Phyllis Tickle, tackles the question of “Great Emergence,” which is to describe it in terms of a phenomenological, theory of great periodic change which finds its way to the liminality of human (and Christian) experience cyclically, and at the cusp of which we are, presently. In the first chapter Tickle takes us down the history of the early church, as early as 70AD to bring to our attention the “Great schism” through the “Great reformation” as turning points in the history of Christianity with mention of notable figures such as Gregory “The Great” and the emergence of the monastic movement during the sixth century as significant as having saved civilization (25). She quotes Karl Jasper, a 1948 German scholar who has termed the near millennial waves of transition as “axial age.”
In an illustration, Tickle delves into the “cable of meaning,” this is to incorporate say, the structural anatomy of a community’s woven strands of spirituality, corporeality (embodiment), morality, all cased into the meta-narrative of the community. Whether one terms it “common imagination” or “collective unconscious,” the phenomenon of the sharing of a common story and therefore meaning, is noted, but with a current necessity to mend the frayed ends of this cable of meaning.
And there is no finger pointing when it comes to how this “Great Emergence” came to be: Tickle invites us to examine the Great Reformation as a prime example. With its subtitle: “A Prequel to Emergence,” Tickle shows that it was not in the 1500’s but already after 1378, when the point of no return had been crossed. Inter-papal struggles and tumult begat the Great Reformation, which is often seen as the “Second Great Schism.” By 1517 Scripture was given its place of authority, which had “accelerated the drive toward rationalism and from there to Enlightenment…” (46) Disadvantages and ironic turns of desired effects. While tension rose in the midst of Islam territories and “intercultural, interreligious clashes of the late 14th and 15th centuries” (50) the historical milieu was set up to anticipate a reformation of some type. As Protestantism rose, there had been the growth of the middle class, and the revolutionary increase in common literacy through the Gutenberg printing mechanism, church authority would in time be reconsidered, the Catholic church would awaken herself, into a “counter-reformation,” with ensuing missionary elites such as the Society of Jesus. The century would hold its departure with a legitimate air, and spirit of conquest and hegemony.
In the intellectual arena, Darwin was reeking havoc with the theory of evolution, a relatively silent figure, Michael Faraday was revolutionizing the way we think about electromagnetism. Through his work we are able to find practical, technological applications of his findings. Intellectuals such as Freud, Jung, and Joseph Campbell are credited in gradual increase of the “disestablishment of what is called ‘the Christian doctrine of particularity’ and ‘Christian exclusivity.’ To compound the non-problem, the advent of radio and television took on a wholly different way in which to exchange information.
Einstein, Heisenberg’s “Uncertainty Principle,” the quest for the historical Jesus, the influence of Karl Marx and his theories of dialectical materialism instilled into the culture skepticism and doubt, which according to Tickle, took to the fraying of the aforementioned “cable of meaning,”
In a stroke of analytically prophetic statements, Tickle offers four quadrants of the spiritual life during the Great Emergence, as typified by: Liturgicals; Social justice Christians; Renewalists; and Conservatives. There is a central arena where these four converge, which would be the area of desirable connection and communication, and with the surrounding currents of the Traditionalists, Retraditionalists, Progressives, and “Hyphenateds.”
Overall, the highly theoretical weaving of the Western meta-narrative is aptly woven with examples, significant players and advents in technology, to build a case that all signs from the past and present are pointing towards just that, another cycle of an emergence, or “Great Emergence” as Tickle calls, it, of change in the religious (Christian), social and intellectual climate at global proportions.
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