Earlier this year, Dr. Scot McKnight (Jesus Creed) delineated between three church segments in a post entitled Letters to Emerging Christians. He referenced the Liberal church, the Evangelical church and the Emergent church and offered some general perspectives on what characterizes each of these particular groups. Another hundred or so commenters added in.
Here's what he came up with:
- Liberal Christians value tolerance, therefore they cannot bear intolerance nor the inflexibility of tradition.
- Evangelical Christians are conservatives, basically traditionalists; they often fear and/or resist change.
- Emergent Christians value decentralized leadership, thus centralized power and authority are offensive.
Obviously, it's impossible to divide all Christians into clear (separate) camps. But given these categorizations, I wonder who has the greatest hurdles to overcome when it comes to utilizing electronic media and web technology for the Kingdom of God.
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I found this threefold schema pretty unsatisfying and maybe too Ameri-centric to be useful for “the rest of us.”
But buying into for a moment - I think the Emergent types have certainly been the early adopters, but I’m unsure how socially transformative their use of the net really is, given that so much discussion in focussed on internal ecclesial issues. The Liberal types have looked like late adapters, but they may well prove to be very transformational, since their web use will end up mapping exisiting networks that are kingdom focussed and politically saavy.
But, my vote woulf go with the evangelicals, simply on the basis of strength in numbers, immersion on consumer culture and commitment to their own programming. I think what McKnight completely misses is the way globalisation is reshaping and transforming evangelicalism on a worldwide basis. Evangelicalism has always thrived through publishing, pragmatism and mission and it would be a bold prediction to say they will not adapt to the new technology.
Web technology is a broad area. There is email, streaming media, blogs, wiki’s, and social networks to name a few. Each group will naturally gravitate to a particlular segment of web technology while slower to embrace another.
Evangelicals already use email, websites, and streaming media. The area where some evangelicals may lag is effectively using blogs and social networks.
The Emerging Church and Liberals will be quicker to use blogs and social networks and slower to use streaming media.