The Great Emergence: a review

September 24, 2008

Just finished The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why by Phillis Tickle. After studying the history of the Church for a year, it’s hard not to appreciate and even admire what Tickle has managed to do in this 163 page book. While Tickle can only present a part of the story, The Great Emergence provides vocabulary that is the basis of our conversation and understanding of the locus and trajectory of the Church in 2008. The Great Emergence is lexical. It is seminal. It’s like the Tommy of emergent concept books.

Tickle’s thesis comes from the rhythm of the Church’s lifecycle: every 500 years, there is a major shift in the theological grounding of the Church (Gregory the Great, The Great Schism, The Great Reformation). We are in the midst of a transformation that can neither be fought nor ignored, it must be understood, or at least generously observed.

In order to get a grip on where the church is today, we have to sift through history as much as we read theory and philosophy. What Tickle manages to address, historically, are the forces that have led up to our greatest ecclesiological questions and tensions. Please read this book. If you are on a church staff, particularly in a mainline denomination, then make this book your next book study.

Why such vehement division between the traditional and contemporary congregations?

Why does the emergent theological landscape seem so broad? Is is still Christian?

If you read carefully, these questions begin to become answerable. However, more questions evolve, but I think questions are a healthy inevitability for the Church. If you’re not asking any, it’s probably time to take your pulse. Tickle has heralded the presence of an iceberg by describing the tip of it. I’ve heard that if you turn into it, it won’t split open the hull.

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