Hi Robi. Yes it was a movement of young religious leaders who wanted to move forward and try new things and be less restrictive called The Emerging Church Movement...it was pretty big and had a profound effect on religion in the USA, moving many toward more freedoms. In the past USA Christians weren’t as connected to the conservative Republican party, but in the 80′s the two came together and won elections and it created a new thing, by the 90′s a huge section of the church realized how they’d been co-opted into supporting a conservative agenda and we basically rose up and revolted...it was also a revolt internally against controls on how services are done and seeking a freedom there to do new more creative things...it’s possible to say we had an impact on getting Obama in and legalizing gay marriage, but then sadly it created a huge backlash both in religion and in society, more traditional people were scared by it...I’m not saying we were the only thing of course causing all this but we were right in there. The institutional backlash was brutal many of us lost our jobs or were even excommunicated, but tons of great new things were created that are still going today. I was the leader of the team organizing local gatherings nationally, kind of like CEA in EA. So it was quite a ride.
I’m no longer religious and so it’s sometimes a little awkward to bring it up, but thanks for asking...I do believe EA could learn a lot from what we experienced. In the end because of a lack of diversity, that we tried so hard to fix, but it just wasn’t fixable, we literally dissolved ourselves and invited in a whole new completely diverse collection of people to take over...they met and began with a lot of hope, but they just didn’t coalesce and it fizzled out. It turns out that we had painstakingly built something over time, and you can’t just replace it magically, so we gambled to become more diverse but it killed the movement. It was very painful but we did it for the right reasons. How often do you see white male leaders step aside and give their roles to women and people of color? It rarely happens, and almost never en masse as we did. So I’m proud of that, even though sad it ended.
Also I’m in no way bitter against religion, I love religion and I’m now a Universalist who appreciates all religion, as well as no religion. I like to say I’m a theist M, W & F and an atheist T, Th & Sat and neutral on Sunday. Somedays I feel faith, other days it seems impossible. There are others like me, this is a possible way to live...I don’t suggest it to others, but for me it allows me to be in solidarity with all humans and to not exclude any while being faithful to my own belief and non-belief. In the altruistic world it gives a great ability to understand and connect with people of faith, and since charities must contend with local faith communities and their leaders that is a really facilitating thing.
Hi Robi. Yes it was a movement of young religious leaders who wanted to move forward and try new things and be less restrictive called The Emerging Church Movement...it was pretty big and had a profound effect on religion in the USA, moving many toward more freedoms. In the past USA Christians weren’t as connected to the conservative Republican party, but in the 80′s the two came together and won elections and it created a new thing, by the 90′s a huge section of the church realized how they’d been co-opted into supporting a conservative agenda and we basically rose up and revolted...it was also a revolt internally against controls on how services are done and seeking a freedom there to do new more creative things...it’s possible to say we had an impact on getting Obama in and legalizing gay marriage, but then sadly it created a huge backlash both in religion and in society, more traditional people were scared by it...I’m not saying we were the only thing of course causing all this but we were right in there. The institutional backlash was brutal many of us lost our jobs or were even excommunicated, but tons of great new things were created that are still going today. I was the leader of the team organizing local gatherings nationally, kind of like CEA in EA. So it was quite a ride.
I’m no longer religious and so it’s sometimes a little awkward to bring it up, but thanks for asking...I do believe EA could learn a lot from what we experienced. In the end because of a lack of diversity, that we tried so hard to fix, but it just wasn’t fixable, we literally dissolved ourselves and invited in a whole new completely diverse collection of people to take over...they met and began with a lot of hope, but they just didn’t coalesce and it fizzled out. It turns out that we had painstakingly built something over time, and you can’t just replace it magically, so we gambled to become more diverse but it killed the movement. It was very painful but we did it for the right reasons. How often do you see white male leaders step aside and give their roles to women and people of color? It rarely happens, and almost never en masse as we did. So I’m proud of that, even though sad it ended.
Also I’m in no way bitter against religion, I love religion and I’m now a Universalist who appreciates all religion, as well as no religion. I like to say I’m a theist M, W & F and an atheist T, Th & Sat and neutral on Sunday. Somedays I feel faith, other days it seems impossible. There are others like me, this is a possible way to live...I don’t suggest it to others, but for me it allows me to be in solidarity with all humans and to not exclude any while being faithful to my own belief and non-belief. In the altruistic world it gives a great ability to understand and connect with people of faith, and since charities must contend with local faith communities and their leaders that is a really facilitating thing.