Curious Christian

Reflections on culture, nature, and spirituality from a Christian perspective

Just to explain … hopefully

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Matt Stone

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So where do I stand in relation to all things emerging? It seems some people are still confused about that so I thought it would help to elaborate with reference to the The New Conspirators. In that book Tom Sine spoke of four streams: Emerging, Missional, Mosaic and Monastic.

Now, it needs to be understood that there is a huge degree of overlap between the four streams, and that the Australian scene is very different to the American scene so there is no one-to-one correspondance. But with that being said, to help you understand, you may find it helpful to think of me as an Aussie representative of the Mosaic stream.

Why? Well, the context I find myself in is one of extreme diversity. Not only is it very ethnically diverse, it is very culturally diverse, very religiously diverse and very socio-economically diverse. Its one of the most diverse suburbs in Sydney, which is one of the most diverse cities in the Southern Hemisphere. Walking up the street I can expect to encounter Sudanese refugees, Hindu shopkeepers, Sikh taxi drivers, drug addicts and ordinary teenagers exploring all sorts of spiritual options. My immediate neighbours include a Buddhist and a Coptic Orthodox priest and my friends include NeoPagans. And so, I find myself involved with a local Christian community that is in the process of a massive transition, that over time is coming to increasing reflecting this diversity as it engages with the community.

And so, my ecclesiology reflects this context. While I find much of value in the emerging, missional and neo-monastic conversations there is much that sits uneasy with me too, given where I am and where I have come from. I am seeking an understanding of postmodernity which is less monolithic than what I find the emergent stream is offering, I am seeking an approach to contemplative disciplines which is less Euro-centric than what I find the monastic stream is offering, and I am seeking an approach to church contextualization that is less tribal and more critical of the “homogenous unit principle” than what I find the missional stream is offering. I have friends who participate in each of these streams and I respect what they are doing, but my context demands I do things somewhat different. The diversity of art you find here is just one espression of this.

Now, as I said, this needs to be taken with a grain of salt. You cannot easily slot me in with McManus as I have not read a single one of his books and the racial history of our countries are very, very different. I am not suggesting a direct correlation with what is going on in America, I am merely suggesting some similarities at the level of ethos and focus, to explain where I am coming from and why the emergent tag doesn’t sit well with me.

Hopefully that makes it a little clearer for those of you who have asked, or just wondered.

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27 responses to “Just to explain … hopefully”

  1. Cobus Avatar
    Cobus

    When the conversation exploded a couple of days ago, I found Sine’s four streams to be of a lot of help as well. As we were busy trying to get some “emerging” folks from around Pretoria and Johannesburg together, I realised that what we call “emerging” encompasses all four of Sine’s streams. For us it isn’t a tension yet. When we say “emerging” in our context, we tend to understand what it mean. We know that it mean that not everyone identity with EmergentVillage in equal amount for example. But in the long run, I think Sine’s streams is going to be a lot of help to point to the fact that there is a lot of conspirators in this conversation, and the test for being part of the conversation is not whether you read Mclaren.

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  2. Steve Hayes Avatar
    Steve Hayes

    “my ecclesiology reflects this context”
    Could you elaborate on that a little. What is your ecclesiology, and how does it reflect the context?
    “I am seeking an approach to church contextualization that is less tribal and more critical of the “homogenous unit principle” than what I find the missional stream is offering”
    Is that what the “missional” stream is offering?
    Perhaps because I grew up in South Africa under apartheid, I have been suspicious of the “homogeneous unit” principle ever since I first heard about it in the 1980s. It sounds a bit too close to the “own affairs” of the apartheid ideologists.
    I can accept it, to some extent, as a missional principle. If you’re evangelising urban youth, for example, you don’t try to include elderly rural people at the same time. But as an ecclesialogical principle I remain suspicious. We have a bit too much of it in the Orthodox Church already — in our Archdiocese we have Greek, Russian and Serbian parishes — homogeneous units all. And then you find they are actually not quite homogeneous enough. In the Greek parishes those of Greek origin find cultural differences with those of Cypriot origin, those from Adriatic islands like Corfu have a different culture from those from Aegean islands like Lesbos or Rhodes. Do you have different parishes for each of them? The “homogeneous unit principle” would probably say yes. And I would say he has made of one blood all the nations of the earth.

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  3. Lucy J Avatar
    Lucy J

    Matt, your way of being and doing “church” (ecclesiology) in the context in which you live and move and have your being, sounds really authentic and adventurous, to me. It’s like I can feel the energy in what you are saying. In fact it makes me think in terms of the empowerment of being a real friend of Jesus in that you can hold dearly the diversity of those around you and yet not be afraid to be who you are yourself.
    I think it’s OK to have cultural specialisation in church practice, whether that be ethnic culture or pop culture, or even church culture. However I don’t think it’s healthy ecclesiology to make that specialisation exclusive or mandatory, because that is malpractice of Jesus’ personal example and teachings.

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  4. Matt Stone Avatar
    Matt Stone

    Cobus, yeah, I used to speak of emerging as encompasing all this, but it became unworkable. I doubt Sine’s streams will be the last word on the matter. I do not, for instance, know where to slot Mark Driscoll and other Reformissional Christians within this. But it is one of the more helpful explainations I have come across.

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  5. Matt Stone Avatar
    Matt Stone

    Steve, perhaps it might help if I tell more of the story. If you asked me this question a few years ago I expect I would have placed myself firmly within Sine’s “missional” stream. I was a guy from a New Age background who was firmly committed to ministering amongst people from my tribe. I believe you are aware, for instance, that for many years I was involved in incarnational mission with Community of Hope amongst New Agers at Mind Body Spirit Festivals. That was what I saw as my mission, but that has changed.
    To skip through this quickly, questions started emerging for me when we failed to translate our missional work into sustainable Christian community. The problem was, the tribe we were ministering to was too translocal, at least in our region. We have friends in Nimbin and Salem who suceeded where we failed, who successfully planted Christian communities in those regions, and I celebrate that. But we failed, I failed, and on reflection I came to see that locale was much more important than I had given it credit. In Nimbin and Salem there was sufficient critical mass, in Sydney there was not, the New Age tribes were too diffuse and the “third places” were too transitory for things to hold together long term.
    What is more important, I found the diversity “within” our nascent groups was scarcely less than the diversity “between” us and the rest of the community. We had a common interest in things esoteric, sure, but we were hardly a homogenous group. We had very different tastes, preferences and spiritual practices. The question came up, was it enough to contextualize for esoterics in a generic sort of way? After all, former New Agers are very different from former Neo Pagans. Shouldn’t we go deeper? But then, could church ever be contextual enough for people like us? Who were so ideosyncratic, individualistic and independent? Seeing the infinite regression this invited, I began to seriously question the homogenous unit principle. Just because it was appropriate for India, did that make it appropriate for here, were pluralism is so much more individualistic a phenomenon? When I had my second child three years ago the impracticality hit home with a thud.
    This set me on a path of looking for different ways. I realized that I had been giving insufficient attention to my Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist neighbours. The local church, which one of our experimental groups had been sheltering under, needed my experience for these missional challenges too. Was it appropriate for me to focus so exclusively on white esotericists, my tribe, and ignore the migrant Hindus on our very doorsteps? In time I because convinced that my tribal focus had been too myopic, that contextualization in my context meant embrace of shere diversity. After all the homogenous unit principal gave us Rwanda, maybe it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
    So, my mission transformed into the embrace of shere diversity and my ecclesiology shifted to match this. I became less interested in house church planting (which is a major emphasis of what Sine defines as the missional stream) and more interested in nurturing church unity in situations of extreme diversity. I have become less interested in finding a place where I feel at home and more interested in finding a place where we can all be exiles together. By way of example, our community includes fundamentalists and liberals and moderate evangelicals, anglos and asians and arabs, young families and retirees, lifelong baptists and new Christians, moderns and postmoderns, middle class and welfare class, charismatics and contemplatives, who all somehow seem to get along. Its chaos, often, but I see something of the Kingdom of God in that.
    So yeah, this is how it is for me. Conversations about postmodernity versus modernity and celtic practice versus contemporary practice and micro-church multiplication versus mega-church expansion just seem too … how should I put it … too bipolar. Does the celtic revival help me minister to Sri Lankans? Does saturation church planting sound like the way forward when we have more subcultures in our suburb than members in our church? Extreme pluralism coupled with extreme individualism demands different thinking. It came to me one day that the most radical thing I could do was to avoid the urge to emerge and plunge right back into the evangelical mainstream, unapologetic about the fact that I had been influenced by orthodox, reformed, anabaptist and catholic tradition, and had tastes influenced by eastern philosophy and western esotericism. It takes perserverance, but it gives permission for others to be ideosyncratists in community, and out of these cultural juxtapositions the completely unexpected can emerge.

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  6. Matt Stone Avatar
    Matt Stone

    Thanks Lucy. Yeah that’s it, cultural specialisation has its place, but that place may vary depending on the context. In my context it becomes more of an individual thing. I encourage people to pray in their own way, when on their own, and be prepared to put their own preferences aside when in community. Its what I practice and I know others do likewise. Same goes for worship. We do alternative worship occasionally, but it tends to be for occasional celebrations like easter. The kids dominate the weekly services, its loud and chaotic with no space for contemplation. Us contemplatives just accept that’s the way it has to be with so many kids. Same goes for theology, in community we focus on the essentials. Take the creation-evolution debate. When the book of Genesis is preached on by the pastoral team, the focus is always on “who” over “how” and that focus is often mirrored by cell group leaders. Generally its only when you speak to leaders privately that you find out where they stand, because we emphasize essentials over peripherals (and in case you are wondering, yes, some are young earth creationists). This emphasis on essentials over peripherals diffuses the power of theological disagreements. We’re not emergent, but we’re not normal.

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  7. Brett Peatman Avatar
    Brett Peatman

    Thanks Matt, I appreciate your reflections. I have been attempting to think through how contextualisation works from within a Sydney Anglican perspective. In many places, certainly where I currently live, I think the groups of people simply don’t exist where the homogeneous unit principle could be employed. There are simply too many small fractured groups, and there is little sense of a general community anywhere. Broadly I think this is true of many parts of Australian culture, particularly in the more diverse areas. People may or may not have an ethnic group they have community with. They have small close groups of friends and go little further than that. Mission becomes a process of observation, praying, listening and looking for opportunities. Opportunities normally present themselves in individuals and families rather than any larger context. Consequently most of the challenges for mission here seem to be not about the shape of the church but more about what I and others do with the people we know. It does seem that this sort of mission is slow and leaves you so often focused on prayer and friendships. I cannot see that it is possible for me to take on a variety of the subcultures to reach people. But we do live in the same area and can relate as people. I don’t see this as hindering mission particularly but it does leave us looking to build a church which is diverse by nature. Following one pattern (which is changing over time) but appreciating people’s backgrounds and hoping to see many transformed in Christ.

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  8. Steve Hayes Avatar
    Steve Hayes

    Thanks Matt, for a very comprehensive response.
    In different circumstances, it seems to me that you have concluded something pretty similar to what I have. Outreach to a community like New Agers can be focused on such a group, but if they become Christians, they need to be drawn in to an inclusive community.

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  9. Matt Stone Avatar
    Matt Stone

    Brett, hehe, I must laugh as part of my journey involved defecting from the Sydney Anglicans to the Sydney Baptists where I found I had more space to work through some of this stuff. But more seriously, one of the issues I have been exploring more recently is how we can work closer together, despite the theological and temperamental differences. I don’t know if you know Shane Rogerson or Jeff Atack (http://cityonahillstanhope.wordpress.com/) but they are two bods I have been in conversation with on what contextualization looks like from a Reformed, Sydney Anglican perspective. Happy to chat further on this. I think one of the key issues is coming to a mutual understanding on how we differentiate between essential and peripheral matters. In other words, creating space within which we can disagree with each other without calling each other heretics. Insufficient breathing space between periperal and essential matters is a key barrier to forging unity within diversity. That’s what we need to work on.
    And I should clarify, in some ways the approach I advocate demands more contextualization work not less. Let me give an example. A few years ago our Sikh neighbours invited us to first birthday party of their first child. A major event. Hall hired out. My wife and I were the only white people invited. It was a special honour. We were complete fish out of water, but we kept our eyes open. At one point my wife asked me over to dance with others, but I had been watching the men and noticed they were staying seated, so I nodded and indicated I was following the mens lead. She took the hint, sensing what was up. Sure enough, a few minutes later they stood up in unison. It was their tradition to do it this way. In short, my wife and I adapted as we went along. Not enough to be experts but enough to demonstrate we were willing to adapt to them as much as they were to us in our home, that we weren’t the arrogant nationals. This is something we’ve picked up over time. Its about listening, listening, listening and being totally unshockable. You adapt as you go. Its contextualization as you go. Its not as specialized, its more spontaneous.
    So, it involves an abandonment of the monocultural Christendom approach every bit as much as the emergent and missional and monastic approaches, but its more fluid and adhoc and provisional I suppose.

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  10. Matt Stone Avatar
    Matt Stone

    Steve, yes, and that highlights another significant thing. I no longer distinguish quite so sharply between attractional (centripital) and missional (centrifugal) church. Extracting people out of their culture and insisting they conform in every which way, yes I still see that as very, very problematic. Attracting people, but insisting on nothing but essentials, then sending them back out again, well that’s a different story. That allows for more substaintial cultural continuity.

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  11. Isaiah Avatar
    Isaiah

    Have you had any encounters with neo-monastics? If so, how do you see your ministry in relation to theirs?

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  12. Matt Stone Avatar
    Matt Stone

    Isaiah, I have a number of friends and acquaintances who identify, to some degree, with the neo-monastic stream. Sally Coleman and Mark Berry are two I would mention from the UK, Celtic Son is one who I would mention from Australia. Some months ago I was also in contact with Brent Lyons Lee, who cowrote Emerging Downunder, a book on neo-monasticism in Australia. You can view more here
    http://mattstone.blogs.com/journeysinbetween/2008/03/emerging-downun.html
    How do I see what I do in relation to what they do? Well there is a lot we have in common, we are all concerned with contextualization after all. But I have noticed I tend to place a much stronger emphasis on engaging with Asian cultures and other non-western cultures than they do, as you’ll see comes out in the dialogue with Brent.
    Its not a strict differentiation mind you. I draw on celtic culture from time to time and I know some of them have drawn on alternate cultures from time to time. Its more a matter of emphasis.

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  13. Peggy Avatar
    Peggy

    Thank you for this thread and your elaboration in the comments, Matt.
    It is no surprise to me that the Spirit continues to hold the launch of CovenantClusters as my own thoughts go along with yours…and we at The Abbey are those who do tend to be bridge builders and not separatists.
    I was laughing to myself at the whole “homogeneous” discussion. I take a cue from nature here: milk. We don’t drink homogenized milk at our home because the process turns the good fat into bad fat by breaking them down so small that they are no longer able to separate and come to the top as cream. They are, however, so small that they can leak out into places where they do damage.
    Hmmm….
    However, when you leave the cream alone, it has that tendency to rise to the top. There, everyone sees that it is separating from the milk. And in order to get it back into the milk before you drink it, so that the protein and other nutrients can be properly utilized, we have to shake everything up. Yeah…we just have to get in the habit of regularly shaking things up!
    Hmmm…is that cream representative of the Holy Spirit?
    Sometimes cream is scooped off the top for special purposes…like butter and ice cream. But these are special treats that we can use to help bring the wonder of the cream out into other areas. The non-fat milk is not wasted–it gets used to make other things that nourish the body.
    Hmmm…the Abbess feels a future blog post coming on, so I’ll stop blog-clogging here!

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  14. Matt Stone Avatar
    Matt Stone

    Interesting analogy but I drink soy so what should I make of that, eh? I have nothing to do with sacred cows.

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  15. Peggy Avatar
    Peggy

    …bro, you need to look into some of the new research on the use of non-fermented soy (and particularly on its effects on males!)… it is not good!
    Well, I don’t remember saying “cow milk” particularly … goat milk is closer to human milk anyway!
    Sacred cows…. LOL!

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  16. andrew jones (tallskinnykiwi) Avatar
    andrew jones (tallskinnykiwi)

    udderly remarkable if you ask me!
    great post, Matt!
    Really!

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  17. brad Avatar
    brad

    so … umm … what – are we talkin’ soycred cows now?

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  18. brad Avatar
    brad

    Ah! The weekend! Time at last for the “Saturday sandwich” of coffee, blogging, and more coffee!
    I’ve been skimming a number of your posts the past couple weeks, and on this one, I think I resonate with many of your sentiments of uneasiness, Matt, maybe some for different reasons. I agree with the rejection of a lot of bipolarities that should be held in tension as paradoxes. And I think integration or fusion isn’t the full answer because it leads just as easily to syncretism as to relevance. And what could we imagine beyond the various contemporary “streams” that seem to have current sway? (Pun intended!)
    Anyway, I keep working at how to describe my understanding of engagement in our cultural contexts, but still find I describe its shape and volume more by what it is NOT than what it is. Like it’s an MRI that takes multiple angles of perspective, and multiple passes across the topic to composite the picture. Guess that means parts of it are still under deconstruction. Eventually I hope to have mostly a positive, reconstructed description of what it IS. Meanwhile, some thoughts that riff off of yours …
    I’m for contextualization, which ties in with the subcultural concept of “supermarket of styles.” But I’m also for counterculturalization that seeks to challenge the status quo of subcultures. And also for collaboration, which ties in with “gathering of the tribes” and “potlatch.”
    I was reared in the Lutheran tradition and appreciate liturgy. I also have a strong background in cross-culturalism (experiencing The Other) and interculturalism (integrating lessons from The Other), and a reasonable amount in multiculturalism (living with/near The Other). So, I feel queasy about ancient-future/liturgical approaches when I feel pressured for conformity by advocates who say things like, “This is the way ‘The People of God’ have always worshiped.” Well, no, that’s really more how the traditions of more typically high-church worship practices have unfolded in their journey from Palestine through primarily European cultures.
    And are we sure that’s supposed to be the all-time standard for all world cultures? And how Old-Testamentory are we actually allowed (or required) to be with worship in the era of the New Covenant? Are they saying it’s wrong to prefer low-church practices? What differentiates high-church worship and the rule-and-rhythm approach to an ordered lifestyle? Is there some kind of biblically resonant, worship-equivalent to world music and fusion that draws in lessons from indigenous but non-Western congregations, and seeks to leave their lesions (and ours) behind, and welcomes a wide range of diversity?
    I have enough background about occult realities in the supernatural realm to be uncomfortable with the more rationalist approaches that basically pooh-pooh the need for cautionary discernment and spiritual warfare. But whatever will we do when the North American Church has to deal with a predominantly animistic setting in another generation or two? I’m equally uncomfortable with the rah-rah approach that overemphasizes fighting the darkness to the point of language and actions that seem more like a fusion of Christian + animism than not.
    I find more appreciation all the time for your blog, Matt, as you attempt to expose us to the diversity of alternative spiritualities in community cultures and alternative traditions within the Church, and explore their significance. I keep sensing that in the coming era of Church reconstruction that parallels global paradigm shifts, we’ll need to process East-West and South-North if we’re truly to become a worldwide Body instead of just outposts conformed to an imported westernized Body. It’ll be bigger than any movement we’ve yet seen, and I’m thankful you’re helping point some ways forward. And actually, I think you’re closer than anyone I know to the substance of what I can only see now in shadow for the shape I think that final MRI composite looks like …

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  19. Matt Stone Avatar
    Matt Stone

    Soycred cows! Brillient! I can feel some photoshopping coming on.

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  20. Matt Stone Avatar
    Matt Stone

    Thanks Andrew

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  21. Matt Stone Avatar
    Matt Stone

    Thanks Brad, I appreciate the encouragement and I really resonate with your MRI analogy. I am think sometimes that contextualization in my context is not so much about finding a new paradigm as learning how to work with multiple paradigms. Edward de Bono once wrote a book called “Parallel Thinking” which touches on some of this from a philosophical perspective. With your analogy I can see you grok what I am talking about.
    Speaking of occult realities, only last night I was reading a book by Patrick Dunn, called “Postmodern Magic”, which spoke of working with multiple paradigms. I bought it six months ago to stretch the grey matter and I think he is hitting on some of the same cultural issues from a Pagan angle.
    To put this back into a missiological framework, some world missionaries differentiate between honour-shame cultures, innocence-guilt cultures and power-fear cultures. Countries like America and Australia are typically defines as innocence-guilt cultures, and this is where the gospel of guilt management comes in. Now, in postmodernity some have seen signs of a shift to a power-fear culture in the west, with corresponding rises in Animism, as you so rightly identify. But, the thing for me is, I can encounter all three paradigms on my walk down to get the paper from the shops on a Saturday morning. In postmodernity I am seeing signs of huge cultural juxtaposition. I need to be able to work with all of that, to switch from an anamistic to an asian to a anglo perspective in a nonlinear manner and somehow make sense of it all.
    The interesting thing is, I find there are some benefits to this. There are some problems that are easier to work through in one reference frame, and other problems that are easier to work though in another. Like switching between MRI images with different colours if you like.

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  22. brad Avatar
    brad

    This makes a huge amount of sense to me, this idea of three different cultural formats. It helps explain why we can talk “at” each other crossculturally, but never connect, even if we are all speaking the same language. It’s the unique “rhetoric” – the glue between the words, phrases, sentences, and statements – that gets us stuck in our own mindspace. We can’t understand what The Others are saying, because their frequency can’t get through our hearing aids.
    Wow, was that something like a triple mix of metaphors? Yikes!
    Anyway, the issue of core perspective or rhetoric is why I base my paradigm analysis work on “information processing mode” and “critical values,” as these are to culture what rhetoric is to language. And since we find from Babel that language and culture are inevitably intertwined, to me this makes sense. The ways we generally process the world profoundly influence the ways we shape our philosophies and theologies.
    What I’ve called “interpolators” – interculturals/culturally fluid people who also integrate insights from others – are like hubs for linking up multiple paradigms. If my hunches are close to accurate, then interpolators have undergone cultural formation in ways that make them open not just to peoples of other cultures personally, but to resonate with aspects of the different rhetorics linguistically and multiple paradigms culturally. Hubs. Could it be we have the best chance of stepping into a multi-everything situation and serving as a liaison who can find or broker some common ground?
    Last thought: If one or another of these three perspectives helps in a specific situation, that’s another reason for becoming multi-perspective people, which isn’t the same as homogenizing all three into something that no one can really recognize any longer or resonate with.
    And speaking of homogenizing, I am deeply sorry to inform you that I did a typo when I talked about ‘soycred’ cows. It should’ve been ‘soycrud.’ Ah well, live and loyn…
    See yuh at the Abbey!

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  23. Matt Stone Avatar
    Matt Stone

    Brad, speaking of rhetoric and the like, have you ever read David Hasselgrave’s “Communicating Christ Cross-Culturally”? In it he speaks of seven dimensions of cross cultural communication, of which language is only one.
    You will find a brief synopsis here: http://mattstone.blogs.com/journeysinbetween/2007/07/seven-dimension.html
    Now although language is only one dimension I think it can serve as an analogy for the rest. Try this on for size. Just as some things are easier to say in some languages and harder to say in others, some thoughs are easier to think through within some paradigms and harder to think through in others. Just as some are multilingual, some are multiperceptual. There are your interpolators. Now, consider that linguistic dud known as Esperanto. What do you think we can learn from that?

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  24. Peggy Avatar
    Peggy

    Exactly, Matt!
    Much of the transformational power that I have experienced personally through the cultural and linguistic and paradigmatic intertwining of the concept of hesed is just that kind of thing … and I believe that this is also why I have been less than successful in communicating the power of the concept in non-personal media. Face to face has been the only way it has worked.
    Interpolators are unique in the way they are because they sense the need to be able to bring up any or all of these modes when dealing with challenging circumstances amid diverse peoples.
    The human MRI = multiple resonance interpolators? Hmmm….

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  25. brad Avatar
    brad

    Yo – M & P, will plan to trip on back here later, as have to zoom out for some errands. Would that make me an “afternoon errant” since it’s only 2 PM here?
    All random. But oh well.
    I was captured all morning by the three culture-frames you mentioned earlier: honor/shame, innocence/guilt, power/fear. Although we typically would term those “worldviews,” look at the non-rational/EMOTIONAL content in them: shame, guilt, fear. This is part of the whole multi-perspective, MRI approach. The perspective of “worldview” or “mindset” alone is too limiting; not all of import goes on in the “mind.”
    And I’m not saying that out of hypermodern skepticism, or an emergent sense of ironics – but from a holistic paradigm that simply says, if we’re going to talk about the immaterial layer of our being that affect our perspectives and actions, let’s at least acknowledge the reality of multi-layers within that immaterial layer.
    Okay. Time to go run errands, less it get late and I truly end up a knight errant.
    And … umm … could my alter-ego please be named ‘Baron de vonn Bonneville,’ in honor of my first car? Which I long since no longer own, carbon-footprint stomper that it was …

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  26. Matt Stone Avatar
    Matt Stone

    Brad and Peggy, you see where i am coming from in terms of my critique of the emergent conversation though? In many ways the emergent conversation represents a rejection of the innocence-guilt motif, or at least a seismic shift in terms of what inspires guilt and confers innocence. So where are we headed? Well, listen to the language. From where I stand, much seems about the fear mongering of the religious right and finding empowerment through emergence. Power, hmmm. Fear, hmmm. What does that suggest we could be shifting towards? Is it any wonder the establishment and emergents end up talking past one another? Its not just about how we think, its about what we think with! This is way below the level of rational discourse, its about gut instincts being basically different. But is this story big enough? No, it ignores the story of migrants and their influence in the story of globalisation, it does not take pluralization seriously enough. A more holistic take on postmodernity would need to be able to do a MRI scan on it and look at postmodernity and globalization from an honour-shame perspective as well. How can we possibly claim to be telling the fully story of postmodernity and globalization if we ignore the honour-shame perspective? Yet ignoring it is precisely what we are doing. And we wonder why the emerging movement is so white. If I am to engage my indian, asian and arabic neighbours, and white Australians who have been influenced by eastern thought, I need to become more conversant with the honour-shame issues globalization and postmodernity throw up. In the face of this I am forced to admit that my understanding is still too parochial and that my gut instincts are still too unreliable.

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  27. Peggy Avatar
    Peggy

    I hear you Matt. I also believe that the whole honor/shame perspective is part of the hesed bundle. There are tons of folks in other parts of the world who understand this “middle eastern” concept much more readily than those in the “western” branch. More of the Hebrew/Greek divide, in my view.
    This is part of why the movie “The Last Samurai” resonated so strongly with me. They understand the implications of having a liege Lord–personally and collectively. They also understand the implications of “breaking covenant” even without using those terms. And they understand the terrible consequences for faithlessness to one’s oath.
    Much of this takes me back to where we all met: The Forgotten Ways blog/book, where Alan calls us to consider that right thinking does not necessarily lead to right action … whereas right action can lead to much better thinking!
    Emerging is taking a closer look at actions. Modern/Western is still stuck with having to know everything…and too frequently never gets around to doing.
    At least, that’s been my experience of the past 40 years, as I’ve been scrutinizing it these past 10 years.
    Hesed continues to show itself simple enough to help those gut reactions be more reliable while being able to plumb the depths of scriptural truths with the best of them.

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