Just when I thought I had said all I want to say on this part time hobby of a blog about cultural Christianity, I run into new thoughts and ideas. Apparently outside the MSM there is a current movement of faith looking or searching for something beyond tenured academics and pension seeking clerics. The establishment seems to want to have a safe haven in life but don’t really want to answer your questions about the Bible or the real meaning of the teachings of Jesus or the here and now meaning of humanity living in this modern slipstream of cultural energy.
Everybody is looking for a label for some non-mainstream faith. I don’t have many labels. I am not a scholar but have said on more than one occasion how I got turned off by most religions because the people comfortable with the keys to the church just don’t want to deal with your questions about faith, God and our places in the universe.
First You Tube clip is regarding a book by an author I have not read but the title and author’s name got passed around to me. The book is The Great Emergence by Phyllis Tickle. In the first You Tube snippet she is defining some terminology and setting some parameters about which her book is about.
Next clip may be totally unrelated except for similar titles. Fascinating stuff though.
Over and above that is what might be a growing phenomenon of many people who want more than what MCT Mainstream Christian Theology states in its boilerplate rhetoric to the diminishing crowds in their local places of worship.
Don’t know what to make of it all. Don’t have numbers or statistics. The You Tube clip from a PBS show Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly is quite informing. Am passing it along. I am probably still in the whip and buggy age about all this. So what! Live and learn.
Have read some of McLaren's work and he's not THAT radical! Why not interview Spong instead. Emergent church a step in the right direction and the critics be damned. Institutional Christianity is dying and has to evolve and it is but change comes hard to entrenched religonists who make their living selling the old ideas in new packaging. This is the future and we need to embrace it. Love, respect and forgiveness are at the core of true belief. It's universal and all are welcome.
ReplyDelete"pension seeking clerics." love it!
ReplyDeleteI am reading the book now. Thanks for the you tube video. I hadn't seen it.
Glad to see you back on line. Missed your diatribes!