Many people have examined the emerging church through a lens of theology. Whilst this is helpful, it is still quite a difficult feat, often such readings will focus on only a small faction of the emerging church, often its most visible American component. However this does not take into account just how varied this self describing movement is.
I am finding it increasingly harder to find any kind of common theology as I meet all kinds of people who represent a broad theological spectrum yet who all self describe with the term ‘Emerging’. For example I have met conservatives, liberal, evangelicals, charismatic, orthodox, catholic, pentecostal, reformed, and neo-orthodox, who would call themselves ‘emerging’.
Well then we may ask is it all about church expression and shape? Well, things get sticky again; I could point you in the direction of house church groups, mega-church pastors, members of Roman Catholic parishes, traditional church attendees, people living incarnationally amongst the poor, all of whom would describe themselves to me as ‘emerging’. There are even now Jewish groups who would describe themselves as emerging. The label is becoming harder to pin down.
I believe we must turn to the lens of culture to gain an important insight into what is going on. So I am going to do a little bit of series in which I examine the emerging church through a cultural rather than a theological lens.
Mass Culture
Since the end of World War Two we have seen the rise in Western society of what sociologists term mass culture. The 1950′s saw the American economy become supercharged through its war effort, the manufacturing sector, used to churning out all kinds of weapons, now began churning out huge amounts of mass produced and affordable consumer items. One such item which became standard for citizens in the post war boom was the car. The car in turn created the suburbs. The return of soldiers saw a baby boom, these new families needed cheap housing, and thus the mass producing culture created mass produced housing. New technologies brought televisions into the home, advertising became more and more part of the noise of daily life, as a golden consumer dream was beamed into every home.
The mass trauma of World War two created a cultural sense of cocooning, of finding safety in a homogenised culture. The nuclear family became elevated in a way that it had not before. The cold war also contributed to this homogenisation of culture as the fear of communism, of seeming different, created a kind of unspoken conformity. Mass culture was born.
However the bohemian stream that has always existed within Western culture, found a new sense of self within this new cultural situation. A new reaction to the mass culture began to coalesce in varied places. The beat writers such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S Burroughs began to plant the seeds that would grow into the counter culture of the sixties. Painters such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning pioneered a new style of painting known as Abstract Expressionism which seemed to directly contradict the clean, neat style motif of mass culture. Bop Jazz musicians such as Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker began playing bebop, a style which directly mocked and critiqued the mass cultures preferred music of swing with its complexity.
In Europe the long established Bohemian community began to react to the emergence of mass culture and modernity on its shores. Probably the most classic example of this is the poet John Betjeman’s famous poem Slough, in which the poet wishes that bombs would come and fall on the suburb of Slough which was to him was an example of the growth of mass culture in Britain.
These original dissidents created the soil out of which everything from Rock, to Pop Art, to Punk, to Art House Cinema, to the Organic Food movement has grown out of. Interesting today this counter cultural element in western society no longer carries the force of critique it once did. Think of it like a migrant group who moves into a new neighbourhood, at first there is only a few families so no body takes much notice, then more migrants appear, people freak out, worried that they will be overrun. But then they get used to their new culturally different neighbours, they actually start to enjoy their food, sooner of later they become a valued part of the neighbourhood. It is the same with the critique of mass culture; strangely it is now part of mass culture. MTV is now the biggest channel in the world. Rock n Roll is older than half a century, your local mall gift store will no doubt feature prints by Andy Warhol. Hollywood makes a move like Fight club which critiques consumer culture yet which features ‘paid for’ product placements. Mass culture needs alternative culture to sets the trends which it will consume and alternative culture needs mass culture to define itself against. It is like a parasite fish swimming on the back of a shark. It is a symbiotic relationship of mutual benefit.
Emerging Church as Critique of Mass Culture
Well what does this have to do with the emerging church? Well a lot. The emerging church is a critique of mass culture. As Christians are in a cultural lag, mass culture did not really hit the church until the 1980′s. As the church growth movement brought marketing techniques and a corporate philosophy into the church. The emerging church has been a reaction to what it has seen as the homogenised model of church that emerged out of southern California in the early 1980′s (which ironically through bringing guitars and folk rock into church, through wearing jeans and a relaxed attitude, had its roots musically, philosophically and stylistically in the sixties counter culture.)
The emerging church for many of its adherents did not so much grow out of a theological re-examination, or a well thought out ecclesiological reaction. It grew out of a shared feeling of ‘not fitting in’ the mainstream Christian milieu, which felt too much to many like mass culture. The dead give away to this can be seen in some unlikely places. Just look at the adoration of the movies Fight Club and the Matrix amongst emergents, both which preach the alternative culture message of mass culture. Just look at the cool leather jacket wearing heroes in the Matrix vs the suit wearing bureaucrat villains, it is classic mass culture vs alternative culture. The dislike of contemporary praise and worship by many emergents has more to do with the fact that it sounds like adult orientated contemporary rock, which is seen as the anthem of mass culture. Emergents also favour the clothes, styles, speech and appearance of alternative culture as way of defining against mass culture. Mac guy vs PC guy, Inner city latte zones vs white picket fenced suburbs, SUV’s vs Prius, you get the picture. This is why someone with a hyper-reformed theological framework and someone from a liberal mainline church can both attach to themselves the term emerging, theologically they may on different planets but culturally they have bought the mass vs alternative culture line.
Having said all of this there is definitely something happening in the church across the western world as it faces the task of being the people of God in a 21st century globalized world. The real question is though, will the exciting things happening be subverted and derailed as people get stuck in the false delineation of mass culture vs alternative culture? More on that next time.
