Okay. You have had your chance. You all have read to the end of Chapter One, right!!
Well, if not, do so. And let me begin the discussion this way:
Gonna own my own perspective... I was trained to read text as an historian --and one of the first things one does when reading history is look for patterns, assumptions, world-view etc.... And, given that The Great Emergence is a book that looks at history, discusses history --and places the theology of the Church in history --I feel I can legitimately and perhaps even cogently remark on my initial impressions of this book.
Perhaps these initial impressions will change by the end or even the middle of the book --but these are first whiffs:
Tickle has painted history with a very broad brush --500 year increments with a universal --a true-in-every-place scope of change. She ear-marks the changes as Jesus --Gregory the Great --the Great Schism --the Great Reformation --and finally the current age. On page 30, she broadens the scope to "all three of the faiths of Abraham" --these changes and patterns of change occur not just in the Church, but in Judaism and Islam as well.
She has divided the church in to three basic entities --Western Christianity (Roman Catholicism and Protestantism --interestingly not geographic), Eastern Orthodoxy (Greece, Asia Minor, eastern Europe, and Russia with an increasing presence in North America, China, Finland and Japan), and Oriental Orthodoxy (Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian or Syrian).
And, Tickle is enthusiastically optimistic. She states that with every turmoil a "new, more vital form of Christianity does indeed emerge." (p17) And, that the "organized expression of Christianity which up until then had been the dominant one is reconstituted into a more pure and less ossified expression of its former self." (p17) And that
...every time the incrustations of an overly established Christianity have been broken open, the faith has spread --and been spread --dramatically into new geographic and demographic areas, thereby increasing exponentially the range and depth of Christianity's reach as a result of its time of unease and distress. Thus, for example, the birth of Protestantism not only established a new, powerful way of being Christian, but it also forced Roman Catholicism to make changes in its own structures and praxis. (p17)
Before I color (perhaps) your initial impressions and remark on these observations --remember --I am not dismissing what she is saying --at all --merely trying to step back and taste and see....
So, before I remark on these initial observations --do you think they are pertinent? Do you have some observations of your own? Click on the 'comment' below and let us know what you are thinking --initially... and why...!
