I have written in the past on the emergent movement. While I have never talked in much depth about their theology, I am quite interested in the sociological trends of places like emergent village. I recieve their newsletter via e-mail and was again interested in the direction they are taking. They are suggesting four shifts in priority that generally follow the organizational structure in our changing world:
- Reduce and decentralize by getting rid of the national coordinator position (this means Tony will be moving on).
- Re-emphasize the importance of the website as a central hub.
- To decentralize by depending on grassroot organizations to plan events rather than emergent village to plan events themselves.
- To Reconfigure the board
I do not consider myself an expert on emergent (I have not read enough of the author’s who call themselves ‘emergent,’ nor do I have the time to do so), but I have been watching the conversation for some years and have been greatly interested by the sociological trends. All of their goals for the “new” emergent-village seem to be about less national presence and more presence as network node (perhapas the anti-federalists were right all along). There is a term recently introduced to me by my blogging friend Nate called subsidiarity. I am so excited by this word because it brings to term some of the ideas that have been boiling in my brain. This concept suggests that matters ought to be handled by the smallest group possible. It would probably have been the view of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy and probably embodies many of the grassroots organizations throughout United States history. There is a good conversation going on about this idea at catholicanarchy (read the comments). I want to quote one of the comments here:
I think (and I cant take credit for this) that locality is such a wonderful answer to capitalism & globalization. Wendell berry is the best critiquer of this system that I can think of. Why can’t people be happy with solving the problems and providing for the needs of their own communities? Everything is always mass produced and shipped all over whether or not its wanted/needed elsewhere. This is where advertising and the creation of perceived needs come in. What is really troubling is when we think about how this has come into Christianity in the form of evangelism.
Why join a subsidarity movement? Well, as Christians we hopefully realize that the best way to work is through the local church as an expression of the catholic church (universal, not necessarily Roman Catholic). Could we argue that God uses subsidarity? He chose a particular people group in a particular place to be the expression of his love to the world. The particularity of God in ‘choosing’ one group to, in turn, bless the wold holistically, seem to show subsidarity, or the idea that working through one group as a kind of tree that spreads its root deep, as his guiding principle. As Christians, we need to remember that bigger is not always better.
