Is ‘change’ really what we need?

Brittian said something really interesting over at his blog today:

Walter Brueggemann spoke about in The Prophetic Imagination.  He said that the Empire of control and competition, is constantly co-opting people’s revolutions.  In other words, when was the last time a revolutionary didn’t eventually become Emperor?  Think Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler…but maybe even more unfortunate are those true believers like the French revolutionaries whose ideas of liberty and equality eventually turned into a reign of terror.  Why?  Brueggemann points out that it is because those revolutions and revolutionaries bought into a critical deception.  The immediacy of their hope.  Anytime, he comments, the hope is too “here and now” it becomes prime real estate for imperial control.  The tangible, touchable, manageable realities of linear thought and rational process are Their domain.  Finally he councils us not to be Managers of change but rather to be Imaginers…  Poets, provocateurs, singers of songs, artists, prophets, painters, sculptors, wordsmiths, etc… Envision a new world, live into that new reality…but don’t necessarily engage in the dangerous assumption that CHANGE is the end all solution.

Brittian specifically is talking about the new ‘green revolution’ that seems to be taking place and how the same big companies are changing their marketing tactics to market to this target audience.  Rob Bell and Don Golden say someting similiar about the oppressed becoming the oppressors from Egypt to Jerusalem in their new book Jesus Wants to Save Christians (44-45):

God gives power and blessing so that justice and righteousness will be upheld for those who are denied them…

To forget this, to fail to hear the cry, to preserve prosperity at the expense of the powerless, is to miss what God had in mind…

Exile is when you forget your story

Exile isn’t just about location; exile is about the state of your soul.

Exile is when you fail to convert your blessings into blessings for others.

Exile is when you’re a stranger to the purposes of God

We have to be careful that we do not buy into ‘change’ as an idea simply as a cool ‘alternative.’  Otherwise, when things ‘change’ we will somehow believe we have reached our goal.  This new green revolution has become ‘the norm’ and the world has begun capitalizing off the label.  Ryan Bolger has a good graphic that I would like to borrow.  The image is a table of the difference between the ‘green’ revolution and the way that perhaps we should respond as Christians (labeled as ‘blue’).

He asks the important question, does the church need a color?  Over at Jesus Manifesto as well there has been an important discussion going on about language.  Who are we leaving out and who are we including based on our language?  It is easier than people sometimes think to learn a cultural language or a certain theological bent and to extol that theological bent to your congregation, but the danger is that the theology begins trumping Jesus Christ and the particular plan and revelation of God throughout time and space–the one that transcends cultures.  It is actually very easy for big companies to read this “cultural language” and create products which they can capitalize off of to “co-opt” the revolution (as Brittian said earlier).

The questions then are large: How does Christianity stay focused on Christianity and avoid being eaten up into a larger mass culture created by the media and big business?  How do we deal with the major environmental movements in a way that is true the particularity of Christ?  Which direction is the church going and is it the right direction? Are we following Christ or are we following culture?  If we are following culture, to what extent to we dwelve into it?  Over at emergent village one person argues that almost nothing is off limits.  Do you agree that Christians can go anywhere and do anything in the name of Christ?  Are there limits on our freedom as Paul often talked about, for the sake of our brothers?

Honk if you Hate Homosexuals

Honk to protect marriage, one sign said.

I sat at a light on the way to work and a group of five stood on the corner.

Another sign said, honk if you support prop. 9. Prop 9 is a proposed law that would make it illegal for homosexuals to be married in California.

Coming into work I say hi to one of the girls.

“Did you see the people on the corner?” I ask.

“No,” she said. “What is going on?”

“There are all these people protesting prop. 9. You know the one about homosexuality and legalizing it.”

“Oh. I think it’s dumb,” she said.

“What?”

“That people are so upset about it.  I mean, homosexuals are people too.  You can’t legislate morality.  They are going to be together whether the law says so or not.”

“Who are you going to vote for?” I ask not really responding to what she said.

“Probably Obama,” she said. “I like Obama.”

(UPDATED): Want more on this subject?  An interesting line of logic is used here.

Evangelical Political Assessment

There is an interesting conversation going on at Evangelical Political Analysis.

Andrea talks about whether or not pastors are abusing their exemption from taxes.

Justin wonders if Obama is really a socialist.

Andre talks about how another Christian president might not be the answer.

In an especially interesting article, Kelly talks about why she is not totally happy with Shane Claiborne.

Thoughts on the emergent – Part 6

Tony Jones, in his book The New Christians takes us on a ride through his understanding of the emergent movement and where it is going. I have only read the first few pages at amazon.com, but I would like to discuss what he says there as a discussion on the Emergent church. In his first controlling metaphor, Jones suggest that the church is like a pay phone. Pay phones used to be useful as a way of communication, but have become largely irrelevant as a result of the cell phone. He argues in a similar fashion that the church is no longer an effective form of communication.

Has the church become ineffective? Jones cites a Baylor University Study that suggests 85% of people attend some kind of church (he cites from page 6 on the attached pdf file, but does not go into great detail about the rest of the study). Because 85% of people go to church, Jones assumes that America must still be very religious (although we are not sure which America he is talking about…the study also cites that those between 18-30 are three times more likely to have no church affiliation). I would like to spend a moment here reminding people that statistics do not prove theories. We might say, there are a lot of people who go to church, therefore America is religious, but it is not that simple. America is a diverse nation, from diverse backgrounds. Look at how Baylor actually breaks down religion in America:

Unaffiliated: 10.8%
Catholic: 21.2%
Black Protestant: 5%
Evangelical Protestant: 33.6%
Mainline Protestant: 22.1%
Jewish: 2.5%
Other: 4.9%

I think it is interesting then that Jones say this in the book:

“The modern church–at least as it is characterized by imposing physical buildings, professional clergy, denominational bureaucracies, residential seminary training, and other trappings–was an endeavor by faith men and woman in their time and place, attempting to live into the biblical gospel. But the church was never the ends, only the means.”

Notice how Jones talks about the “modern church.” Is he talking about mainline protestants or evangelical protestants? Is he talking about Catholics or those who are unaffiliated? What place do black protestants have in this movement (have their been many black theologians in the emergent movement?). The book then goes on to talk about problems in the Anglican church, Episcopal church, and the Southern Baptist church as if because they all have problems they are all part of the same monolithic phenomenon. But the problems are not monolithic. They are all localized problems within particular denominations and I don’t know why or how Jones thinks he can speak to all of these denominations.

We need to spend more time in the local church and less time talking about the church universal. We have study after study coming out about the American churches, but the unsung heroes are the ones who are doing something at the local and regional level. The church will never be the church outside of the regional tendencies of particular places.  We can continue to make generalized statements about what “emergent” means, but I believe this expression can only be realized at the local level within the tradition of denominational churches.