Emerging Evangelicals

by Bielo, James S.

• ISBN13: 9780814789551
• ISBN10: 0814789552
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-10-01
• Publisher: New York Univ Pr

Summary

The Emerging Church movement developed in the mid-1990s among primarily white, urban, middle-class pastors and laity who were disenchanted with America's conservative Evangelical sub-culture. It is a response to the increasing divide between conservative Evangelicals and concerned critics who strongly oppose what they consider overly slick, corporate, and consumerist versions of faith. A core feature of their response is a challenge to traditional congregational models, often focusing on new church plants and creating networks of related house churches. Drawing on three years of ethnographic fieldwork, James S. Bielo explores the impact of the Emerging Church movement on American Evangelicals. He combines ethnographic analysis with discussions of the movement's history, discursive contours, defining practices, cultural logics, and contentious interactions with conservative Evangelical critics to rethink the boundaries of "Evangelical" as a category. Ultimately, Bielo makes a novel contribution to our understanding of the important changes at work among American Protestants, and illuminates how Emerging Evangelicals interact with the cultural conditions of modernity, late modernity, and visions of "postmodern" Christianity.

Author Biography

James S. Bielo is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Miami University in Oxford, OH. He is the author of Words Upon the Word: An Ethnography of Evangelical Group Bible Study (Nyp Press, 2009} and editor of The Social Life of Scriptures: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Biblicism.

Table of Contents

Figures and Tables	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction: Conceptualizing Emerging Evangelicalism	p. 1
Stories of Deconversion	p. 28
Ironies of Faith	p. 47
Ancient-Future I: Experiencing God	p. 70
Ancient-Future II: Everyday Monastics	p. 98
Missional I: Everyday Missionaries	p. 118
Missional II: Kingdom Theologies	p. 138
Church Planting I: A New Work	p. 157
Church Planting II: Sense of Place	p. 178
Conclusion: Dialogic Evangelicalism	p. 195
Appendix	p. 205
References	p. 211
Index	p. 221
About the Author	p. 225
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