Before I launch into a discourse on the intersection of the Emerging Church movement and Capitol Hill, I want to define both of these terms. While you may think you know what I mean by “Capitol Hill” in Washington DC, I hope my definition will help you reunderstand what this place truly is. Also, because I rest so heavily on the concepts and principles of the Emerging Church movement (EC), I want to help you better understand what exactly the movement is. Because the EC is a rather diverse movement, it is often times hard to pine it down. I could fill ten posts with information on its various facets, but I will choose right now to focus on two. Throughout the next six to seven posts, you should better understand what the movement is and how I think it beautifully intersects with reaching the Capitol Hill community for Jesus Christ.
First, what do I mean by Capitol Hill? For most American Christians, it is a bureaucratic institution that pumps out the pork, wages war, spends your money willy-nilly, and sometimes threatens the values we hold dear. But the Hill community is no different than any other community in America: it is filled with hurting, lost, broken individuals. We need to realize Capitol Hill is not merely a center of power and bureaucracy, but rather a community of lost individual people. That community is composed of 23,000 postmodern young adults (average age is 27), roughly 80% are unsaved. And these staffers are leading very broken lives that need the restoring power of the love of Jesus and His gospel. It is out of this hurting, broken, lost, sin-marked heart/mind/life that policy is being written. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the Church must move beyond viewing the Hill as an organization and look at it through the eyes of Jesus to see a community of individual people living dark, broken lives.
Now if Capitol Hill is more than simply a bureaucratic organization and really a community of dark, broken individual people who need to be restored by Jesus Christ, then the Church must engage that community missionally and spiritually. But if I am right, and the EC is the conversation that speaks to this community, what is it saying and why should we listen? This conversation understands the Church needs to move beyond the Modern (philosophical, not technological) version of Christianity and reunderstand some aspects of our faith, while recognizing a seismic cultural shift and the need to missionally engage with that emerging postmodern culture. Both of these “conversation pieces” are what the Church needs to hear if it desires to reach the Hill community for Jesus and with His Way.
Before I try and unpackage what I mean by the need to move beyond the Modern version of Christianity, the Church needs to recognize the fact our culture already is emerging beyond modernism into postmodernism. Some believe we already are a postmodern culture, while others say we are still emerging. Regardless, our contemporary American society is reacting to emerging beyond modernism, and this is really what postmodernism is: a reaction to modernism and a desire to move beyond this philosophical structure.
Without going into great detail of the philosophical distinctions—both because I am certainly not qualified to make a length discussion and because it is really not entirely important to the over all series—pure modernism held to a single, universal worldview and moral standard, a belief that all knowledge is good and certain, truth is absolute, individualism is valued, and thinking, learning, and beliefs should be determined systematically and logically. Postmodernism, then, holds there is no single universal worldview. All truth is not absolute, community is valued over individualism, and thinking, learning, and beliefs can be determined nonlinerarly.
How has this tension affected spirituality, religion, and the Church? Postmoderns react severely to dominant groups imposing a single worldview and life story (called metanarratives) on a people group. They have seen the destruction various groups throughout history imposing using certainty and worldviews to bring destruction upon a people group and world. These metanarratives range from Facism with the Nazi regime in Germany, to Communism being utilized in the former Soviet Union, to Christians suppressing different people groups like slaves and women using the metanarrative of the Bible. Obviously, it is unfortunate Christianity is lumped in with evil, Satanic dictatorial beliefs throughout history, but the biblical worldview (metanarrative) is considered just as oppressive as these other regimes. This is why a diversity of spiritual experiences and traditions is accepted, celebrated, and embraced.
While most believe the transition into a fully postmodern, “post-Christian” era has not fully culminated, there are very real forces at work behind the scenes of modern American life. The American society is moving into a world beyond the values and worldview of modernism, and even more significantly beyond Christianity. We need to recognize that much of the culture neither understands nor accepts Christianity as being true, real or valuable. At worst, Christianity is seen as a worldview used to oppress Blacks, women, Native Americans, and other non-Western nations; at best, Christianity is one other alternative in the spiritual smorgasbord and completely irrelevant to 21st Century living. Welcome to our world!
Not only does the Emerging Church movement recognize the need to missionally approach our postmodern, Post-Christian culture, it also appreciates aspects the postmodern critique of philosophical modernism, especially as it relates to the current manifestation of Christianity. Ultimately, this movement recognizes that our current articulation of the Movement of God has been influenced by modernism and is no longer a viable option. The professor and author Scot McKnight puts it best when he writes on his blog: “Emergent is a reaction to what the Church has to offer and what the Church is today, and what it has to offer is not enough, not good enough, not biblical enough, not spiritual enough, not radical enough, not relevant enough, not in touch with a new generation of young adults who simply will not let the ‘same old, same old’ be what they will tolerate for the Church (which is theirs too).”
In reacting to Modernism and the current version of Christianity the EC values several things: relationships over institution; the gospel as a restoration to relationship with God and His Story now, rather than simply a consumeristic ticket to heaven later; an emphasis on an apologetics of incarnational living and orthopraxy, rather than a propositional argument of orthodoxy; evangelism by discipleship and process, not sales-pitch and end-product; experience of God and life change over intellectual study and a sterile approach of God; importance on spending money on missional work rather than Church buildings, programs, and fluff; honest-to-goodness radical confession and admission of where and who we really are, rather than superficiality and fake-Christian vinear; equipping the saints for grassroots activism over hierarchical control and church celebrityism.
I could go on, but as you see there is a deep down sense that there is something wrong with the “state of things” within the Church, and the “system is to blame.” Which means there is a need to re-do the system, from ground up. In other words, one of the most significant features of the Emergent movement is “systemic analysis.” While those who are doing the analysis are not getting it completely right, the issue is clear: the system is what led us to this “state” and there is a need to re-work the whole thing. To be more precise, the Modern system has run its course, especially in the midst of this postmodern culture.
I fully realize I did not do the EC conversation enough justice in this post, but I feel confident the description covers the basics and will serve its purpose in laying a foundation for the series. If you are left wanting in my description of the EC, the following posts should help you understand more what it is trying to say to the Church. The next series of posts will unpackage more what embracing the EC movement would look like in missionally approaching the Capitol Hill community. Hopefully, this series will give you a greater appreciation for what we in the EC conversation desire for God’s movement and what I am dreaming of for the Church’s missional involvement in the Hill community.
