Rummage Sales

Every five hundred years, the church, whether she realizes it or not, has a rummage sale. The cultural, societal, and philosophical baggage gathered "along the way" must be re-constituted or tossed aside all together.

*Jesus came to bring Israel back to Torah-abiding, justice-executing ways.

*The important council's of the 5th centuries definitively gave the church language to understand who Jesus really was (fully God and fully human--a belief we moderns take for granted)

*The split of the Western Church (Catholicism) and the Eastern Church (Orthodox) and the Oriental Orthodoxy (Coptic, Syrian, etc.).

*Martin Luther's Reformation of Catholicism in the 16th century

*The Great Emergence of the late 20th/early 21st century (sometimes mentioned as postmodernism).

Every five hundred years, the rummage sale comes a knockin'. This is the premise of Phyllis Tickle's new book The Great Emergence. A "short epic" (thanks for that expression Jonathan), this book covers the major threads of Christianity as a social movement over the last two thousand years. Tickle masterfully weaves in and out the complexities of Christianity's spread: the good, the bad, and the downright ugly.

Too many highlights to cover, so I'll mention just one facet. Towards the end of GE, Tickle attempts to describe the different branches/response of Christians in this new reality, this emerging world landscape (141-143).

• Traditionalists: "Like those who have fallen heir to Grandpa's old home place and who still like things just the way he had them, they see no need either to fight with the neighbors or to change the furniture." This group is content, fine with business as usual.
• Re-traditioning: This group has chosen to stay with their inherited group, but unlike the Traditionalists "they energetically wish to make it [the church] more fully what it originally was." These folks want to keep the house, but make major interior changes and modifications: create a new kitchen, update the plumbing, drop new floors.
• Progressives: "[W]hile wanting to maintain their position in institutional Christianity, they want also to wrestle with what they see as the foolheartedness of holding on to dogma based ideas and doctrinally restricted governance and praxis." This group will knock out some walls, extend favorite rooms, even build additions if need be.
• Hyphenateds: "[T]hey recognize theirs is the most schizophrenic of the encompassing circles . . . householders who have fallen heir to Grandpa's old home place, feel a compelling need to honor the land it sits upon and the trees that surround it, but no need to retain its structural shape. Imaginatively enough, though, while they may tear down the house, they will savage some of the material out of which it was built and incorporate those honored bricks and columns, plinths and antique doors into the new thing they are building."

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Which stream do you find yourself in?