The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing And Why

The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing And Why by Phyllis A. Tickle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Tickle provides a brisk and breezy overview, predominantly of Western Christianity, with North American Christianity given particularly close consideration as she attempts to chart possible courses forward.

There are a number of trenchant critiques to be found here at Goodreads and elsewhere, and certainly my marginalia pen was kept busy as I read. But in the main, Tickle’s book lays out a readable survey of Church history that every North American Protestant ought to be familiar with — OUGHT to be familiar with. Hey, if some of what people are gabbing about here is new to you, why not pick this up and give it a little of your own attention? A reader could do much worse.

Supplementary material: Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Gifford Lectures on Silence Within Church History covers the same points of divergence Tickle does, plus a great deal more — and very engagingly (thanks, Paul!).

Plus: my earlier reaction to what I was reading in The Great Emergence still pertains.

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