James McMahon at A Disciple’s Journey has written an interesting comment in response to my earlier post, “Trying to Connect the Dots of the Emergent Movement.” He describes the mission venture of two friends in West Africa. Their missionary method, James says, differs from that of “many denominations [which] send missionaries into areas to build a church in the image of American Christianity, with Western worship practices and order. In effect, American denominations seek to create congregations in their own image regardless of the surrounding culture.”
James, thanks for your comment. I admire the remarkable mission your friends are carrying out in West Africa. You are fortunate to count them as friends. However, I fail to see how that description sheds much light on the Emergent Movement. You are right that it is offensive to confuse Christianity with American/Western culture, and to approach evangelism, either at home or elsewhere, with an imperialistic attitude. However, consideration of such concerns has been going on long before the Emergent Movement came along.
Hudson Taylor, the great missionary of the Inland China Mission, stirred controversy in the 1800s when he wore Chinese clothes in order to relate to Chinese people. The Anglican missionary Roland Allen wrote his classic books on missions and indigenous Christianity almost a century ago: Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? (1913) and The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church (1927). [Wonderful books. By the way, the full text of both books is available here].
Albert Mohler, a Southern Baptist who is certainly no emergent, wrote an interesting article last month about missions (“The Continuing Call – Christian Missions in the Post-Colonial Age”). Mohler writes: “…the age of colonial missions is now past — certainly among the most respected and established missionary organizations.”
My point is that the principle of “contextualization” in missions and evangelism, what emergents might call being “incarnational,” is certainly not a new idea or a discovery of the Emergent Movement.
James, please tell me more. I am glad for the opportunity to have a direct conversation with someone who has a positive view of the Emergent Movement. I think my question to you (or anyone favorable to the emergents) would be to tell me more about the philosophical view of that movement. What is the philsophy (i.e., epistemology) of the emergents, how does their philosophy differ from that of evangelicals, and how is their philosophy better (i.e., more Biblical)?
As I have made amply clear on this blog, I share the emergents’ repulsion with many of the things we Baby Boomers have introduced to the modern church. I can definitely relate to a desire to strip away all of the nonsense with which Baby Boomers have degraded the contemporary American church. But the Emergent Movement seems to want to be something more profound than merely a rebellion against the gawdiness of Baby Boomerism. The emergents want to have a new philosophical view of things. Right? I would be very interested, James (or anyone else), in hearing you saying something about that.
(If this conversation continues much longer, I will be forced to break down and read one of Bruce McLaren’s books. That is something I have decided I really don’t want to do. However, emergents will be happy to know I am going out today to pick up a copy of N.T. Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God. I’m going to ask the real bookworm in our family, my wife Norma, to read it and tell me what she thinks.)
