Phyllis Tickle: The Great Emergence

Phyllis Tickle, The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), 173 pages, ISBN 9780801013133.

Chances are you have heard of Phyllis Tickle. As the founder of the religion department of Publishers Weekly, the author of at least two dozen books, and a popular speaker on religion in America, Tickle’s latest work has been widely anticipated. The Great Emergence takes on the broad task of chronicling church history, arguing that Christianity changes just about every five hundred years. She outlines the stages of development leading up to the present transformation and then sets her sights on the future of the church. Her main concern is not with the so-called “Great Emergence” but rather with Christianity in North America and the implication of the insight that twenty-first-century Christians in North America are facing the church’s most recent giant rummage sale. The results of this event are three-fold: first, a new, and more vital form of Christianity emerges; second, the dominant organizational framework of Christianity is reconstituted into a more pure form; and third, the Christian faith spreads dramatically as a result of the transformation. This description essentially summarizes the argument of the book.

Tickle’s argument is not unusual. Major shifts and periodic events have been the subject of other writers. Consider, for example, the widely popular work of Thomas Kuhn on the nature of scientific revolutions, or the work of Philip Jenkins on the next Christendom. The Great Emergence lacks much of the depth of these and other works. Tickle offers no detailed dialogue with any historical period or theological argument, no footnotes, no bibliography, and shows little desire to justify her observations. The chief reason may be that she does not have to do so: the argument is correct. Tickle is right: The church is facing its own coming to be in yet another shape and form.

Tickle’s book is short and to the point. Highly readable, as all of her work, The Great Emergence can easily hold your interest throughout any of the seven chapters. The book consists of three major parts: (1) a description of the nature of the great emergence, (2) a historical account of its origins, and (3), a prospectus of the future of the great emergence. However, it seems that despite the descriptive nature of most of the chapters, the heart and soul of the book is not in the content but in the idea it seeks to present: a shift in the patterns that define the profile of the church. Essentially surrounded by four primary forces, conservatives, liturgicals, social justice Christians, and renewalists, the center of Christianity is constantly shifting, and the contours of a new emerging center are already forming. Tickle suggests that the most significant alteration to be expected is the emergence of Christianity as a movement that places all authority in the existing center in order to accommodate the massive changes in the church and in culture.

There are many ideas that fill the pages of this brief book. It is an idea starter; and that is perhaps also the main limitation of the book. The book will sit well with anyone who is also an idea-oriented person. For those who seek well-grounded arguments, historical and theological support, and well-informed discussions, The Great Emergence will likely remain only a supplementary text. Pentecostals, who fit well in Tickle’s category of the renewalists, will be happy to find Pentecostalism represented in the argument, even noted as the “first, solid, applied answer to the question of where now is our authority” (85). But many Pentecostal readers will be disappointed at the lack of depth in perceiving Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity as a global movement. Pentecostalism resists the generic identification of Christianity as either a center-oriented or boundary oriented movement. After all, early Pentecostal literature in North America understood the impact of the movement as consisting precisely of the three-fold pattern attributed to the great emergence: a more vital form of Christian faith, a return to the purity of Christianity, and a dramatic growth worldwide as a result of the transformation. As an idea starter, this book may as well get Pentecostals thinking about themselves and their own role in the emergence of a new Christianity. The basic premise of the book offers much fuel for that discussion.

Reviewed by Wolfgang Vondey