'Emergent & Beyond'

i was over at Emerging Women reading this post and i had to comment. Here is what i said:

Emergent is nothing but a white, middle class, male dominated club. There are some really great men pulling for us women and say they are supportive. But, the proof is in the pudding and i have yet to see many more women added to the conversation. We get accused of being too strong if we push our way in but then we sit and are STILL waiting for the invitations. Nothing has changed since 2005 when i was in Nashville for the emergent conference. There is very little diversity in that i see very little minorities such as Latinos, African Americans, LGBTQ, and women. i am so over trying to reach out and have pulled back a lot from emergent. i refuse to put the 'Friend of Emergent' badge on my blog.

It appears to me that emergent is a boys club that enjoys intellectual masturbation with one another. If a woman pops in now and again to join the conversation they are ok with that, but anymore than i think they feel threatened, unless you are a big wig like the lovely and enjoyable Phyllis Tickle. i do not know the way forward but am tired of trying to figure it all out.

Ok, i've ranted enough.

Happy New Year!

Warm Regards,

Existential Punk

So, today i received an email from the always delightful Becky Garrison, who sent me a link to this article at Publisher's Weekly about the term emergent and emerging church in publishing and the change within the future of publishing.

"Few publishing categories are as confusing to bookseller and customer alike as what has come to be known as the emerging church; the category has become so unwieldy that even publishers and authors have trouble grappling with it. And the problem stems almost entirely from confusing the emerging church with other nontraditional forms of Christianity.

“The term 'emerging church' is so loose that one moment you can apply it to a specific book, and the next moment, you can just as easily decide it isn't emergent at all,” says Dudley Delffs, Zondervan's v-p and publisher of trade books.

One author who has separated the emergent from the nonemergent is Tom Sine, whose InterVarsity book, The New Conspirators, released earlier this year. In it he makes a clear distinction among four streams of alternative Christianity: emerging church (emphasizing the gospel as story, community, experiential worship, the arts, and much more); missional (an outward focus on mission); mosaic (intentionally multicultural); and monastic (a radical communal lifestyle, often lived out among the poor).

What Is—and Isn't—Emergent

Many in the emerging church “conversation,” the preferred self-descriptor, distinguish among three terms: emerging church, an umbrella term for the category; emergent, referring to an unorthodox interpretation of scripture; and Emergent, shorthand for Emergent Village (EV), a largely online community. Most of the publishers PW spoke with used the terms interchangeably, as does the Christian community at large.

Other forms of alternative Christianity are often mistaken for emerging/emergent, but are not. One cause for confusion, says Al Hsu, associate editor at InterVarsity Press, is that many books that are not theologically emergent still resonate with emergent readers, such as IVP's The Circle of Seasons (Nov.), a title about the liturgical year from Presbyterian writer Kimberlee Conway Ireton.

And then there's the mistaken assumption that to be young and edgy is to be emergent. “A traditionalist in a younger body is not emergent,” Hsu says, pointing to Shane Claiborne as an author who is frequently referred to as emergent but is not. Claiborne, who with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove coauthored Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers (IVP, Oct.), lives in an intentional community in inner-city Philadelphia.

Other well-known CBA authors often miscategorized as emergent are Zondervan's Rob Bell (Jesus Wants to Save Christians, Oct.), who eschews labels altogether; and Thomas Nelson's Erwin McManus (Wide Awake, July), pastor of a community called Mosaic, and Donald Miller, whose Blue Like Jazz became a national bestseller.

So who actually is emergent? Without question, Doug Pagitt (A Christianity Worth Believing, Jossey-Bass, June), Tony Jones (The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier, Jossey-Bass, Mar.), who founded EV, and increasingly less so, Brian McLaren (Finding Our Way Again, Thomas Nelson, May), who serves on EV's board but has moved beyond emergent.

Matt Baugher, v-p and publisher of spiritual growth and Christian thought at Thomas Nelson, avoids using the emergent label. “Anyone who has come out of this postmodern decade is now being thrown into that category,” he says. Zondervan does not use the term internally, while Baker Books acquisitions editor Chad Allen also resists using the label—ironic, since Baker and EV partner in publishing books under the Emersion imprint.

Delffs, who calls the term “almost meaningless,” says manuscripts for supposedly emergent books fall into two categories: those that try to proudly exist in the spotlight of emergent, and those that are “fresh, innovative, culturally engaging and not self-congratulatory. Those are more appropriate, more of what we want.”

NavPress senior editor Caleb J. Seeling also sees manuscripts from authors who are self-consciously emergent. “Usually they're just entering the conversation, struggling and trying to find freedom from the traditional church. They're just catching up,” he says. . ."

Becky is quoted in the article and i so resonated with what she said:

"Becky Garrison: Women have told me they were involved with the emerging church years ago, but left when it became clear there was no room for them at the table. Emergent Village's insistence that this is a conversation while only a few of them get to do the talking has alienated many who were initially drawn to the dialogue. There are those who feel that in order to participate, one needs to have the four “Ps”: pastor, published, Ph.D.—and don't make me explain the last 'p.' As an Episcopalian, I've been accustomed to seeing women in the pulpit since 1979—so discussions about the role of women bores me to tears. (Garrison is the author of Rising from the Ashes: Rethinking Church [Seabury, 2007], the first U.S. book about the emerging church written solely by a woman.)"

Here was my email response to Becky:

Becky,

THANKS so much for sending this to me. i have struggled for years with EV and finally just got frustrated after feeling only so welcome as a woman!

i was really frustrated at EMERGENT Nashville that the women had their own meeting, which is good, but except for Phyllis Tickle, were not very welcome into the rest of the conference as speakers/workshop leaders. Where was the integration i wondered to myself. i am tired of the men saying we are welcome and that they support us but the lack of much action pisses me off.

ALL THE BEST!

Adele aka Existential Punk

So, ANY OTHER Emerging/Emergent Church Women out there that have anything to weigh in on this debate?