Pluralism and the Emerging Church

I am the pastor of a small church in center city Chicago. My wife and I moved to Chicago 6 years ago to start this church. In some ways I suppose we are what would be called an “emerging church.” We host a quarterly goth night, we look for many other creative ways to reach out to this highly post-modern, post-Christian, post-gentrification culture, we value relationships and sincerity. In other ways I am sure we are dinosaurs: we have use of a church building, I minister in the church full time, we have a cell group outreach strategy, our worship service has some traditional evangelical elements to it, and we even have a purpose statement (though in fairness to us it is focused on discipleship). Despite these idiosyncrasies, I am now often encouraged to speak in various arenas (research, media, denominational associations, sponsoring churches) concerning the emerging church.

With this new found voice, I figured it would be wise for me to become better versed in emerging lingo. In the past reading articles on the OOZE has sufficed, but I supposed that I needed something slightly more academically intense. I picked up Brian McLaren’s work a Generous Orthodoxy and began to read looking for some kind of theological explanation of this movement in which we currently find ourselves.

What I found instead was what I consider the most important topic for us to begin to actually discuss in this emerging dialogue. While some of what he mentioned demonstrated his basic genius and good humor, much of his argument drifted disturbingly close to pluralism. In the name of being friendly, he almost dismissed the uniqueness of Jesus’ work through his bride the Church (check out chapter 17). Now, I fully understand the warnings against uber-critique in his chapter 0, but I also sensed in his tone a desire to spark conversation. Perhaps this would be a good forum to reopen that dialogue.

In chapter 8 (pages 145 and forward) McLaren argues that what polarized the church in the hyper-conceptualist modern era was our view of the authority of the Scriptures. He argued that both fundamentalists and liberals were trying in their own ways to address the basic questions of modernity through using modernity’s own tools. Perhaps a similar polarization lies in the future of the emerging movement. Let’s hope we can have a more healthy and productive dialogue than the debates that erupted in the modern era. Beyond that, however, let’s pray that we take as seriously as the modern evangelicals the preserving of the uniqueness of the Christian faith. Evangelicals offer more than just their passion that he discusses in chapter 7. They made many mistakes, and I am sure we are making many now, but over all it is fairly impressive that Christianity survived the modern threat, and much of that we owe to the tenacity of the “fundamentalists.”

The polarization I expect in the emerging dialogue will come down to this question: Is a relationship with Jesus in the context of the Christian community the only way to experience Jesus’ offer of eternal life? Note that this question is far more relational in nature than what our forbearers debated. Are we going to be wholeheartedly loyal to Jesus as his disciples, or are we going to open ourselves up to gaining spirituality from various other religious and secular sources?

Clearly the issue of pluralism –vs- exclusivism is not one we can avoid, especially as we reach out to people who have been deeply impacted by other religious systems. We can either choose to absorb their beliefs and practices and become a kind of religious buffet, or we can challenge their sub-Christian values (as we do our own worldly values) with intentional relational discipleship. We hope and pray that as our dialogue continues the emerging movement will lean more and more towards an exclusive focus on Jesus. While other religious should be treated respectfully, and at times may have some wisdom to offer (all truth is God’s truth), they simply are not completely affirming to the basic teachings and attitudes that Jesus desires for his disciples to reflect. As his disciples we are required to treat people with true love… a loving response when someone is mistaken in their core beliefs is to gently and relationally confront those issues, and help them discover the truth, not to simply leave them where they are.

If you want what Jesus offers, you can only get that through who he is and what he has done.

NIV Acts 4:12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved."