The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God (Isaiah 61:1-2)

I’m still pretty new to all this Emerging Church stuff online. There definitely seems to be a pretty wide variety of what people are doing and saying. But there are two things that I find curiously absent from the discussion (although maybe I just need to look harder). Both Christian Anarchism & Liberation Theology seem to me to be historical intellectual precedents to certain aspects of the Emergent movement.

As I mentioned in my original post on the topic, Emerging Church groups seem especially interested in systematically dismantling, examining and rebuilding the basic teachings of Christianity. This process of intensive discussion and questioning seems to also be happening in small tightly knit groups such as House Churches and others. This focus on small communities is an attempt to circumvent institutional power structures and return to a more authentic worship which better parallels that of early Christianity.

In this sense, the House Church movement closely mirrors anarchist “affinity groups“:

An affinity group is a small group of 5 to 20 people who work together autonomously on direct actions or other projects. You can form an affinity group with your friends, people from your community, workplace, or organization.

Affinity groups challenge top-down decision-making and organizing, and empower those involved to take creative direct action. Affinity groups allow people to “be” the action they want to see by giving complete freedom and decision-making power to the affinity group. Affinity groups by nature are decentralized and non-hierarchical, two important principles of anarchist organizing and action.

Wikipedia’s entry on the Emerging Church lists several commonalities among the various groups, many of which seem straight out of anarchist textbooks:

• Highly creative approaches to worship and spiritual reflection […]
• A minimalist and decentralised organisational structure.
• A flexible approach to theology whereby individual differences in belief and morality are accepted within reason.
• A continual re-examination of theology.
• A high value placed on creating communities built out of the creativity of those who are a part of each local body

It’s so freakin’ similar that I’m hard pressed to see why this issue hasn’t come to the fore more readily in the “emergent dialogue” that seems to be happening. Especially in light of the tradition of Christian Anarchism, popularized by people like Jacques Ellul. Ellul posited that Christian faith, outside its institutional structure was essentially an anarchist tradition which eschewed all systems of domination, be they political or ecclesiastical. And while you’re at it, check out this Christian Anarchist resource: Jesus Radicals, which features a library with many of Ellul’s works. Also, from the anarchist/activist camp, there’s been some great discussion about how Jesus’s teachings, when taken in their original context promote non-violent resistance against “the Empire” in truly anarchist fashion.

But again, I’ve not yet seen much of any mention of these topics in the Emerging Church. Perhaps this seems a little too extremist to some of them. But to me, it makes perfect sense. Once you start questioning one power structure, and systematically deconstructing and reconstructing it, it seems ridiculous or perhaps dishonest to just stop there and be satisfied.

Liberation Theology is the other historical reference point which I think could be brought into this discussion. Liberation Theology, as far as I understand it, rose to prominence especially in Latin America in the 70’s. I’ll have to read more about it though. But it seems to focus on aspects of the Christian story where Jesus acts as liberator to the poor and oppressed. I read that the Catholic Church officially denounced Liberation Theology at some point though, because it ended up getting mixed up with a lot of Marxist doctrine. The connection to Marxism, I’m sure, is part of the reason Emerging Church people aren’t touching it. Others have connected it to Satanism, and perhaps rightly so, since Satanism focuses a lot on liberation from oppressing structures and doctrines. [More links I collected on Liberation Theology]

Again, I think if you’re going to start questioning stuff, really start to question. Go to extremes. Seek out all the precedents, whether they are good, bad or ugly. You gotta open up all the doors and windows and let in as much fresh air as you can. Then and only then will something really exciting and authentic start to emerge. To me, this means hitching all our wagons together so that we’re in a pan-religious pan-ideological emergent movement, rather than one restricted solely to Christianity, or to politics in the case of anarchism.