I just finished reading Phyllis Tickle’s The Great Emergence. Her thesis is that every 500 years the Christian church experiences a paradigm shift–a fundamental reappraisal of the basics of its faith. A new expression of the historic faith emerges that shatters the coherence of the old order. These “rummage sales” produce a major advance in the spread of Christianity. The last great upheaval was the Reformation, and–the point of the book–we are presently experiencing one, the Great Emergence.
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I’ll leave you to read the book if you want to. It is an impressive integration of religious, cultural, and political history—with a few questionable linkages and generalizations. But I was much more intrigued by what she did NOT say. She did not explain this flow of history that produces a sea change every 500 years, and nowhere in the book does she use the word “sin” or “evil.”
There have been many explanations of causes or forces that “move” history: trade and commerce, powerful ideas, conflict between social or economic classes. Some Christians are comfortable with “providential” history, seeing nations operating as agents of divine favor or judgment. But Tickle makes no explanation whatsoever. It could be that she, as a postmodern thinker, is simply uninterested in the great “meta-narratives” that ascribe to this or that great force the power to order human society over eons of time. Or perhaps her purpose was to describe “what” was happening, not to explain “why.” But I find the gap a bit disturbing.
It seems in Tickle’s analysis the church is carried from crisis to crisis by this current, whatever it is, and simply molds itself to, or is molded by, the demands of the changing intellectual environment. The Church (the body of believers in the world) has little impact on, or resistance to, the tide.
Here lies Tickle’s second omission: I believe that this tide can best be described as a moral conflict. The abundant grace of God confronts human moral twistedness; the creative image of God in humanity is at war with the human will to power; and the redemptive plan of God at odds with human self-centeredness. If I am right, the Church is not merely carried through history by a benign force, adapting itself to ever-changing circumstances, periodically changing clothes to keep in fashion.
What is missing from Tickle’s book is an understanding that the Church by the grace of God stands opposed to dark forces that seek to dominate the culture-shaping institutions of our world. The Church is the bulwark that God raises to curb the sometimes overpowering evil pouring from the human heart. The Church is God’s work in this world. It is true that the story of Christianity in this world is usually not a very pretty one—but we (faulty, weak, short-sighted, and morally compromised) are the improbable tools that God has chosen to use in this continuing conflict. He will win, no thanks to us. He presently—and ultimately—controls the current.
This is a thought provoking post, Bill. You’re answer to the meta-narrative that Tickle missed. But it’s like the mirror image of Tickle: you have the explanation as to why, without the info.
I know I know, you wrote a blog post and Tickle had a whole book. But for the record, I am pretty interested to read the history you’d marshal to show that it’s the church that’s kept society from collapsing. Even as an evangelical, I have a hard time seeing that. So if you’re wondering what the next entry will be (or better, what your next BOOK should be!) type away and know I’ll be interested in that answer.
And secondarily (and with the caveat that I haven’t read the book) what’s the problem with one historian just telling the big story and leaving to others the job of explaining why it was all that way?
Dave, historians are prone to pick at each others’ work because each of us have only part of facts (not to mention the interpretations!) right. But to your question: The survival of human civilization owes very little to humanity itself, and that includes the church. The Christian Church has been behind times for most of the last two thousand years. The miracle is not that the Church has “kept society from collapsing.” The miracle is that God has continued to use the Church to accomplish his plan, and it is God’s grace, not human intelligence, that has prevented the world from collapsing into anarchy. I do believe that the Christian Church is one of God’s primary channels of grace.