The Great Emergence, Hiding In Plain Sight?

Like many other things we have noted, the tension toward changing things externally into new forms, as opposed to reworking them internally into what should be, has been a major characteristic of each of our previous hinge times and will continue to be part of our present one. The imperative for us in the twenty-first century, therefore, is not to fear either of the two coursings, but to fear with all our hearts and minds and souls the pattern of bloodiness that in the past has characterized the separation of innovators and re-traditioners from one another. 

Phyllis Tickle, The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why

‘People involved in Uzbek politics are accustomed to rumour and lies. It’s common practice to assume that all information is unreliable and all sources biased, which ensures that all rumours are taken seriously. Rumour is not automatically believed, of course, so much as it is shared, parsed, and discussed — sometimes far beyond what its dubious origins might merit. The result of ubiquitous paranoia is not disbelief. It is credulity. 

‘When all information is assumed fraudulent and all sources suspect, when your worst suspicions about your government are routinely confirmed and denied, when on-line communication — itself nebulous and malleable — is your only means of interaction, what do you do? You follow your principles . . . . But in Uzbekistan, following your principles often gets you nowhere. And there’s not much you can do about it.’ 

When I wrote this passage in 2011, I did not know that eight years later, I could substitute “America” for “Uzbekistan” and it would serve as an apt summary of Trump-era politics. 

Sarah Kendzior, Hiding In Plain Sight: The Invention Of Donald Trump & The Erosion Of America

It is a curious experience reading Phyllis Tickle’s charting of Christian response and re-formation in the 21st Century in concert with Sarah Kendzior’s charting of the US decline into gangster autocracy and civil dissolution.

Tickle is, as every person of faith is required to be, an optimist — albeit with an ability to acknowledge blunt realities. Kendzior is a flinty realist who cheerfully admits she’s lost all hope.

I’m midway through both, so commenting now is foolish of me. But you don't expect wisdom from me! So here I go.

I will admit I am more easily persuaded by Kendzior’s pessimism for the future of American democracy, or any possibility of democratic reform (forget about justice), than I am by Tickle’s sense of what shape the “emergent” Christianity might take.

What if this emergent Christianity simply . . .  doesn’t? Emerge, that is.

Repeat caveat — I am only halfway through Tickle’s book. But at this point she focuses almost exclusively on the corpus of Western Christianity. Maybe she delves deeper into other embodiments later, so bear with me.

Tickle says the Christian church holds a “garage sale” every 500 years or so to get rid of the arcana holding it back from properly addressing the concerns of the present. But what if the every-half-millennium “garage sale” — which jettisons modes and conceptual memes that no longer work in correlation with our species’ relation to its technologies and natural habitat — what if the current “garage sale” being organized sorts out the superfluousness of . . .

. . . Western Christianity?

Western Christianity has moved in lockstep with — and has largely aided and abetted, wittingly or no — the materialist mercantilism that has eroded our planet’s communities and ecosystem to the point of mutual ruination and collapse. Do we even have a coherent understanding of “community” or “stewardship” we could articulate at this point in our history?

My guess is (optimistic bastard that I am) there are other forms of Christianity more likely to emerge into something fungible for humanity at large. African and Chinese Christianity, to take just two examples, are, for starters, both more robust expressions of Christian community than anything you’ll find here — due in no small part to oppression and persecution that has occurred within living memory of these communities.

Anyhoo — thoughts that occur as we collectively chart the ever-widening gyre. More anon, I hope. Be well.