I am doing a little reading on the subject of the emergent church right now. One of things I stumbled across through the magic of Google is Scot McKnight’s 2007 article Five Streams of the Emerging Church in Christianity Today. In the article McKnight identifies five major themes inherent in much of the emerging church world. Generally McKnight believes that emergent churches are prophetic, post-modern, praxis-oriented, post-evangelical and political. Reading his descriptions of each of these themes I was struck by how much the emergent church movement, as he describes it, has in common with Unitarian Universalism. Let me briefly compare, contrast and expand on each of the themes.

Prophetic

McKnight describes the emergent church movement as using "prophetic rhetoric." He writes:

The emerging movement is consciously and deliberately provocative. Emerging Christians believe the church needs to change, and they are beginning to live as if that change had already occurred.

The prophetic rhetoric that McKnight refers to is the rhetoric found in the Hebrew Bible and used by prophets like Hosea. It is meant to provocative.

I think that some Unitarian Universalists use prophetic rhetoric in this manner and I know that others don’t. Being largely post-Christian I suspect that it would be difficult to claim that most Unitarian Universalists use prophetic rhetoric. On the other hand, I think that the recent work on public witness that Bill Sinkford has engaged in on behalf of the Association is grounded in a sense of Unitarian Universalism connection to the prophetic religious tradition.

Post-Modern

Postmodernity, as McKnight defines, is recognizing "the collapse of inherited metanarratives (overarching explanations of life) like those of science or Marxism." He suggests that pastors in the emergent church movement relate to postmodernity in one of three ways. They "minister to postmoderns, others with postmoderns, and still others as postmoderns."

Those who minister to postmoderns see "postmoderns as trapped in moral relativism and epistemological bankruptcy out of which they must be rescued." Those who minister with postmoderns "they live with, work with, and converse with postmoderns, accepting their postmodernity as a fact of life in our world. Such Christians view postmodernity as a present condition into which we are called to proclaim and live out the gospel." According to McKnight, "The vast majority of emerging Christians and churches fit these first two categories. They don’t deny truth, they don’t deny that Jesus Christ is truth, and they don’t deny the Bible is truth."

It is the final group that "attracts all the attention." Emergent Christians who "minister as postmoderns…embrace the idea that we cannot know absolute truth, or, at least, that we cannot know truth absolutely. They speak of the end of metanarratives and the importance of social location in shaping one’s view of truth." As one of them, LeRon Shults, write:

From a theological perspective, this fixation with propositions can easily lead to the attempt to use the finite tool of language on an absolute Presence that transcends and embraces all finite reality. Languages are culturally constructed symbol systems that enable humans to communicate by designating one finite reality in distinction from another. The truly infinite God of Christian faith is beyond all our linguistic grasping, as all the great theologians from Irenaeus to Calvin have insisted, and so the struggle to capture God in our finite propositional structures is nothing short of linguistic idolatry.

It seems to me that contemporary Unitarian Universalism shares a great deal in common with this third perspective. As a community we recognize that each individual has his or her own truth. In general, we reject creeds because we realize that since religious truth is a largely a matter of personal experience it is difficult, if not impossible, for one community or one individual write a statement of belief that adequately sums up truth. Additionally, there a number of Unitarian Universalists who are suspicious of our human ability to describe or name God. Mark Belletini writes and talks eloquently about this.

Praxis-oriented

McKnight argues that more than anything else the emergent church movement is characterized by its emphasis on "praxis–how the faith is lived out." He describes how this emphasis "can be seen in its worship, its concern with orthopraxy, and its missional orientation." According to McKnight, this means that the emergent church movement is open to experimentation in worship, encourages its members to live their beliefs and calls for its participants to engage in "the redemptive work of God in this world."

Certainly all three of these elements can be found in pockets of the Unitarian Universalist movement. For example, youth and young adult worship as well as the worship of some group like UU pagans can be highly experimental and experiential. Most Unitarian Universalists I know try to live out their beliefs and certainly the prophetic members of our movement call us to engage in social justice work. None of these elements are spread universally throughout our movement. However, they can be found in many of our congregations and communities.

Post-evangelical

By this McKnight means that the "emerging movement is a protest against much of evangelicalism as currently practiced." Theologically, emergent Christians differ from evangelicals in two primary ways. They are "suspicious of systematic theology" and they are ambivalent about who is inside and who is outside of their movement. According to Mcknight, this group believes that what "really matters is orthopraxy and that it doesn’t matter which religion one belongs to, as long as one loves God and one’s neighbor as one’s self."

Again, I see some parallels to Unitarian Universalism here. Certainly there are a lot of Unitarian Universalists who are deeply suspicious of systematic theology. Indeed, other than Thandeka I would be hard pressed to name a recent Unitarian, Universalist or Unitarian Universalist theologian who has paid that much attention to systematic theology. This might, in part, reflect the fact that a lot Unitarian Universalists are post-Christian. However, I can’t even name a 20th century Unitarian, Universalist or Unitarian Universalist theologian who has made a serious effort at writing a systematic theology.

The second point is something that is true for most, if not all, Unitarian Universalists. There is certainly a widespread sentiment amongst us that there are good people to found throughout the world’s cultures and religious traditions.

Political

The fifth stream feeding into the emergent church movement is politics. Here McKnight simply notes that many participants in the emergent church movement "lean left in politics." The same, of course, can be said for most Unitarian Universalists.

In sum, I think that there are sum interesting parallels between contemporary Unitarian Universalism and the emergent church movement. Our fundamental differences, of course, should not be over looked. They are evangelical Christians and we are not. However, to the growth and success that some emerging congregations have met with suggests to that Unitarian Universalists have something to learn from the emergent church movement and that the lessons that movement provides us with might offer us some opportunities for growth.