The thesis of her "conversation" today (everything in the Emergent Church movement seems to be labeled a 'conversation' of some sort or another) was that the "emergent" or "emerging" movement we are starting to see is part of a grand tradition in western religion of periodically breaking down and completely re-forming or re-building our religious basis. To this end, Phyllis makes two possibly-controversial but simultaneously very revealing assertions: first, that the Abrahamic religious traditions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam -- does the Baha'i faith count?) reach a breaking point roughly every 500 years at which the present basis of authority and religious understanding can no longer hold and must be re-formed; second, that we are in the midst of one of these 500-year reformations right now.
Looking at the first assertion as it impacts the Judeo-Christian tradition:
- 1000 BCE: King David, the consolidation of Israel and worship of Yahweh; religious authority from oral tradition and a divine monarchy, temporal authority from divine monarchy
- 500 BCE: Second-Temple Judaism, the "invention" of monotheism; religious authority from a vaguely-defined collection of written scriptures and a priestly class, temporal authority from a priest-sanctioned monarchy
- 0 BCE/CE: The Coming of Christ, beginning of the decline of the Roman Empire, the first universalization of monotheism (ie, our God should be everybody's God); religious authority from Christ and his directly-appointed apostles (and their appointees, the Bishops) - or in Jewish tradition from the Rabbinate, temporal authority from the Emperors
- 500 CE: Catholicism/Orthodoxy, fall of Rome and beginning of teutonic warrior-states; religious authority from the Pope (west) or the Emperor (east), temporal authority from whoever has military strength to own the land
- 1000 CE: The East/West Schism, beginning of feudal monarchies; in the west: religious authority from the Pope, temporal authority sanctioned by the Pope
- 1500 CE: The Reformation, beginning of modern nations; religious authority from the canonized scriptures as interpreted by an educated pastorate (typically sanctioned by the national Church), temporal authority from a sense of national identity - evolution of the idea of 'consent of the governed'
- 2000 CE: The Emergence, globalization-pluralism-multiculturalism; religious authority from spirit-led individuals in community, temporal authority from a sense of global human identity - notion of government as ensurer of social justice, eco-justice, and common welfare of all people
It seems like a reasonable fit to the data, no? It is not, however, the only fit to the data, nor does it account for the fact that other revolutions have happened out-of-sync with this cycle (eg, the American Revolution / American Reformation and the onset of the individual-in-community as source of authority was about 250 years out-of-sync with this cycle)
And the second assertion? That we are in the midst of one of these great upheavals right now? I have to admit that my wife and I have been sensing "the end of the world as we know it" for a few years now: global climate change is driving home the point that we really must all work together to make our culture sustainable or my kids will not inherit a very nice home, global religio-civil conflicts are driving home the similar point that we really must all learn to talk to (and listen to, and work with) each other or we just may all end up killing each other, and the fact that we can't even all agree to talk about these issues because we'd much rather hate each other on religious or political grounds says that we really do need a new religious and cultural basis for our society.
To borrow a phrase from a friend of mine: what better time than now?
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