Anglimergent: Anglican + Emergent = ?

[James Henley]

It's really interesting looking through the different people in the Anglimergent network and the very different places we all seem to come from. What it is that makes us all Anglican seems reasonably clear, but what it is that makes us all emergent is less so. Also, what is it that makes an Anglimergent worldview different from Presbymergent, Luthermergent, Convergent, Agmergent, plain vanilla Emergent, or whatever other denominational groupings have formed up over the last year or so?

I thought I'd have a go at trying to answer those questions for myself personally, but also to try and start some dialogue about why we're here, and what the big questions are for us Anglimergents.

Anglican DNA
At this point I've got to admit to being a pretty poor Anglican. I have very little knowledge of all the church politics and all of that stuff, I get some of the history but I'm no expert, and I was baptised as a believer not as a baby (I'm not sure how relevent that is, but...). I'm pretty much an Anglican because it's where I ended up aged 8 when my family moved across the country. However, I can see a lot of potential in the Anglican church, I see a lot of amazing history and tradition, and I see a huge openness, especially with the Mission-Shaped Church report in the UK, to news ways of doing and being church. So, what do I reckon is makes up the core of the "Anglican" DNA that makes up an Anglimergent theology/worldview.

A faith in the old system, believing it can and will evolve. There's something in this about church unity as well - it would be so easy to have gone non-denominational with our emerging church. Also, there's a power and a deep connection in being rooted by a succession that goes right back in history. We are connected to our brothers and sisters who went before us in a very real way.

A passion for liturgical, rhythmic expressions of worship - recognising that there's something about poetic words which have been passionately shaped to glorify God. This, again, is something which is a link to the historical church and which also brings in this flavour of the neo-monsatic which, I think, is part of the distinctive flavour of Anglimergence.

A commitment to church in new, fresh shapes. And this is, at least in the UK, becoming part of the new missional DNA of the Anglican church. We're getting there - and we're becoming more open.


Emergent DNA
As far as one can define what "Emergent" is, I think I'm probably more of this than I am Anglican - however in the UK with so much of our emerging churches being closely linked to the Anglican church, I think that "Anglican" is very much part of who we are as Emergents. What makes us emergent - especially in relation or contrast to also being Anglican?

A commitment to Missio Dei and missional church. For me, at least, I think part of what has brought me to an emerging theology is a realisation that the "old" expressions of church - even those which are reasonably fresh and done really well - aren't connecting with un-churched people in my generation (millennials).

An acknowledgement that the absolute is beyond our reach. This epistemological humility is pretty much at the core of what it means to have an emergent theology - a tension between the relativism of human thinking and the absolute of God.

A commitment to constructive dialogue, as opposed to negative, opposing arguments - what I mean by this is a reluctance to draw up battle lines, but instead a desire to dialogue and construct something together. This, hopefully, leads to much more willingness for collaboration with others of different backgrounds, opinions, worldviews.

A particular worldview. By which I mean that we see the world and culture through a specific lens of post-modernism. Emergents tend to see the world in a specific way which is different to the established church. I believe this is the main reason for comments about the emerging church speaking in a different language that other can't understand - and so can't argue with. There's something that makes a us think in a different way about theology and life - not nessesarily better, but different.


Anglican + Emergent = ?
So what do these two worldviews/elements come together to create? I think a lot of what is "Anglican" and what is "Emergent" is quite compatible, especially if you throw in a strong whiff of new monasticism.

There are, however, some elements which are held in tension - which seem to oppose each other. For instance, an Anglican hierarchical ecclesiology would seem to be in contrast to an emerging focus on equality and community. Also, a high-church understanding of the sacrements would seem to contrast with a pretty low-church emergent theology, where again community and coming together as the body of Christ seem more important than that everything is done right. Those are just the first two things which came into my head - I'm sure there may be more.

So, what do you think? Is there stuff I've left out of either Anglican or Emergent which you would say is important? And particularly what do you think it is that makes Anglimergent distinctive from other streams of the emerging church? What other tensions do you encounter between emergence and anglicanism?

[Tim Mathis]

Hi James,

Excellent post. It all resonates with me. We had a lively dialogue that hit on a lot of these themes in the Forum/Theology section, under "(me)defining Anglimergence".

I think you've done particularly well in the Anglican DNA part of what you've said. That commitment to the old system/evolution/church unity is particularly important to me, and it certainly does set us apart from the 'other' emergent--particularly American (post)evangelical/nondenominational--streams. It's our sort of baseline launching point. Some of us have that baseline b/c we were raised with it, others b/c we chose it, but all of us (if I can speak for all of us) find something valuable or inspiring in Anglican history, culture or polity. I find that we Anglimergents possibly don't talk about that as much as we do about postmodernism and all that mumbo jumbo.

My Anglicanism is prior to my emergent-ism. I came to Anglicanism consciously b/c I found it deeply appealing, intellectually invigorating, and spiritually life enriching. I later came to emergent-ism unwittingly, and later found that I identified with the themes of the stream before I ever knew that there was one. That is, before I knew it had a name. Emergence as a concept is invigorating, but my identity, really, is Anglican.

My guess is that Anglicanism has affected emergence disproportionately, as so many of the great emergent pioneers were in the Anglican Church. Not sure though, I'm biased and I haven't experienced emergence from any other perspective.

Tim

[Tom Allen]

You would kind of expect diversity from Anglicans - I loved Michael Ramsey's (a truly great Archbishop of Caturbury) wisdom that "Anglican" is only ever an adjective which describes something rather than a noun which defines it. From this emerges new insights and gifts of the spirit which continually enrich the tradition and enables it to adapt to every age - something which Gafcon seems to have forgotten. One of the excellent things about the folk that were emergent first then became Anglicans is that they do so for the best of reasons rather than with so many contemporary evangelical Anglicans who have become Anglicans out of convenience rather than conviction.