The Great Emergence

1. The Church holds a giant "rummage sale" every five hundred years

about every five hundred years the empowered structures of institutionalized Christianity, whatever they may be at that time, become an intolerable carapace that must be shattered in order that renewal and new growth may occur.

The 500-year cycle. History reveals a recurring pattern where the established Church undergoes a massive upheaval, metaphorically cleaning out its attic. This process is not destructive but regenerative, ultimately birthing a new form of faith while revitalizing the old.

Three consistent results. Every semi-millennial "rummage sale" yields predictable outcomes that reshape the global religious landscape:

• A vital, brand-new form of Christianity emerges to meet the needs of a changing world.
• The older, dominant form of the faith is reconstituted and purified.
• The faith spreads dramatically into new geographic and demographic territories.

Historical precedents. We can trace this cycle back through major historical hinges, including the Great Reformation of 1517, the Great Schism of 1054, and the monastic consolidation under Gregory the Great in the sixth century. Each transition was marked by deep cultural anxiety but ultimately expanded the reach of the Christian story.

2. The "cable of meaning" preserves societal stability until its casing is ruptured

Like a little dinghy tethered to a distant dock, the human grouping is secured by that cable.

Anatomy of meaning. Religion acts as a protective cable that anchors human society to a purpose greater than itself. This cable is wrapped in a waterproof casing called the "story" (the shared history and ethos) and a mesh sleeve called the "consensual illusion" (the common agreement on how the world works).

The inner strands. Inside this protective sleeve lies a three-strand braid that defines the human religious experience:

• Spirituality: The internal values and experiences of the individual.
• Corporeality: The physical, embodied evidences of religion, such as canons, buildings, and liturgies.
• Morality: The external, objective enactment of those internal values.

The periodic rupture. Every five hundred years, both the outer story and the inner consensual illusion take a simultaneous blow. When this happens, the casing rips open, and society systematically pulls out, examines, and reconfigures each of the three strands before patching the cable back together.

3. Every major religious reformation is triggered by a crisis of authority

Always without fail, the thing that gets lost early in the process of a reconfiguration is any clear and general understanding of who or what is to be used as the arbitrator of correct belief, action, and control.

The central question. When a religious system is fractured, the immediate casualty is the consensus on who or what holds the ultimate right to define truth. During the Great Reformation, this crisis was exemplified by the absurdity of three simultaneous popes warring for legitimacy, which shattered the medieval story.

The Protestant solution. To resolve this chaos, the Reformers established sola scriptura (Scripture alone) as the new, unimpeachable authority. This shift, combined with the "priesthood of all believers," had profound cultural consequences:

• It demanded universal literacy so individuals could read the Bible themselves.
• It accelerated the rise of rationalism, the Enlightenment, and modern science.
• It birthed denominationalism, as individual interpretation naturally led to splintering.

The modern decay. Today, five hundred years later, the authority of sola scriptura is withering under the weight of modern criticism and cultural shifts. We find ourselves once again asking the terrifying but necessary question: "Where now is the authority?"

4. Scientific and psychological breakthroughs of the modern era shattered the post-Reformation story

In consort with each other and the sciences that came out of them, biology and physics were to split the cable open, tear the story, snag the sleeve, and lay out to public view the braided strand.

The scientific assault. The mid-nineteenth century marked the beginning of a relentless scientific bombardment of the Christian story. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution challenged literal creationism, while Michael Faraday’s discoveries in electromagnetism demystified the invisible world, replacing angels and miracles with force fields.

Mapping the unconscious. Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung further disrupted the traditional understanding of the human soul by mapping the vast, uncharted territory of the unconscious mind. Joseph Campbell later popularized comparative mythology, delivering a devastating blow to Christian exclusivity:

• He demonstrated the universality of religious myths across cultures.
• He utilized the new medium of television to broadcast these myths directly into American living rooms.
• He shifted the public perception of truth from dogmatic certainty to symbolic metaphor.

The rise of fundamentalism. In reaction to these intellectual tsunamis, conservative Protestants retreated and codified "the Fundamentals" in 1895. This defensive posture sought to protect the inerrancy of Scripture, but it ultimately set the stage for a bitter, century-long culture war.

5. Pentecostalism and Alcoholics Anonymous shifted authority from the institution to personal experience

Pentecostalism, in other words, offered the Great Emergence its first, solid, applied answer to the question of where now is our authority.

The Azusa Street revival. The birth of modern Pentecostalism at the Azusa Street Revival in 1906 bypassed traditional ecclesiastical hierarchies. By emphasizing direct, palpable contact with the Holy Spirit through speaking in tongues, Pentecostalism established that ultimate authority is experiential rather than canonical.

Democratizing the sacred. Pentecostalism’s radical egalitarianism broke down deep-seated social barriers:

• It united Caucasians, African Americans, and Latinos in participatory worship.
• It challenged the dry, highly intellectualized liturgies of mainline Protestantism.
• It spread globally, becoming the second-largest Christian body after Roman Catholicism.

The AA revolution. In 1935, the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous struck a parallel blow to pastoral authority by introducing the concept of a "Higher Power as we understood Him." AA proved that spiritual healing could occur through peer-led small groups rather than dogmatic, clergy-controlled institutions, paving the way for the "spiritual but not religious" phenomenon.

6. Technological and social shifts dismantled the traditional nuclear family and marginalized its conserving influence

When mid-twentieth-century Caucasian Protestantism lost Rockwell’s Grandmas, it lost a large part of itself.

The automotive disruption. The mass production of the affordable Model T automobile in 1908 physically untethered Americans from their local communities. Sunday afternoons on Grandpa's porch were replaced by family road trips, transforming the sacred Sabbath into a secular day of leisure and shopping.

Rosie the Riveter. World War II forced millions of women into the workforce, permanently altering the domestic hierarchy of the nuclear family. When the war ended, the memory of female autonomy lingered, fueling a feminist revolution that rejected the submissive roles enshrined by post-Reformation Protestantism.

The Pill and family reconfiguration. The introduction of the birth control pill in 1960 gave women total control over reproduction, leveling the economic and social playing field. Consequently, the traditional nuclear family ceased to be the default social unit:

• Dual-income households became the economic necessity and norm.
• Nontraditional living arrangements eventually outnumbered traditional ones.
• The home shifted from a center of religious formation to a mere pit stop for busy individuals.

7. The erosion of sola scriptura occurred through a series of progressive social and moral challenges

When it is all resolved—and it most surely will be—the Reformation’s understanding of Scripture as it had been taught by Protestantism for almost five centuries will be dead.

The slavery schism. The first major blow to the absolute authority of sola scriptura in America occurred during the Civil War. Because the Bible contains passages that tolerate slavery, Protestant churches split violently over its interpretation, exposing a deep moral vulnerability in literalism.

The gender and divorce debates. Throughout the twentieth century, the literal application of biblical mandates repeatedly failed to withstand the pressures of social progress:

• The Bible's strict stance on divorce was quietly abandoned to accommodate domestic realities.
• The prohibition against women speaking in church was bypassed to allow female ordination.
• The elevation of women to the episcopacy further signaled that cultural evolution trumped literal text.

The final battleground. The contemporary debate surrounding homosexuality represents the final, bitterest battle for the old understanding of scriptural authority. Once this issue is resolved, the traditional Protestant framework of biblical absolutism will be replaced by a reconfigured understanding of sacred text.

8. The "Gathering Center" is a new, non-denominational, and highly collaborative expression of faith

American religion had never had a center before, primarily because it was basically Protestant in its Christianity; and Protestantism, with its hallmark characteristic of divisiveness, has never had a center.

Watercooler theology. The rapid urbanization of the twentieth century forced diverse Christian traditions into daily, intimate contact. Through casual conversations in offices and break rooms, believers began to swap theological ideas, liturgies, and spiritual practices, gradually melting away rigid denominational barriers.

The emerging center. This centripetal force pulled elements from the four traditional quadrants of North American Christianity—Liturgical, Social Justice, Renewalist, and Conservative—into a swirling, collaborative center:

• It rejected the dry, dogmatic divisions of the past.
• It embraced an "incarnational" worship style that engages the body and the senses.
• It birthed house churches, pub theology, and a "new monasticism" focused on radical obedience.

The surrounding currents. While a small percentage of purists in each quadrant react violently against this center, the vast majority of Christians are sorting themselves into transitional currents. These include "re-traditioners" who seek to revitalize inherited structures, "progressives" who remodel dogma, and "hyphenateds" (like Presby-mergents) who bridge the old and the new.

9. The Great Emergence relies on a decentralized, "networked" model of authority

Like them and from the point of view of an emergent, the Church is a self-organizing system of relations, symmetrical or otherwise, between innumerable member-parts...

Network theory. The Great Emergence is abandoning the hierarchical, top-down organizational structures of the Reformation in favor of decentralized networks. Much like the Internet, the Church is increasingly viewed as a self-organizing system where authority is distributed rather than centralized.

Crowd-sourced truth. In this networked model, no single hub or leader possesses the monopoly on truth. Instead, theological wisdom is "crowd-sourced" through ongoing, egalitarian conversation across the entire network:

• It prioritizes relational connectivity over institutional loyalty.
• It operates on a "center-set" rather than a "bounded-set" model of belonging.
• It shifts the paradigm of faith from "believe-behave-belong" to "belong-behave-believe."

The Quaker influence. This decentralized approach draws heavily on Quaker theology, which has always trusted the "inner light" and communal discernment over external hierarchies. Writers like Richard Foster and John Wimber paved the way for emergents to embrace a fluid, Spirit-led model of authority.

10. Emergence theology is de-Hellenizing Christianity to embrace paradox, narrative, and Jewish roots

If in pursuing this line of exegesis, the Great Emergence really does what most of its observers think it will, it will rewrite Christian theology—and thereby North American culture—into something far more Jewish, more paradoxical, more narrative, and more mystical...

The Constantinian error. Emergents are increasingly skeptical of the theology inherited from the post-Constantinian era, which merged Christian faith with Greek philosophy. This "Hellenization" introduced a rigid dualism that separated the sacred from the secular, the body from the soul, and focused salvation almost exclusively on a ticket to heaven.

Embracing paradox. Postmodern science and quantum physics have made emergents comfortable with mystery and paradox. Rather than trying to resolve theological contradictions through cold, systematic logic, the emerging Church celebrates them as the space where divine vitality lives.

A return to narrative. By stripping away centuries of Greek philosophical abstractions, the Great Emergence is returning to the narrative, wholistic roots of Hebrew scripture:

• It views salvation as the restoration of the earth rather than an escape from it.
• It values story and lived experience over codified, systematic dogmas.
• It reclaims a mystical, embodied faith that honors the sacredness of all creation.