the result was a powerful and thsu sometimes authoriatian institution with no focus on trasnformation of the world or people, all about maintianance and not about mission.

now how we are church as christ;s body cause that body is sent 'as the father sent me' is incarnational and thus not a restorationsist movment to 're-create the ealry church' that was the shape of the body in it's time and place, we need ot discover what it is in ours, but it will be church whatever name we use, and i fear if we totally disconnect form that word it will just be another bad form of church. so perhaps use other words but keep conencting them to the 'c' word?

[Revnelli]

One other interesting development I've noticed is the use of "Church" to describe the meeting place or/and gathered community of any religion. EG a Muslim church, a Buddhist church This seems to be mainly done by those outside of the religions.
I have some ambivalence about this as I see church as a particularly Christian term. However, it gives me hope that the word 'church' can be loosing some of the negative associations Kieran and Deanne identify, and can be used as a more neutral term.

[Ian Mobsby]

I think there is a deeper question - what does it mean to be Anglican ecclesiologically. What is distinctive about this tradition, and what of this tradition is key then to hold onto sociologically and theologically, so that we can then seek the question - what should the church look like in a new post-modern altro-modern context in terms of worship mission and community.

For me, it is the Trinitarian Ecclesiology at the heart of Anglicanism that is crucial to an understanding of a distinctive Christian community. Its that unity in diversity, the practice of presence, a commitment to wanting a relational community modelling a deep expression of church that attempts to live out perichoretically the call for church to be a visible representation of the invisible kingdom of God. This depth is key if we attempt to ask the question how should we live? How do we live IN contemporary culture but not OF contemporary culture.

So for me, the Anglimergent communities I did some research on a few years back - was the startling rediscovery of a Trinitarian Ecclesiology, which was essential at the time of the foundation of the Anglican church in the carnage of the reformation. Just see how many of these anglimergents bang on about Rublev's ikon and begin and end alt worship services with an invocation to the Trinity - you then get the picture.... So with these in place - it makes sense what Ryan Bolger identified as the 9 chariacteristics of the Emerging Church - because each of these is about living out a Trinitarian Ecclesiology using Avery Dulles' Mystical Communion Model combined with a Sacramental model.... So with this in mind, each Anglimergent community approaches your questions above, being very aware that there will be different flavours for different contexts and social groupings.

So for me - we need to dig this deep - to be able then work out what lies at the heart of our Anglican tradition, to then reimagine and reframe this in the context of the current expression of post industrial western culture.

Hope this makes sense.

Incidently, I think a lot of Anglimergents are seeking to work in a context of spiritual tourism, the new brave world of spirituality, and seeking to explore how we be a Christian community in but not of this culture. So for some like Moot in London, it is about seeking to assist people from being Spiritual Tourists to co-travelling Christian pilgrims. This is easy to say, but very difficult in practice to do, and hence why we need people like Steve (in this discussion) who have the time to support missional explorative engagement in this growing new mission area.....

So those are my two pennths

Ian Mobsby