What Do Publishers Mean By "Emergent"?

by Jana Riess, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 3/12/2008

I got another one of those press releases today, the kind that hypes a book submission as fresh, edgy and pioneering. Nothing unusual there. Only nowadays, Christian publishers are latching on to a new term for such books, whether or not they deserve it: "Emergent."

Emergents or the emerging church is a group of Christians—primarily but not exclusively evangelicals—who share some common characteristics. They're interested in postmodernism, and want to explore how to be Christian in today's pluralistic world. They are especially keen on rethinking the Christian gospel through story and experience rather than dogma. They want to reach out to the unchurched (though, like many Christian movements, seem to have their best success among the burned-out "postchurched"), and are well-connected to new technologies, especially the blogosphere. They want to simplify Christian trappings, sometimes foregoing buildings in favor of small house churches that take communion al fresco by downing grape juice in Styrofoam cups with the homeless. You get the idea.

But many of the books I'm receiving that bear the coveted label "Emergent" are not, to my thinking, Emergent at all. Some are authored by megachurch pastors, and since Emergent folks are to megachurches what locally grown organic vegetables are to fast food, I've learned to be suspicious of the label "Emergent." What it should mean is some of what I discussed above. What it increasingly means is this: The following book was written by a Protestant male under the age of 40. He probably has a goatee. He definitely wears eyeglasses that are much cooler than yours.

Part of the problem rests with the porous boundaries of a group like Emergent. As Tony Jones helpfully points out in The New Christians (Jossey-Bass, Mar.), the emerging church is not an institution so much as a conversation. And a conversation is by its nature permeable, which is helpful when you're trying to avoid church-as-usual and generate some new ideas. Yet this conversation's very openness has left it vulnerable to friendly exploitation, as the Establishment quietly co-opts the iconoclastic, anti-Establishment label Emergent. In the end, readers wind up feeling like they've been enjoying a terrific tête-à-tête with someone at a cocktail party until a brash and self-promoting interloper butts in.

Ironically, some of the books that casually brandish the label "Emergent" seem distinctly at odds with the liberal, often radical, political action espoused by many Emergent authors, including Brian McLaren (Everything Must Change, Thomas Nelson, 2007), Tony Jones, Shane Claiborne (Jesus for President, Zondervan, Mar.), or Will and Lisa Samson (Justice in the Burbs, Baker, 2007).

What I fear will be next is a trend of blurring Emergent ideas with self-help. It's easy to see how publishers would find this marriage irresistible: why not join an appealingly edgy hipster ethos with those stock-in-trade Christian books that promise improved prayer life, more effective parenting, and better abs in 30 days? But Emergent folks deserve more than becoming the book equivalent of a glossy infomercial. I'm not the only one who's uncomfortable: I can, in an utterly un-postmodern appeal to an Authority Figure, quote Brian McLaren on the subject: "It's not about the church meeting your needs; it's about joining the mission of God's people to meet the world's needs."

The thing is, I care about this issue. I know it's trendy for the literati to scoff at the emerging church conversation and show their own bona fides by pointing out that there is nothing truly new about it from a theological perspective. (Bonus points if you can drop the names of one or two early church fathers who championed some of the same ideas.) But that been-there-done-that attitude in no way explains how Russell Rathbun's Jossey-Bass book Post-Rapture Radio (which will release in paper in June) knocked the wind right out of me, why I mark up my copies of Brian McLaren's books with arrows and exclamation points, and why I get excited whenever I discover a fresh Emergent voice. There is something special going on here, which is why the growing co-optation of the label Emergent for the same-old-same-old Christian books is so annoying. Here's hoping that publishers (and authors) can restrain themselves before the label becomes meaningless.

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