Challenging the Critiques of Emergent: A White Man’s World.
Upfront Disclaimer: I do not speak for anyone on the board at Emergent Village, nor am I assuming the position of spokesperson. I speak from a position of proximity and friendship with emergent. And if you want to put a label on it (something I will hopefully make a point about), then by God, you can consider me emergent. I recognize up front and am fully aware that as with any group, the possibility for mistakes exist. So I am in no way in favor of giving Emergent “a get out of jail free card” from receiving criticism. I simply hope to push back against the criticism and remind everyone (myself?) of the spirit of emergent, instead of taking pot shots. I also will be careful of how exactly I capitalize e/Emergent, so please pay attention to my attempted nuance.
Let me begin by saying half of us wouldn’t be where we are today if it wasn’t for the conversations that emergent started and helped give shape to (since emergent isn’t an organized group – it’s almost impossible to say Who, What, When, or Where). So that alone should give us give us a bit of slack to play with. Sometimes I think we’re like the kid who got adopted and taken in by a loving family, only to grow up and leave them to go out and find their original parents as they got older. I for one and am proud that emergent took me in and gave me a safe place to BE.
With that in mind and with a posture of gratefulness . . . let’s critique the critique. The first one is the loudest and most frequent criticism of Emergent and it is . . .
Emergent is just a bunch of white guys sitting around and talking theology.
I can’t say that I’ve never thought this (casually or seriously). But I think it’s a faulty landing place for a couple of reasons.
For one, I don’t think it’s the fault of Emergent leadership. I’ve been involved in the late, great Christendom pretty much my entire life. And out of all the groups, denominations, traditions, leaders, and people that I’ve been around, emergents are by far the most diverse in terms of ethnicity and gender. Now that could be due to my own limited history, but in reading emergent books and being a part of emergent (I use this term every so loosely in relationship to a label in these situations) conversations, I find the group to be rather diverse. I’ve come in contact with more African, Latin American, feminist, and black theologians via emergent conversations and books than I have in any other place. Whether it’s a footnote in a book or a glowing recommendation over a beer, I’ve never heard the leadership of a “group” model and champion diversity as much as I have with Emergent.
In addition, I think something can be said of our insatiable desire for labels and brands. Those in Europe and Latin America don’t need the label Emergent to be emergent. And I have a strong hunch that those involved in leadership with Emergent don’t need the label either. So perhaps it is really only those of us in the blog-O-sphere and the critics on the outside that have defined ourselves by our homogeneity. I know for a fact that those in leadership with Emergent Village – the Board of Directors and the Coordinating Group – are way more diverse than the blogrolls of those raining down criticisms or the pews where they sit on Sunday morning.
In this vein, I do think a lot of people see Emergent as a brand or label (something I’ll devote tomorrow to). I did it in the first paragraph for crying out loud. But I do think it’s pretty simple . . .
I think those who see Emergent as a noun and adjective . . . are the ones who see it as “a white man’s game”.
And I think those who see emergent as a verb . . . see and know just how diverse the spirit of emergent is.
Now I hope Julie and Adam don’t get pissed, but when I hear a female say that Emergent is “a white man’s game” only to see them pick up their ball and go and do their Emerging Women thing, I have to think that not all of the fault lays at the feet of Emergent. But rather with those who continue to want to see Emergent as a noun and adjective.
At last glance, we now have 3 different sub-sects of Emergent – Emerging Women, Presbymergent, Anglimergent. I’m not sure why these 3 groups get a pass for their homogeneous nature and for appropriating theology in their specific contexts while Emergent continues to get slammed. I’m not bashing these groups. My only complaint is that no one has started a recovering Bapticostal-louiegiglioisgod-megachurchmergent group that I can join.
The beautiful thing about each one of these groups is that they are serving as on-ramps to many people who would never enter the conversation in any other way.
The thing that makes emerging women so great is that they are doing emergent in the context of emerging women. The thing that makes Presbymergent so great is that they are doing emergent in the context of Presbyterianism. The thing that makes Anglimergent so great is that they are doing emergent in the context of Anglican church.
The thing that makes Julie, Adam, and Karen so great for giving shape to their particular streams is that they know just how valuable doing emergent locally and contextually is as opposed to being simply labeled or defined as emergent.
Each particular group is deconstructing their theologies and practices in light of their postmodern context. Each group is then re-appropriating these theologies and practices against a new backdrop and in a new light.
They deconstruct and practice. Deconstruct and practice. Deconstruct and practice. And even then deconstruction can be construction.
Anglimergent, Presbymergent, Emerging Women. There really isn’t a problem with having these nuanced streams of emergent because they are all appropriating their theologies in different contexts. The only problem will come when one or all of these groups begin seeing itself as a noun or as an adjective as opposed to a verb. When emergent is a verb, you begin to see the spirit of emergent across various contexts. And what Emergent Village is doing is valuable for it’s context just as Presbymergent is valuable for what it is doing in it’s context.
I had a great conversation with DJ Chuang about this the other day for an upcoming podcast. He made an excellent point that what most white, male emergents are wrestling with and practicing is not the same type of things nor theology that 2nd generation, Asian Americans are wrestling with and practicing. But that doesn’t make them any less emergent. They are simply doing their theology and practicing their theologies in different contexts. They are not branded or labeled as Emergent, but rather they are doing emergent and are very much a part of the spirit of emergent.
But just imagine for a moment that we take everyone even loosely affiliated with Emergent away from the table except for the white men . . . wouldn’t they still be deconstructing their theologies and privileges from their heritage and traditions (20th century evangelicalism) and then re-appropriating that theology in their new context? If they weren’t and hadn’t been doing this all along, then would they have so many female and minority voices both leading and involved?
Although, to back track, I still don’t assent to the idea that Emergent is just a bunch of white men.
But if it were . . . and I’m not saying it is . . . then why is it that every other group gets a pass?
Blake stole my thunder a bit in the comments to the introduction, when he wrote “The white male critique could be aimed at almost any theological framework, especially in the US.” I find it funny that conservatives would stand on the outside looking in and say Emergent isn’t diverse.
Hmmmm . . . I’m glad we don’t look to Mohler, Piper, or Driscoll to be our models for diversity. The last time I checked the EV leadership was made up of both women and minorities, middle class folk and not-so middle class folk, suburbanites and city dwellers. And not only that, but they recognize their own limitations in perspective, whether they be male, female, white, black, rich, poor, suburban, or urban. Take those two things and add in the fact that the EV leadership sound are borderline Spartan cheerleaders in their books, lectures, and practice when it comes to diversity and you have a pretty compelling case that Emergent Village is a far cry from “a white man’s world”.
In conclusion, I think the problem lies less with the leadership of Emergent Village and more with the myopic, homogeneous circles of the critics.
Then again, I could be wrong. I am a white man after all.
*UPDATE: Mike Morrell reminded me that I forgot about some of the other Emergent “flavors” Submergent (Anabaptist), Convergent (Quakers), Emergent Nazarenes, UMerging doesn’t quite exist yet as a stable group, but it should….