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.

An Introduction

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….

An Emerging Profession: An Addendum.

If you haven’t had a chance yet, you really need to give the other bloggers a read from the thoughts that they shared today.

The other bloggers are Adam Walker Cleaveland (www.pomomusings.com), Carol Merritt (www.tribalchurch.org), Wess Daniels (www.gatheringinlight.com), Julie Clawson (www.julieclawson.com), and Jonny Baker (www.jonnybaker.blogs.com).

I’d specifically like to mention Jonny Baker’s listing of some general comparisons between starfish and spider models, as they give better backdrop for my thoughts. The starfish column is on the left and the spider on the right.

CEO | catalyst
boss | peer
command and control | trust
rational | emotionally intelligent
powerful | inspirational
directive | collaborative
in the spotlight | behind the scenes
order | ambiguity
organizing | connecting

And you should really give Wess Daniel’s post a read. He creates a very insightful link between the consumption patterns of the more traditional top-down approach. I’m not sure why this idea resonated so much with me, but I don’t think I have ever really made the connection with the role “consumption” plays in the whole process. Below are my rather brief comments that I will hopefully build upon in the coming weeks, teasing out this connection between consumption and practice.

Wess, way to build the argument and situate in the proper context of consumerism. i think this a very necessary distinction to make. that consumption is as much of a framing starting point as anything else. and it is from this starting point that most organizational models flow. as consumerism reinforces and perpetuates the existing narrative, there can be no divergence from it. i think the ones who are starting to “get it” (whatever “it” is) are the ones who are wrestling with their relationship to consumption. those who are comfortable within their consumptive patterns tend to exist well within the current paradigms. this is not to say that i/we don’t consume. it’s just that there is a growing uneasiness with it. and it’s from there that a proper critique is forming and taking shape.

An Emerging Profession: Top Down Hierarchies & Flat Worlds.

Drew Ditzel of Hawks, Dawgs, and Jesus is writing his final paper for a class at Columbia Theological Seminary for a class on Emerging Church Models. Part of the stipulations of the paper is that he’s supposed to consult 5 or more bloggers (this is my kind of class). He’s asked me as well as a few other more well known bloggers to contribute to a topic related to pastors/clergy and their relationship towards their congregations.

The other bloggers are Adam Walker Cleaveland (www.pomomusings.com), Anthony Smith (www.postmodernegro.com), Carol Merritt (www.tribalchurch.org), Wess Daniels (www.gatheringinlight.com), Julie Clawson (www.julieclawson.com) and Jonny Baker (www.jonnybaker.blogs.com). I will be blogging along with them today on the same topic.

I’ve chosen to think about the changing dynamic between pastors/clergy and their congregations in relationship to organizational structures built off of hierarchies. My premise is that most pastors/clergy operate and relate from their position on the hierarchy (which is conveniently located at the top rung). They exist at the top and assume that their role is to disseminate power downward towards everyone below them (other staff, volunteers, congregants, community).

Despite good intentions, hierarchies are created for one purpose, to funnel power to the top, effectively creating a bottleneck. In hierarchical models, this distribution of power (i.e. influence, information, communication, control) is puncticular and linear. Meaning that it moves from Point A to Point B and then to Point C and on down the line. The flow of energy is always moving from or going towards the top.

Another workable analogy might be that of a family tree. The pastor sits at the top as the parent. In a traditional understanding of family, a parent can have more than one child, but a child can only have one parent. Thus the parent is always over the child. And the child always under the parent. A family tree is a hierarchical tree.

For the most part, pastors have always run their churches based off these hierarchical models.

Take a look at the rather crude model below. The figure on the left illustrates the way most pastors/congregrations function. Information flows from one level to the next. But always going through the top, always going through the pastor/clergy. This is an illustration of the hierarchical model. Take away the pastor/clergy and the organization collapses in on itself.

However, the model on the right is one that others have suggested might have more potential in our current cultural context. It is a model based off of web-like, networked, indigenous organisms. There is no “top”. There is no “bottom”. There is no “head”. Rather all areas are actively in flux and intermingling with one another.

Ori Brafman and Rob Beckstrom articulated this cultural shift in their seminal work The Starfish and the Spider. They described how most organizations function like spiders. If you cut off the leg of the spider, it’s crippled and will forever be without a leg. If you cut off the head of a spider, it will die. For organizations built on the framework of hierarchy, if you cut off the head, the entire organization withers and wilts.

In comparison to a starfish, you can cut off the arms . . . chop it into a million pieces . . . and it will still regenerate itself and grow again. They further describe this theory of leadership by discussing how the human brain works in relationship to memories.

Let’s say for example, we wanted to erase a certain memory from someone’s brain. Under the hierarchial model, we’d locate the specific neuron and zap it, and the memory would be gone. But in Lettvin’s model (flattened/web-like/network), the memory would be much more difficult to eliminate. We’d have to zap a pattern of neurons – a much more difficult proposition.

The analogy should be clear.

This is why organizations with a plurality of leaders, authority, and voices are the most innovative, creative, and revolutionary. Shawn Fanning, the creator of Napster (essentially the tipping point for peer-to-peer technology), for all intents and purposes, began the process of bringing down the top-down music industry. Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda attack and allude the most sophisticated military nation in history from a cave with little to no money. Craig Newark created Craigslist and overnight the top-down print news lost one of their biggest sources of income and audience by undercutting the “classifieds”.

This is why Thomas Friedman coined the term “flattened world”. It’s as if someone stomped on and squashed the traditional hierarchical model. The result is now a flattened world, a world without clear boundaries, hierarchies of power, and linear communication/influence.

Leadership no longer comes from the top and from one source. Rather leadership comes from the margins and from a plurality of sources.

Looking at our model again . . . we can see that the emerging model on the right has the highest potential for collaboration, co-participation, checks and balances and locality to name but a few.

This is not to say that the model on the left wasn’t effective. It worked for a time. It was a great vessel for organization and communication in a time and world that trusted authority, a world where the line between leader and audience was much more concrete and distinct. But as those lines have blurred, as more and more people are being empowered to participate and create alongside of, we are in desperate need of an organizational model that is able to embrace and reflect this change in culture.

And if there is any organization that should be adept at and equipped at making the change it should be the church. The church has a great legacy of decentralized organization. Afterall, the Jesus movement spread like wild fire (virally) as this type of flattened, web-like, network of family and friends moved out and multiplied (as a side note, multiplication is the byproduct of flattened models while addition is the byproduct of hierarchies). I mean can you imagine Jesus as a CEO or a traditional pastor/clergy? The king of the castle, the head honcho? If this was the model that Jesus wanted us to imitate, he would have become a priest and never left the synagogue.

Instead, he knew that any great revolution of love (as opposed to a revolution of force) was dependent on movement from the margins. And consequently empowering those he found at the margins.

This is where true leadership happens. This is what most organizations are already beginning to reflect in their leadership structures. The question is whether or not pastors/clergy will embrace something that their congregants already know to be true.