This book is being heralded as one of the first seriously scholarly studies of the emergent church movement in the USA, and is the lightly edited text of a doctoral dissertation from Princeton - which is GOOD NEWS, because it means that what Tony Jones is saying has been tested robustly and intelligently. He is also well-known from within the movement itself - and that, too, is good news, because it means he writes with enormous hands-on experience and understanding of the nuances of the subject.
The focus of this study is what he calls 'practical theology' as a framework within which to make sense of 'emergence', and also through which to help it articulate and structure itself plausibly if it is to become more than a transient protest movement against the doctrinaire evangelicalism of much of the dominant American Protestantism. He notes, for example, the hope expressed in one of the eight emergent congregations which he takes as case studies, that 'we don't become so much about nothing that we're not really providing anything helpful or useful for people'; another quotation from within the movement expresses what might be one of the main themes of the whole study: 'We were really kind of sad that people were hearing the good news as bad news, basically, in a nutshell'.
Having characterised the eight congregations (that is too 'churchy' a word in itself: these understand themselves as 'communities of faith'), Jones explores the key practices which typify their activity - communion, worship, preaching, community; also more open-ended practices of hospitality, theology, art, priesthood of all believers, and sacred space. Much of this is innovatory - although one of the findings of this survey is that these are not simply 'innovating communities' - there is also a great deal of appropriation of the contemporary into existing understandings of 'church', and a very significant amnount of 'reclamation' of deep tradition: the emergent church movement is far from simply a parachurch or contrachurch or postchurch.
All of this Jones goes on to map against a thorough exposition of the ecclesiology of Moltmann - chosen partly for the resonances which already exist between his work and the kinds of ideas being explored in and through the emergent movement, but also - strikingly - in conscious view of his repudiation of a great deal of the abstract and hieratic nature of western Christian theology (since the Latin Patristic period - practically since the beginning) in favour of the 'relational' theology of the Eastern, Greek heritage. This is a whole world which will be well-known to many non-evangelicals, but which it is hugely interesting to see post-evangelicals beginning to explore as a reaction against legalism and formalism within their own tradition - and against phenomena such as hypocrisy and judgementalism. In particular Jones identifies at the core of this a theological vision which is Trinitarian, Creation-focused (ecological), and open to the indwelling of God (eschatological) - to use technical terminology: 'pneumatological' and 'inter-penetrative' in its understanding both of God and of God's relation to the rest of us.
It is hugely important to Tony Jones (and to the movement of which he is a part and which he describes and hopes to challenge) that this theology is practical - it helps us make a difference for good. So his 'theology', in a properly critical dialogue with Moltmann, is also heedful of the 'ethical' focus to be found in thinkers such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Jeffrey Stout, and Pierre Bourdieu: it is not a journey for the intellectually faint-hearted; it is intelligent (and intelligently self-critical) in its survey of current ideas about 'virtue' and moral 'habit', and not only 'postmodernism' and 'theology'.
In conclusion, Jones proposes a theological basis which will help the emergent churches to recognise and affirm the sacredness of the whole world, to embody egalitarian and democratic patterns of life, to foster trust, and to engage in dialogue, all of which sounds very zeitgeisty - which is why he is so keen to undergird it with rigorous theological foundations (maybe 'aspirations' would be a better word). 'Emergence' will begin to come of age, he thinks, when these patterns of thinking and relating begin to be adopted instinctively by more and more of the members of 'traditional' networks (including theology faculties), although he also foresees the need for a degree of institutionalisation within emergence itself if it is really to achieve anything lasting.
I found intriguing (I think exciting) echoes of Levinas, and of his derivation of our understanding from ethics rather than metaphysics; there are obvious echoes of John Zizioulas and of that whole school in contemporary Orthodox theology; and, in particular in Tony Jones' identification of 'friendship' as a theological category which will help guide us reliably into better discipleship, I think there is a fruitful echo of older Eastern theology, for example from Vladimir Soloviev or Pavel Florensky. These are all sources beyond the zone of Jones' own references, but if generating more open and fluent conversations about all of this is part of his aim, these are conversation partners with whom, surely, extremely productive dialogue might take place.
It is a fascinating, careful and measured, thoughtful and illuminating book - and I recommend it strongly. ( )