The Great Emergence

As I've been given time off from cooking and other chores today (yea!) I thought I'd tell you about The Great Emergence by Phyllis Tickle.

She begins with the supposition that, according to Rev. Mark Dyer, "about every five hundred years the Church feels compelled to hold a giant rummage sale. And, he goes on to say, we are living in and through one of those five-hundred-year sales."

The five hundred year points are typically referred to in terms that begin with, or are associate with the word "great," hence, "The Great Emergence."

• There was the beginning of the church in the 1st century.
  
  
• Then around 500 years later there came Gregory the Great and the beginning of the monastic movement following the fall of the Roman Empire.
  
  
• Next, around the 11th century came the Great Schism, the divide between the Eastern Orthodox Christianity (Constantinople) and the Western Church (Rome.)
  
  
• The most easily recognized "great" is the 16th century Great Reformation with Martin Luther and his 95 theses nailed to the door at Wittenberg church-- thus laying the foundations for Protestantism.
  
  
• That bring us to the 21st century and what Tickle is calling the Great Emergence.

I'm with her on this. The majority of the book is a well researched explanation of these events in the life of the Church, bringing us to many observations about the changes in Protestantism in the 20th century which got us to the state of flux we are in today. I think she does a good and thorough job of this, without crossing over into tedium.

The point being made that the Church was ripe for a rebirth, the author goes on to explain the emerging church as she sees it. I'll write a little about that explanation in a follow up post.