GYC 2013: Before Men and Angels

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

GYC 2013 Seminar: Emerging Church & Emergence Christianity

John Jovan Markovic

01-The Emerging/Emergent Church: What It Is, Where It Comes From, and Why It Matters

This message was presented at the GYC 2013 conference, Before Man and Angels, in Orlando, Florida.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.gycweb.org.

We thank you for waking us up and for this opportunity to sit down and study, to learn, to prepare, to do the best, what you called us to do.

I teach at Andrews University in the Department of History and Political Science.

I also teach, I teach modern European history.

Of course, I teach world history survey courses.

And in that capacity I'm halfway, with 1 foot in the religion department and with the other I'm back in history.

So let me, without further, I will begin now with my presentation and then within it I will give you more information about my background, where I come from, why I took upon myself to study the emerging Church slash emerging Christianity.

And today I will follow the slides and try to leave enough room for questions and answers.

Then in the second presentation there will be more room for questions and answers.

And this afternoon we'll continue with the subject.

So I'm not repeating any of these lectures.

This is a series of 6 lectures from now till the Sabbath afternoon.

And if you are interested in the subject, I strongly suggest that you attend all of them.

Because the subject is comprehensive, huge.

And I am offering to you only part of it.

Simply, this material cannot be covered in 6 hours.

Kennedy to identify his most important asset that would qualify him for the presidency.

Kennedy responded, I think that it is my sense of history.

I can testify to the same effect history has in my own life and in the formation of my worldview.

I have developed deep appreciation for sense of history and strongly recommend to all of you to take history seriously, major in history.

It is the training in history that helped me better grasp the meaning and message of the scriptures.

On the undergraduate level at Andrews University I completed a concentration in Theology, majored in History, minored in Greek, received my Bachelor with Honors in 1982.

And today I'm actively involved in the Honors Program at Andrews University.

On the undergraduate level at Bowling Green State University I focused on medieval and modern European history and completed dissertation on the socialization, radicalization of Russian radical youth before 1917, received my doctorate degree in 1990.

And since 1990, I am teaching European history and church history at Andrews University.

Gradually over time, and partially due to the departmental needs, but largely due to my personal interest.

I expanded my research from socialism to communism, to antisemitism, racism, classical liberalism, nationalism, totalitarian regimes, postmodernism.

Now I'm finding myself addressing this phenomenon that people call emergence Christianity.

The history of these isms, history of anti-Semitism in particular, helped me more fully grasp the church history and as well emergence Christianity.

I was born in an Adventist family and went through the primary and secondary education of former communist Yugoslavia where I was not only challenged for my Adventist beliefs, but publicly ridiculed and physically abused by both peers and my teachers who often ridiculed me that I believed the fables and legends of the old women.

It is in that system that I stood up for my faith without wavering.

I left Yugoslavia for Paris in April 1968, immigrated to the United States in September 1969.

Paradoxically, it is in the land of freedom here in the United States that I began to give up my faith in God and the Church.

If the story of your life is similar to my own and to the stories of many of my students and Andrews, please take a comfort in the fact that Jesus Christ has enormous and endless patience to help you find answers to the fundamental questions of life and overcome the difficulties in your life.

He definitely helped me and it is only due to his patience and grace that I am standing before you today sharing my personal experience and professional findings.

It took me a long time to learn that my existence is not all about me.

It is about God himself and about people around me.

Having said that, it does not mean that as Satan claims, God is a self-serving and self-oriented creator who created us in order to please his own needs.

Our God is not after us in order to have us lose our identity, personality, and personhood in his own.

Contrary to what Satan wants to convince you of, your identity, your personality, and your personhood can fully flourish only when you allow God to be present in your life.

By the way, The entire introduction is not just for the sake of introduction.

The entire introduction is shaped and put together to introduce you to the subject of emergence Christianity.

So, what does my personal story have to do with the subject matter before us?

Keep in mind that we humans are all in 1 and the same mess.

We are born, we live relatively short lives, only few of us reach the 90s.

We, most of the time, struggle with illnesses, with pain, with abuse, Injustice, brutality, and then we die.

If you want to grasp and remember that human history is the story of misery and death, only peppered with memories of joy, pleasures, quality life, goodness, great achievements, and success.

When people speak of human progress, they are merely refusing to face the reality.

Fact of history, the greatest achievements in the volume and quality in literature, music, technology, sciences, and so forth, has been produced by no other than Western civilization.

No other civilization ever in human history has achieved more.

Yet, it is that same Western civilization that has produced and inflicted upon humanity the greatest evils ever.

Think of racism, that's a European product.

Anti-Semitism, European and Christian product, colonialism, European product, inquisitions, church product, world wars, European product, Hiroshima.

Why is this generation of ours so frustrated with authorities, both political and ecclesiastic, with ideologies, with corporate business, and with life in general.

Because all of them, the Church, the democratic governments, the corporations, all failed to live up to what they originally stood for.

Because modernity manifested through theology, philosophy, sciences, technology, capitalism, socialism, communism, democracies, national states, failed to deliver on its promise of progress.

It is this frustration which began to manifest itself in society since the 1960s that academics label post-modernism, a term so misunderstood and abused these days.

You and I stand, as the slogan of this conference says, before men and angels.

You and I best witness for God when we obey His will and His commandments.

When we refuse to compromise, it is then that the people see who we really are.

It is then that the people, I'm sorry, Show compassion, be patient, give time to people to grasp and accept the gospel.

Meet people where they are in their existential context and then help them with care to place where they can accept Jesus Christ and the message about his soon coming.

After all, aren't we Seven-day Adventist people who were supposed to understand times and know what Israel should do?

Aren't we a people of history, a people who value history and a people who take the biblical narratives as history.

I find the sense of history and of existential reality to be a very useful tool in our situation today.

I'm not comfortable when leaders in society, be they politicians, academics, priests, confuse issues, muddle the water, so to speak, or use Karl Marx language, drug the masses with religious opium.

Hence, in my work, I aim to understand the phenomenon in all of its complexities and ambiguities, and then telling the truth about it in a simple terms for everyone to understand.

7 years ago, I began this research with the idea that the emerging church is yet 1 more denomination in the making among many we already have.

It did not take long to find out I was mistaken.

The emerging church is a phenomenon of a much greater magnitude.

I read books about them, books written by them.

I attended a few of their conferences and workshops, and had some interesting experiences I had the privilege to meet Brian McClure, Doug Paget, Leonard Sweet, Richard Rohr, and others.

I aim to represent their teachings with fairness.

Although I will at times refer to persons and organizations, since that is unavoidable, My focus is on ideas, concepts, and teachings rather than on individuals themselves.

If I disapprove of or sound judgmental about an idea or a concept, I should not necessarily be taken by you as judgmental of individuals.

I find the emergence to be fine people, pleasant to be around, and some of them earnest seekers for truth.

They are tireless in making society a better place for the oppressed, the poor, and the ostracized.

What I'm going to share with you in the next few days should be used with care.

As you share with others what you are going to learn here, please do not misconstrue or misuse.

Do not use my statements in judgmental or divisive manner against those in whom you believe you have detected emergent ideas and concepts.

Lack of unity, divisiveness, lack of mutual respect and compassion for each others is a huge problem among us Seven-Day Adventists.

As we proclaim the gospel, God tells us to have patient endurance.

I find present generation to be very much confused and distrustful when it comes to beliefs and what future brings.

02-The Emerging/Emergent Church of the Second Vatican Council

This message was presented at the DYC 2013 conference, Before Man and Angels, in Orlando, Florida.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.dycweb.org.

Dear Father, we thank you for this beautiful day and we thank you for being patient with us.

Thank you for giving us another day of life and another opportunity to sit down and study.

Well, let me continue now here with, okay, how can I have this?

Okay, as I pointed out, this is a list of books that I was able to discover.

We ended the first session with a list of books expounding the idea of the emerging church.

When I use the term here, the emerging church, I'm not talking about the emerging church after 2000.

It is just books that expounded the idea of the emerging church at their own time.

Remember, these books were published before 1990s.

They had no idea what is happening after 2001.

The very first title published in 1968, 3 years only after the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council, refers to the Church in general and the Catholic Church in particular as the emerging Church.

This paperback in 2 volumes lays out a history of the Christian church as evolutionary process.

That the idea of the emerging church goes back to the very first interpretation of the purpose, intent, and nature of the Second Vatican Council.

The word emerging does not necessarily mean coming out, coming onto the scene, becoming, and appearing.

It actually means evolving, going through an evolutionary process.

The idea of the church going through an evolutionary process like nature and life is directly attributed to the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

The church history of the last 2000 years is presented as an evolutionary process through which all Christian groups, Heretically included now, all of them are part of 1 and the same organism, all of them together are undergoing transformational changes toward a common goal.

The Protestant reformers, Luther, Calvin, for example, and the Protestant movements like Anglican Church and the Methodists are part of 1 and the same process of emerging.

For centuries, the Church of Rome, now this is my reaction to what they are saying.

For centuries, the Church of Rome, including the Eastern Orthodox Church, treated schismatic, heretical, and rebellious Christian groups as excommunicated outsiders whose destiny was in the hell.

The Protestant reformers were nothing but outright rebels and the church without much compassion hunted them down and burned them at the stake.

The Anglican Church came into existence due to Henry VIII's insatiable appetite to divorce his legal wife Catherine and marry Anne Bollein, not to take the Church and Christianity forward.

And for centuries the Church persecuted the Jews as well.

Hatred and contempt toward Judaism nurtured by the Church Fathers ever since the second century for the sole purpose to distance Christianity and thus the masses away from the Torah and Judaism is a historical fact.

And no matter how hard the revisionists try to change it, it simply does not fit the new emergent evolutionary history.

The new history downright assaults and denigrates the pogroms and inquisition of the 15th century.

Now I'm now interpreting this whole thing.

This reinterpretation, recasting, revising and rewriting the history of the Christian Church is the very spirit of the Second Vatican Council.

Second, it is revolutionary in thought and practice.

And third, it paves the way for fundamental changes in how Christian across denominational lines should understand Christianity and other religions.

What happened at Vatican II is nothing less but an introduction of a new era, a new way of doing Christianity, a new attitude.

The next question, how and why this radical turn in the attitude of the Catholic Church toward the Protestants, the secular society and the rest of the world came to take place.

Years prior to the Council, the number of ecumenical Catholic theologians was increasing.

The progressives, Catholic thinkers, including La Nouvelle Theologie, or English translation, New Theology, group that existed in Paris, argued that the church was losing touch with society.

And third 1 is the work and ideas of Teilhard de Chardin.

He published the book, I'm sorry, he did not.

His book, The Phenomenon of Man, is his most influential book.

It was completed in 1947, but published in 1955 after his death.

Wilkins and Colt, that is the authors of those 2 volumes that I showed you at the very beginning, the book published in 1968.

Wilkins and Colt say about Teilhard de Chardin, they say what Augustine meant for medieval Christianity and if you know some church history, Augustine is credited as the most important, most influential theologian who shaped the medieval Christianity, medieval Catholic theology.

And what Aquinas meant for Scholastic and modern Catholic theology.

Again, Thomas Aquinas is considered the most, after Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, the most influential Catholic thinker.

Wilkinson and Colt argue that is the work of Teilhard de Chardin for our contemporary society.

During the 1920s, Teilhard was well known in Parisian intellectual circles for his ideas on Christ and evolution.

In The post-war France, 1945, Teilhard and Jean-Paul Sartre, those of you who know anything about modern intellect, philosophy, modern period, history, you should know something about Jean-Paul Sartre.

The 2 of them were the most sought after lecturers in Paris.

When Harper and Collins conducted a recent survey of the 100 most influential important spiritual books of the 20th century.

Finally, this is quotation from Kofi Annan, 1 of the In his speech to the American Teilhard Association in April 2005, he said the following, quote, Finally, I am convinced that Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is a thinker for the 21st century." Some of the renowned theologians and scholars have become Tayardians, and I have their names there.

At this point, we need to point out that the Vatican Curia, that is the conservative parties, have at various times prohibited Pierre Teilhard to publish his work.

Nevertheless, a number of his lectures have been put in print, mostly on the subject of geology and paleontology.

And after his return from China in 1946, where he spent many years, almost 20 years, in both exile and in pursuit research in paleontology, he was prohibited even to teach in the universities of Europe.

He ended up moving to the United States and dying in New York City in 1955.

Teilhard de Chardin is 1 of the well-known scientists, paleontologists, and at the same time as a Jesuit, he's also a trained theologian.

Pierre Teilhard never saw his major works in print.

Nevertheless, that does not mean that others were not aware of his ideas and work.

Throughout the 1930s and the 1940s, even while in China, Teilhard continually corresponded with his Jesuit friends and shared with them his unpublished manuscripts.

It is they who published his work after his death on Easter Sunday, April 10, 1955.

Few months later, The Phenomenon of Man was published in 1955 and then translated into English as the Phenomenon of Man.

You may wonder how is it that a man who died more than 7 years earlier and whose ideas on the evolution versus biblical creation and the original sin were found to be against the teachings of the church, would be able to influence the spirit and attitude of the council.

We need to recognize that even among the ranks of the Catholic leadership, there were various schools of thought and factions.

Prior to the opening and during the proceedings of the council, historians of the council tell us that serious battles were waged over the wording of most of the documents.

Those who elected Angelo Giuseppe Rancali, the Pope on October 28, 1958, did not expect him to make radical moves.

He was in age, a month short of 77, and the cardinals most likely chose him because he was liked by many.

3 months after his election, on January 25, 1959, John XXIII announced his intent to convene a council.

There was no apparent need for a council.

His further clarification that the council would not be called, that it will be called Second Vatican Council, clearly began to make the conservatives a bit apprehensive, because it meant that he will not pick up on the agenda of the First Vatican Council.

Not only why, but clerics were wondering what was the council supposed to do.

In his announcement on January 25, 1959, John spoke of 2 aims.

Number 1, to promote quote the enlightenment edification and joy of the entire Christian people.

Number 2, to extend a renewed cordial invitation to the faithful of the separated communities to participate, not to return with us in the quest for unity and grace for which so many souls long in all parts of the world.

But I just want to point out to you, You see the very careful language.

When you say, we call you to return, then you are saying we are separate.

It is a change in style, you'll see, just listen to what's happening here.

Pope John appointed preparatory commissions to prepare the documents for the discussion.

Members of the commissions were aided by the experts, parity.

484 such parity had been appointed by either John, because John died within several months, and then successor Paul, both of them appointed, 484 of these experts.

The preparations for the council were massive, like never before in the history of the previous councils.

The preparations took 2 and a half years.

03-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the Principle of Emergence: A New Worldview

All right, ladies and gentlemen, it's 3 minutes after 02:00 so I have to start.

Dear Father, we thank you for this afternoon, we thank you for this day, we thank you for an opportunity to study, to learn.

We need your presence, we need your Holy Spirit to help us to understand and most of all to wisely apply in our lives to hold onto our faith in you.

All right, I don't know, some of new faces here.

In the first presentation, I was in general terms trying to explain to you, to depict, to picture, to depict to you what the emerging church movement is all about.

And I gave you some major characteristics about it.

Things that come out the most common in the writings of the emergents.

When you meet the emergence or people who belong to the emerging church movement or who identify as such.

When you read their literature, of course, some of them emphasize each 1 or each group emphasizes what is peculiar, interesting to them.

Some of them are very heavy on, for example, spiritual formation.

Others are very heavy on social activism.

A person like Brian McLaren, He is pretty much covering all of the aspects of the emerging church movement.

I don't find him discussing a lot mysticism, but lately he is more into it as well.

He is more comprehensive than the others.

1 thing that you will come across that was the first part of the first session today, or the first presentation.

The Emerging Church is not a new denomination.

It is a new conversation, new way of seeing things, it's a new way of thinking about Christianity.

And of course they have an objective to introduce this so-called new Christianity.

It's ecumenical movement, very much, all of them are ecumenical.

Theistic evolutionism is very much part of it.

They emphasize spirituality at the cost of religiosity or in contrast to religiosity.

And 1 thing that comes out a lot, often, many times, into writings of all of them, is this idea that we as society, as Christian Church, as individuals, we are undergoing a process of tremendous change.

A change which is affecting our fundamental way of thinking and living and doing Christianity.

And so the word worldview often comes out.

And so there's so much mentioning it, talking about it and I think this is what they use in their trying to convert listeners to their own way of thinking.

Everything has changed, therefore everything must change.

If we want to translate that, it means, look how we have technology, science, changed our lives in such a way that our world and the world of our fathers and grandparents is totally different.

And therefore, life is so different, therefore, because everything changed, everything must change.

That means now Christianity, the way we did it, it doesn't work anymore, therefore we have to change, come up with a new kind of Christianity.

So that is basically the bottom line of the argument in a simple language.

Series

GYC 2013 Seminar: Emerging Church & Emergence Christianity

03-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the Principle of Emergence: A New Worldview

Transcript

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