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During recent centuries, Christianity was influenced significantly by Modernism in the sense that it sought to take the individual narratives of the Bible and drill down towards a set of underlying truths, or meta-narrative, that underpinned them all. This scientific reductionism of underlying truths was then packaged up into a Christian worldview that members of the Church were expected to adopt. These worldviews often contained a lot of cultural baggage as well as theological stances. While disagreements regarding these worldviews were common, this generally resulted in the creation of other denominations with their own distinct but equally modernist Christian worldviews rather than a questioning of modernism itself.
By contrast, Postmodernism has been characterised by the deconstruction of modernist worldviews. The reasons for this are beyond the scope of this article, however, it is clear that Christianity has been influenced by this. Individual Christians who choose to reject the particular Christian worldview that they have previously held are now more likely to subsequently question the very idea of a modernist Christian worldview rather than create an alternative one. This has led to a climate where many individual Christians are deconstructing each area of their Christian faith and analysing it piece by piece. Each individual experiences his or her own unique journey through this deconstruction process. One observed phenomenon is that many Christians subsequently start to reconstruct their Christianity thus finding a faith that, while basically Christian, is often distinct from the more established churches. One definition of the Emerging Church is that it is the collective noun for the individuals who are emerging from this process of deconstruction and reconstruction of Christianity, or those who have joined groups being led by such individuals.
While there is no single co-ordinated organization behind the emerging church globally, and no guarantee that the Emerging Church will mature into a coherent movement at all, the term is becoming increasingly common currency among both leaders of Emerging Church groups and Emerging Church thinkers. Many of these leaders and thinkers have written books, articles and/or blogs on the subject.
So far, Emerging Church groups have typically contained some or all of the following elements:
The Emerging Church movement is closely related to the House Church movement in that both of them are challenging traditional notions of how the Church should be organized. Not all House Churches are as influenced by Postmodern philosophy as the Emerging Church, but many Emerging Churches are also House Churches.
Examples of Emerging Churches
Emerging Church sites
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