Emergent-Hyphenated-Nazarenes

One of the things that have found interesting about the emergent conversation is all the “hyphenated” parallel conversations. By “hyphenated” I mean those who both identify with the emergent conversation while still identifying with the story of their own traditions. These groups tend to take on names like presbymergents, Angli-mergents, Metho-mergents, Luther-mergents ect. I guess when I named the blog over three years ago we should have been Naz-mergent, but the idea is the same.

Phyllis Tickle the author of The Great Emergence said on a blog late last year, “They (hyphenateds) fascinate me more even than do completely emergent congregations, because they seem to me to be engaged in the more difficult task of bringing to the party the best of two worlds, the ancient and the future. They are hyphenated, in other words, because they seek to meld the DNA and passion and post-modern theology of a new form of Christianity with the existing body and operative history of an established tradition.”

Here are some hyphenated groups that can likely identify with the tensions we are navigating as Emergent Nazarenes.

Methomergent (Methodist)
Baptimergent (Baptist)
Presbymergent (Presbyterian)
Luthermergent (Lutheran)
Anglimergent (Anglican/Episcopal)
Convergent (Quaker)
AGmergent (Assemblies of God/ Pentecostal)

I occasionally go to the DC Emergent Cohort, and one of the great pleasures of this is that I get to meet and interact with people in other Christian traditions who also are trying to navigate this hyphenated existence. I love the ecumenical feel of these groups as it reminds us all that we are all branches connected to the same tree; perhaps I should say the same Vine. Yet, we also all very much identify with the particular stories of our various traditions and do not want to abandon them.

I find it very interesting how this conversation has gravitated to us hyphenateds. I think some of the early disillusionment with the institutional church, which was a contributing factor to the emergent conversation early on, drove many to nondenominational circles. Yet the conversation itself caused many to pause, to look back at church history as we are trying to move forward enough to recognize that further division simply is not the answer. Brian McLaren refers to this in his book A Generous Orthodoxy as being “post-protestant.” At some point we have to just stop the protest that leads to endless divisions. Such division certainly is not consistent with call for unity in the Body of Christ we find in scripture.

Besides, hyphenateds tend to really resonate with the story of their particular tradition, while at the same time seeing it as just part of the broader Christian story that all followers of Jesus have taken part in through out history.

Emergent Nazarenes are Nazarenes

As Nazarenes we resonate with being a church that named itself “Nazarene” because they wanted to be a “church for the despised”; after all "can anything good come out of Nazareth?

We resonate with the Church of the Nazarene’s message of holiness, which is optimistic rather than pessimistic about our Salvation and embraces the transformational power of the gospel. We can trace some of our roots here to some shared roots with Pentecostalism which shouted from the rooftops concerning the power the Holy Spirit in our lives. This message took off also in the American holiness movement within our tradition that spoke of being able to live in God’s transformational power TODAY.

Related to this, we resonate with the history of the Church of the Nazarene as it embraced not only the individual transformational power of holiness, but also the social dimensions of holiness. Our denomination was built on taking on social issues like helping the poor and working to bless the communities we lived in by doing things like taking a stand against alcoholism. This is true Wesleyan theology in action that frames holiness in the context of love and understands John Wesley’s statement, “The gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social; no holiness but social holiness.”

As Nazarenes we resonate with our big tent mentality. We appreciate the mentality of our community that has long lived with the tensions of “American holiness” views and “Wesleyan holiness” ones. We appreciate our willingness to find solidarity with even our Calvinist leaning friends who were perhaps attracted to our more hopeful and optimistic view of holiness and decided they wanted to hang out with us under our tent; perhaps these where some of the first “hyphanated” folks. We also embrace all our efforts to become truly an international church community, no matter how rocky and imperfectly we have navigated those efforts so far. We appreciate that as Nazarenes we strive to be a welcoming community.

So we emergent-Nazarenes may identify ourselves with the emergent conversation and even desire to be agents of change and growth as we transition into a growing post-modern word, but we also hold fast to our roots and the particulars of our Nazarene story. We humbly move forward trying to take the wisdom of the past found in our tradition and apply it in new ways in our changing world. We are emerging from and with our tradition, understanding that all change, growth, and transformation is a hard journey. But we are confident that Christ is present with us all on this journey and he leads and empowers all transformation which makes us more like him.

Peace,

James Diggs