I especially recommend this book for those who have become dissatisfied with religious Christianity, and instead describe themselves as “spiritual, not religious.” It brings some perspective to the current chaos and competition among the Christian religions, and helped me gain some clarity as to my own position within the milieu.
Phyllis Tickle’s The Great Emergence is a broad-strokes description of how the Christian religion has gotten to where it is today and how it is currently going through another historical transformation. Tickle uses sophisticated language and some lite references to roughly survey of the evolution of changing authority behind Christian beliefs, including the authority of the Emperor Constantine to form a Bible and clear doctrines, of monasteries which preserved the Bible and doctrines through the Dark Ages and thus anchored them in culture, of the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch and the Roman Pope, and of the Bible as the “Word of God.” She also goes about briefly showing how Christianity debunks its own authorities about every 500 years (not on a strict schedule, but as cultural conditions change and in unison with cultural changes). She concludes with some very specific formative points of the new Emergent and Emerging Christianity, which is in process, but sadly those points get smothered in a lot of other discussion unless one is paying close attention.
Somewhat wordy, but well worth reading. Tickle’s book helps me to get a handle on the history of church and institutionalized religion and their relationship to several elements of current culture that are changing both church and religion. She also gave me some very specific ideas of some forces that are clearly influencing and forming the Christianity of the next 500 years.
This is a great book for the sincere spiritual seeker coming out of the Christian tradition. www.ChristopherAune.com
- Amazon Business : For business-only pricing, quantity discounts and FREE Shipping. Register a free business account
