11.23.08

emergence

Posted in culture, emergence, learning, transition at 5:05 pm by len

TickleCould it be that what the Lord did for the gospel in China by persecution will actually happen in North America via new technology and economic collapse?

While this isn’t exactly the suggestion Phyllis Tickle makes in her book The Great Emergence, I think it is a likely scenario. The collapse of trust in institutions and the professionals employed to direct them — the huge impact of participatory technology — the death of one set of lenses for understanding the world, and the rediscovery of another.. older.. way — and, as Tickle does point out, a convergence and synthesis of Christian worldviews.

The book is more important than I thought it would be and worth reading. Having finished it I can finally get into NT Wright, The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture. There is also a lengthy article available at NT Wright website on the same subject. And then a new book has arrived on my desk: A Community Called Taize. Great stuff.

2 Comments

  1. Rick Meigs said,

    November 23, 2008 at 5:18 pm

    “Could it be that what the Lord did for the gospel in China by persecution will actually happen in North America via new technology and economic collapse?”

    Let’s hope so!

  2. Random Acts of Linkage #88 : Subversive Influence said,

    November 29, 2008 at 1:28 pm

    [...] Len Hjalmarson asks a good question out of Phyllis Tickle’s Great Emergence, The: How Christianity Is Changing and Why [...]