New Evangelicals
From Neoredemptive
Robert Webber is the most visible proponent of the theory of a movement among the children of the Evangelical heyday, variously called the "New", "Young", or "Younger" Evangelicals. In an interview available at http://www.wordsofchrist.net/webberinterview.html, Robert Webber (Post-Conservative professor, writer, and speaker) says that the "younger evangelicals" are characterized by three commitments:
- To deconstruct the reliance of evangelicalism on modernity, especially the empirical method and on culture, especially its anti-historical attitude, its pragmatism, and narcissism.
- To return to the sources of the Christian faith, especially in the ancient church, and
- To build a church in the postmodern culture that reflects the two previous commitments.
... the "Canterbury Trail" from evangelicalism to Anglicanism (and, from there, often on to Roman Catholitism...)
This movement seems to have morphed into part of what we now call the emerging church and emergent.
Worship Forms - Experience
On the forms of worship services preferred by the younger evangelicals, Webber says:
Traditional (1950’s) worship is based on reason and verbal communication. Today’s young (older too) live in a culture of mystery and symbol. Words remain important, of course, but communication must also be embodied. Today people want to worship with their bodies. Again this was true in the ancient church. The models are there, we don’t need to create new models, but adapt ancient models to our life in this world. Worship that continues to be verbal only, simply does not engage the whole person.
How does this get incarnated?
Worship Forms - Blending
This usually manifests itself as blended worship services.
We really, really, really don't like "blended" worship; it almost invariably falls victim to:
- Inoffensiveness (which is death to sincerity-soaked folk or rock forms)
- Pandering and placating the crowd
- Poor execution (least-common-denominator mediocrity)
and is often symptomatic of
- Congregations with confused cultural identity
- Congregations with confused missiology
- Congregations led by pastors who are relatively ambivalent about music
Blended worship is most likely to "blend" the late western choral hymn tradition with inoffensive soft rock, with perhaps occasional forays into chant and modern rock, but never a serious sampling of gospel, hip-hop, R&B, hard core, punk, metal, techno, radio pop, alt-rock, prog-rock, African folk dance, or any of the eastern musical traditions. It winds up satisfying the stylistic taste of a sampler-platter culture instead of using a particular musical culture's innate values to confront our lackadaisical spirituality.
... more goes here ...
Bibliography
Resources popularizing Webber's positions can be found at ancientfutureworship.com.
