Theological Dictionary word of the day: the emerging church
Emergent Christians are predominantly found in Western Europe, North America, and the South Pacific. Some attend local independent churches that specifically identify themselves as being "emergent", while many others contribute to the conversation from within existing mainline denominations.
During recent centuries Western Christianity, like all of Western civilization, has been influenced significantly by modernism. In the 19th century modernist Protestant theologians sought to examine the individual narratives of the Bible and from them extract a set of underlying truths or "meta-narratives". By using methods borrowed from scientific reductionism it was hoped that a grand truth and worldview would be attained. In practice, however, the modernist approach led to additional schism within the Church (cf. Christian liberalism, Christian fundamentalism).
Postmodern church expression, on the other hand, encourages followers to deconstruct each element of their faith experience and reassemble the pieces according to his or her own unique journey of deconstruction.
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