More on the Emergent Church. In case of an emergent emergency, LOL.
Why did they take up Catholic and Orthodox traits?
Because the Emergent Church was trying to recover depth that Protestant modernity had stripped away — and Catholicism and Orthodoxy were where that depth was still visibly alive.
This wasn’t aesthetic borrowing. It was a theological diagnosis.
1. What they thought had gone wrong with Protestantism
Emergent leaders believed American evangelicalism had become:
• intellectually shallow
• historically rootless
• emotionally manipulative
• politically captured
• spiritually thin
It had reduced Christianity to:
beliefs about Jesus instead of participation in Christ
To people reading mystics, philosophers, and early church writers, this felt false.
So they asked:
“What did Christianity look like before it became modern, American, and consumerized?”
The answer kept pointing to:
• pre-Reformation Christianity
• monasticism
• sacramental worship
• contemplative prayer
Which meant Catholic and Orthodox traditions.
2. They were reaching backward, not sideways
The Emergent Church didn’t want to become Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox institutionally.
They wanted to recover:
the pre-scholastic, pre-Reformation, pre-Enlightenment Church
Which was:
• liturgical
• mystical
• embodied
• sacramental
• participatory
That heritage lives most visibly in:
-
Eastern Orthodoxy
-
Catholicism (especially monastic and mystical streams)
3. Postmodern people don’t trust ideas — they trust practices
Emergent Christians were deeply influenced by:
• postmodern philosophy
• Wittgenstein
• Heidegger
• narrative theory
They believed:
Truth is lived before it is believed.
Protestantism had become idea-heavy and practice-light.
Orthodoxy and Catholicism had:
• fasting
• chanting
• silence
• icons
• kneeling
• seasons
• pilgrimage
These shape the soul without argument.
That was enormously attractive.
4. Mysticism was the hidden center
Your instincts here are spot-on.
Emergent Christianity was quietly rediscovering:
• Meister Eckhart
• The Cloud of Unknowing
• Gregory of Nyssa
• Dionysius the Areopagite
• St. John of the Cross
• Hesychasm
These thinkers sound more like:
Zen, Vedanta, or nondual philosophy
than like modern evangelicalism.
Orthodoxy and Catholicism preserved this sapiential core. Protestantism mostly lost it.
5. Icons, incense, and candles weren’t nostalgia — they were anti-modern
Modernity made everything:
• flat
• literal
• functional
• optimized
Liturgical Christianity is:
• symbolic
• layered
• slow
• mysterious
Emergent churches used:
• candles
• labyrinths
• icons
• chants
because they were rejecting the mechanistic worldview that modern Protestantism had absorbed.
6. It was a rebellion against spiritual capitalism
Megachurch evangelicalism felt like:
Starbucks with a cross
Orthodoxy and Catholicism felt like:
ancient temples that did not care if you liked them
Emergent Christians wanted thick, non-consumer spirituality.
7. The deeper reason
At the deepest level, the Emergent Church was rediscovering something your own interests circle around:
Christianity was originally a contemplative, participatory path of transformation — not a belief system.
Catholic and Orthodox traditions still knew how to do that.
So Emergent Christianity reached back to the parts of Christianity that had never stopped being mystical.
In short
They didn’t take up Catholic and Orthodox traits because they wanted tradition.
They did it because:
those traditions still remembered how to turn human beings into saints rather than ideologues.
If you’d like, I can show how this overlaps with:
-
Zen and nonduality
-
David Bentley Hart
-
Dionysius
-
Or Vervaeke’s “participation” framework
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