Response to Philip Clayton's post on Theology After Google

I just spent way too long typing out a response to Philip Clayton's blog post on theOOZE (a site that I rarely frequent and that I only checked out in this instance because Jason at Sustainable Traditions recommended it.) only to find that my comment wouldn't go through.  Aaaarrrgggghhh!!!! (No Wonder there were no comments posted there yet.)

So I'm posting it here, mostly because I don't want to let all that work go to waste. (I don't even know that what I wrote was even decent, but still, it's the principle of the thing that counts here. If I spend that much time pounding out a reply, someone should have the opportunity to read it.)

i was shocked after reading through your article to see that there were no comments after you'd specifically asked for comments!  if some sites can get hundreds of idiots to reply their their posts, then this post should at least get the comments of one idiot.  

so here i am.   ;-)

(hopefully there's not 10 comments waiting in moderation before mine making me look like even more of an idiot once they all go through. *sigh*)

i suppose i'm left, after reading your article, wondering who you're talking about.  if pastor's are no longer authorities, is that because non-christians no longer see them as authorities? or because our churches have grown into mass media spectacles where you simply can't have a personal relationship with your pastor in which you can talk out theology and life in such a way that you build a relationship and respect for that individual and allow him to speak into your life -- to have some level of authority?

i'm a member of a small church (in a denomination that's been around since the '60's i think, when it split off from a mainline denom). i read blogs right and left. i write about my own spiritual journey and i feed my intellectual and spiritual self in a plethora of ways (from books to online posts to online communities). and i don't see my pastor as a host at all.  he's a teacher and a pastor.  he prepares information for me to digest, cogitate on and discuss.  he's the authority because he's the one spending the time it takes to research and delve into the topic in order to present it to us. granted he's not just stuffing facts and rules into our spiritual gullets. there's a lot of conversation and interaction. but he's guiding us, not hosting us. he's teaching us.

i also think you're creating a bit of a false dichotomy.  you're saying there's what church was and what church is becoming.  but what church was wasn't always church.  in my opinion it was far more common as recently as 30 or 40 years ago for churches to be filled to the brim with people who didn't believe a word of what they were hearing. they hadn't chosen to follow jesus. they were just "going to church" because that's what you did.  that's not church. ok, so it is, but it's a very different definition of the word than i think either you or i would mean by it. and how much "authority" did any pastor/clergy have in that case? they had neither authority nor were they a host.  they were just part of the ritual that people went through on sunday mornings.

i think i also balk at the "we're not in kansas anymore" overall idea to the post. yes, in many ways the internet is changing our world dramatically.  and yet people are still people and relationships still involve talking and interacting and probably having a bite to eat and something to sip on while you're together. in that sense, things are still very much the same.  church is made up of people learning to get along with each other despite differences, learning to love self-lessly, to care for each other and so on.  that's not internet stuff.  that's the same sort of thing that the church has been doing for millenia. 

The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New Generations (a book review)

http://barefootmeg.multiply.com/reviews/item/30
Click through to see my review of Dan Kimball's book on the Emerging Church.

Personality (Temperament) Types and the Emergent Church Movement

I've embarked upon a brief exploration into the world of the Emergent Church Movement.  Though the Wikipedia article sucks, imo, the book by Dan Kimball, the Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New Generations is actually pretty good.  Dan explains not only some of the "distinctives" of the Emergent Church (not that he'd ever use that word), but he also explains why it's called Emerging in the first place. 

What struck me, though, as I read about this Emerging (or Postmodern) generation (characterized by a lack of belief in absolutes, an interest in the spiritual and mysterious, a strong distaste for institutionalized Christianity, a longing for authenticity and a need to experience a relationship with God rather than sitting back and being told about it) is that is sounds very much like the NF personality temperament type.

An NF: "searches for meaning and authenticity, empathetic, highly responsive to interpersonal transactions, keeps in close contact with others, highly personalized, gives and needs strokes freely."  (from Type Talk at Work, How the 16 personality types determine your success on the job by Otto Kroeger with Janet M. Thuesen and Hile Rutledge.)

While on the other hand, what Dan refers to as the Modern generation (characterized by adherence to absolutes as guide-stones in life (absolutes either from religion or science), a preference for structure, systems and institutions, and putting a high value on knowledge and formal education) sounds very much like the SJ personality temperament type.

An SJ: "strives to belong and contribute, prizes harmony and service, orderly, dependable, realistic, understands and conserves institutional values, expects other to be realistic, supplies stability and structure, more likely to reward institutionally than personally (trophies, letters, etc), can be critical of mistakes more easily than rewarding expected duties." (also from Type Talk at Work, How the 16 personality types determine your success on the job by Otto Kroeger with Janet M. Thuesen and Hile Rutledge.)

Is it just that NF's often lead the way into new movements and eventually SJ's take over and institutionalize the movement?  Or is Dan thinking that he's reaching a new and emerging generation when all he's really doing is reaching a specific subset of people that have been with us from time immemorial?

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Another good page on NFs.
Another good page on SJs.

Modernism - a comparison

Dan Kimball, in his book The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New Generations, describes modernism as follows:

"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."

He then contrasts that with postmodernism:

"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 nonlinearly."

To summarize -- modernism is concrete, certain and logical; postmodernism is flexible, uncertain and is more feeling or experience oriented.

I finished reading Kimball's book about a week ago and have been thinking quite a bit about it ever since.   So when I saw a mention of Modernist authors (such as Joseph Conrad and Henry James) in the Great Courses sale catalog, I took note.  I love the catalogs because they often include long excerpts from various classes.  The lesson I was reading was on "The Year that Changed Literature: Defining Modernism -- Beyond Impressionism" by David Thorburn.  Thorburn summarizes these early modern writers as follows:

"Part of the reason [modern narrators are no longer omniscient as their predecessors had been] is that they live in this skeptical, pessimistic, problematic, disorderly environment.  They are the heirs to uncertainty.  They are the heirs to instability.  They are the heirs to a notion of the fluidity and immense complexity of a world that no longer has the kind of stabilizing coherences that earlier religious, moral, and institutional dispensations created for people. And the beginnings of Modern novels, therefore, reflect this much more problematic, much more fluid, much more uncertain environment. ...In the problematic and uncertain universe of Modern fiction there are other compensations and other virtues, but the certainty and the self-confidence of the older-tradition are gone."

I was taken aback because everything I read sounded almost word for word something that I would have read in Dan Kimball's book -- only he would have been using those phrases to describe Postmodernism, which he finds almost antithetical to organized, fact driven, systematized Modernism.)

What gives?  Is this a case of "what goes around comes around"?  Or is something else at play?

I think the key has far more to do with personality types than defining social movements.