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Ammonites

The following review is edited.  Not having been in an academic study of religion environment for many years, I was unaware of this movement, but I’m not surprised.  In fact, I’m pleased because it seems to be an internal effort to reclaim the best of what Jesus taught while discarding Paul’s mania for getting everything organized into an institution.  (That he would control!)  As it turns out, this approach is an always-present, but ordinarily latent element of the on-going establishment, rather like the recurrent heresies of unitarianism (Are you going to have one god or THREE?) and universalism (If god is merciful, “he” must save everyone.)  It also privileges the local congregation (as opposed to denomination) in the Quaker way and echoes Taoism in recommending a “way,” rather than dogma.  It sounds a little like both house churches and home schooling.  These two authors are academics, one American and one Irish, but not figures in the movement -- rather people who study religion.

Gerardo Marti

THE DECONSTRUCTED CHURCH: UNDERSTANDING EMERGING CHRISTIANITY . By Gerardo Marti and Gladys Ganiel. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. xi + 268 pp. $35.00 cloth.

. . . The book is anchored in its thesis, “the ECM is a discernible, transnational group who share a religious orientation built on a continual practice of deconstruction” (p. 6). This thesis provides the backbone for each chapter as Marti and Ganiel document a group of individuals resisting previous religious structures to provide a safe haven for individuals disillusioned by traditional Christianity (both from mainline and evangelical traditions).

. . . In it the authors provide a brief but comprehensive description of the ECM as a religious movement that is focused on religious relativism, radical community, and equipping believers to live missional lives in their local community. . . . the authors note that the ECM is squarely focused on moral freedom and the belief that Christians should not be judging the behavior or beliefs of fellow Christians. On the other hand, they interview individuals who have left the ECM out of a belief that the church loved people too unconditionally and was afraid to enforce any sort of moral code.

. . .While undoubtedly the works of Derrida and others are important to understanding how emergents view the idea of absolute truth, the focus of emergent Christianity is orthopraxy (right action) as opposed to orthodoxy (right belief). This focus on action is evidenced in the structure of the book, which devotes an entire chapter to “Following Jesus in the Real World,” a description of how emergents alter their politics, career choices, and lifestyles in order to more accurately reflect how they view religious devotion.

. . . Oftentimes, academics who study a popular culture movement fill pages with terse, scientific writing that is largely inaccessible to the average reader. However, I was delighted to see that Marti and Ganiel have an approach that is precise but accessible to a wider audience. . . .

Gladys Ganiel

The conclusion of the book wrestles with many of the major questions about the ECM, such as whether the movement is just repackaged liberal Christianity and whether the movement is dying. However, one of the questions that the authors do not address directly is: Why should the average person, or even average sociologist, care about the ECM? Scholars who study the movement will continue to wrestle with understanding the historical significance of the movement because it is unclear whether or not the movement will endure. In a radically changing religious landscape that is seeing the decline of the Religious Right and the rise of religious “nones,” Marti and Ganiel believe that the ECM is well positioned to provide an alternative for those who are considering leaving Christianity altogether. . .

RYAN BURGE Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, Illinois

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In my present mood of houseclearing and Lenten renewal  I’m certainly open to this idea of deconstruction, maybe especially "Xianity."  The whole problem with an institution, religious or not, is that they are all big ships in the worldly sea that need the barnacles scraped off their hulls so they can be examined for leaks.  And the area most likely to leak is “morality.”  To consciously stand back is sort of like taking the vessel into dry dock.  Morality that is dogmatic cannot be seaworthy.

My own drydock and scraping is the sorting of papers, as usual, and the printing out of eight years of emails that I had thought were safe in GMail.  How deluded I’ve been.  How deluded I was then, still believing that writing a book about Bob Scriver would make me rich (I estimated $10,000!) and respected.  Last year is the first that I made any profit at all:  $5.50. That was before the editing director got into a huff over the F-word and more or less jumped ship.  Academic publishers are not publishers -- they are pass-throughs for employment.

There is no safe.  There is no profit.  Academics are no better than anyone else.  In fact, universities and seminaries are shipwrecked daily.  The captain does not stay onboard.

The Ship of State

There is survival.  If you can keep up. (That means swim like hell.)

For instance, this whole problem of the secular/scientific versus the religious which keeps trying to invade the government -- with some success when they have enough money to buy politicians.  The more I try to think it all through, the more I trip on old roots.  It needs deconstruction with an axe.  When small-minded people use religion to gain power they have entered the ground of "Game of Thrones."  You know what happens, because it happened in the past in Europe.

In the past few weeks I discovered that the lovely online mag called “Aeon.com” had a beta discussion version that was supposedly reaching out to new writers.  I quickly discovered that they were intent on being “nice” and would not tolerate anything obscene, grisly, or sexual.  Though they purported to be reconciling science and religion, both of which are very much obscene, grisly and sexual, I felt they were in fact trying to establish themselves as enlightened gentry who wanted a platform -- that is, beyond their conviction of their status.  Doomed, doomed.  And anyway, most of the people who posted were on the payroll.  A circle getting tighter.  And I was bitter. Too much like the coffee room at Div School -- all that steamy air filled with theories about how to get ahead by nailing the perfect topic.  Hit the No-Fire-Only-Smoke alarm, clear the room.

The Deconstructed Church

I feel the way I did in high school looking back at my primary school self, my desperate determination to stay myself seriously challenged.  Having come so far, I’m constructed, deconstructed, reconstructed, just structureless.  A respondent, but I hasten to say not despondent.  Nor rigid. 

There’s an old joke about UU’s.  A bride who intends to sew her own trousseau goes to buy material.  She asks for nine yards of blue chiffon to make a nightgown for the bridal night.  (I told you it was an old joke!  Today there would have been many nights already and if the bride wore anything it would probably be old sweats or the groom’s t-shirt.) 

In the joke, the clerk says, “That much material?  Your lover will never be able to find you in all this chiffon!”   The bride says, “Ah, but for us, the search is all!”  It sounds like those Derrida Christians know the new morality is upon us, but it’s a scrambled mess and probably best ignored until sorted.  In the meantime, keep searching.  The reward may be sweet. In the meantime, we might as well take care of each other.   If the floor needs sweeping, do it.  If the coffee isn’t made, make it.  If someone is hungry, feed them.

I’m not enamored of all the conventional Christian rushing around being compassionate, generally defined by the dispenser and interspersed with long periods of shunning and criticism.  People lose their tempers, get confused, storm off and have to creep back.

But it is often perfectly obvious that something needs to be done, probably without waiting around for an authority figure, as in "church leader", to say so.   And yet the Pope is onboard.  Even he (celibate) knows that contemporary wedding ceremonials have become so elaborate and ostentatious that the point of commemorating personal commitment is entirely lost.  It's that way all over.  It cannot be redeemed by church law -- only by a return to the essential, even if it's Other.

Ammonite fossil