The Palatable Gospel

Thank you Emergent Village for this article.

By Nic Paton: There’s a meme that has been doing the rounds, and this is the charge, primarily from the detractors of emergent spirituality, that its followers are compromising the Gospel in their attempts to make it “more palatable” to the world. Take for example, these comments critiquing the emergent POV: “the error … in the emergent church … [is] we become whatever the audience needs us to be in order to make the gospel palatable.” (Paul Edwards talking to John MacArthur) “Their hope is to make Christianity more palatable to the world” (Marsha West) There are a number of ideas inherent in statements such as these. Firstly, there is an admission that the gospel as normally presented might not be that palatable. However instead of directing the question towards themselves, the detractors aim it at Emergents. Instead of asking “What is wrong with my gospel?” they would rather say “Your gospel is wrong.” It hardly needs to be said that this posture is a matter of the splinter in the eye of another obscuring the log in one’s own. Then there is an assumption that Emergents (from their critic’s point of view) share the same “market space”, asking the same question but arriving at different answers. That the Emergents “bottom line” is selling tickets to heaven (and escaping hell). That they are part of the same framing story, but offer an alternative ending. That Emergents are using the same ingredients and cooking up a competing dish, instead of “Pizza Evangelista” they are offering “Pizza Emergente”. The very use of the term “palatable” reveals an assumption that spirituality is but a matter of “taste”, and by extension, attractiveness, to a targeted demographic, within a marketing paradigm. But it can be argued that this very paradigm is what Jesus referred to when he said “You cannot serve two masters … you cannot serve both God and Mammon”. Marketing is a matter of Mammon, while the Enterprise of God is often about losing market share, being unpopular, perceiving the potential in small “mustard seed” beginnings, and forgoing worldly profit for the eternal reward of obeying God and loving the world. To these detractors, Emergents are in competition for the market of “lost souls”, vying to retain a Christian following in a culture in decline. But that Emergents are doing it wrong — in giving up the Evangelical, Modern worldview, they have in effect rendered this gospel null and void. There is often very little appreciation amongst these voices that perhaps Emergents have a different vision of God and Gods purposes, and that is why the meal they serve tastes so fundamentally different. Rather than simply sweetening an essentially bitter pill, this vision might involve an altogether different understanding. In saying “You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth” [Matthew 5, The Message] it becomes apparent that God sees palatability not as compromise or unfaithfulness, but as a good and natural thing. To believe that that which is true must therefore be tasteless, unpleasant, unimaginative, gauche or dowdy is to deeply misunderstand the Lords Pleasure. It might be said that the call of the Gospel is to do the very thing that Anti-Emergents accuse us Emergents of: to allow by our worship of God, and our presence in Her Kitchen of Mission, the natural aromas of the creation to be savored and enjoyed by all. Another problematic assumption of the “more palatable” critique is the notion that “My presentation of the meal of truth is the only way it can be served. To serve the meal differently is to abandon truth”. “My truth” becomes synonymous with “The Truth”, rather than a view on Truth. This pernicious fantasy of modernity, an excessive overconfidence in our ability to perceive the absolute, is something that remains a stumbling block in creating a Christian spirituality that can take us forward beyond the decaying carcass of Christendom. As we have seen, the question of hypocrisy must be asked. What if those who accuse Emergents of compromise are themselves the compromisers? What if the charge that we are merely “making the gospel more palatable to our generation” is exactly what some evangelicals, fundamentalists, or Anti-Emergent’s, are doing? To those who prefer declaration over conversation, absolutes over contextualised truth, the literal over the metaphorical, the rational over the mystical, the individual over community, the conservative over the creative, the historical over the cosmic, I ask: Is your gospel of an ideal, absolute, holy, perfect (and punitive) God not simply pandering to the tastes of a generation who prefers individualised salvation, unsustainable material prosperity, a way of life which continues to violate the already disenfranchised, passive consumption over creativity, and continued exclusivism at odds with the loving, embracing God of Grace? Instead of Emergent’s diluting and compromising truth, perhaps it is the modernist understanding which is doing just that; allied with the World system, the Modernist gospel is becoming discredited: as spiritual food it is as best stale, and at worst, putrid. Yeuch; enough already. Pass the salt, please. “Look, everything is on the table, the prime rib is ready for carving. Come to the feast!” [Photo]Nic Paton—Postmodern Liturgist, multi-instrumentalist, VJ, and scullery theologian—lives in Cape Town, South Africa, and contributes to Emerging Africa.