the age of the Jesus nerd

At this point, it has been around a few years and, of course, picked apart in scholarly circles. But anyone with even a passing interest in what’s going on in our church or, for that matter, our culture right now should familiarize themselves with Phyllis Tickle’s The Great Emergence.

My very simplistic summary is this: approximately every 500 years, throughout its history, Christianity has had to radically reinvent itself in order for its “Good News” not to turn into bad news. Ways of thinking and doing the Christian faith, which were once believed to be permanently valid, eventually fail to hold water as the world changes around them, and new ones need to be adopted. In each case, there is a moment of cultural crisis where the church either needs to adapt or lose all relevance.

These “cycles of history” actually begin in the context of an intra-Jewish dispute, with Jesus himself totally turning the idea of covenant faithfulness on its head, seeking out the unclean and the sinners rather than avoiding them in order to preserve his own ritual purity. A little less than five centuries later, the whole western world is nominally Christian, but with the fall of Rome, after which the “Gospel” can no longer be synonymous with the growth and triumph of the empire, a handful of oddball mystics smuggle it out into the desert. Five centuries later the schism between Eastern and Western church shattered any notion that the one universal church might be visible across all particular geographies and cultures, each with their own limited hierarchies and thought patterns. Five centuries more bring us to the Great Reformation, which, on the surface, was a grievance against corrupt men in power but, at its core, signified the breakdown of the medieval way of doing Christianity. And that brings us up to today. 

I don’t think you need to buy the almost Asimovian prophesying of her 500 year schema, and I question how much she has left out in order to tidy up a bit (e.g. the rise and then re-encounter with Islam, Copernicus, Darwin, etc.). But it’s hard to deny that she is basically onto something. Christianity changes.  And it’s changing fast right now. What each of Tickle’s 500 year crises have in common is that they all result from a breakdown in authority of some sort, and when authority breaks down, the church tends to move from visible unification to fragmentation.

Now, whether the imperial church of the 4^th century was actually more unified than the protestant church of the 20^th century on the ground is a much more complicated question, but the decreasing centralization of money, authority, and influence is undeniable. This is a byproduct of the increased spread of information, which enables people to think for themselves. The more people feel authorized to think for themselves, the more difficult it is to get a whole lot of them to lend you authority. The Gutenberg printing press skyrocketed the number of Bibles and the writings of the reformers in circulation. For everyday smiths and cobblers (who likely couldn’t read, themselves, but knew a parish pastor who could), this unlocked the previously inconceivable notion that the Pope might be wrong about something. How much more now that a live tweet of an American political debate can be read by a kid in San Salvador?

We call this postmodernity. In philosophy-speak this means the breakdown of any overarching “meta-narrative.” In normal-speak, it means that we’re not all on the same page.

As the church grapples with what postmodernity means for us, the culture is having to figure it out too. One of the most interesting manifestations of this is the rise of the nerds. If you still assume a jock-centric hierarchy in popular culture, you probably haven’t talked to a high school kid in quite some time. 

The geeks have inherited the Earth. By “geek,” I don’t necessarily mean someone who is academically inclined, though it could be that. Geeks are any persons who both exercise their individuality and find community through the shared love of anything that is not general interest. Whether it be theater performance, the Harry Potter series, or expensive barbecue sauce. The particular object of affection doesn’t matter so long as it can act as a conduit, connecting small pockets of community in a wearyingly massive and pluralistic world. In my life this looks like “Blazer-Con,” a convention for American fans of English Premier League Soccer who wear tweed and listen to the “Men in Blazers” podcast. My wife and I will be traveling to the next convention in Brooklyn late this year.

I wouldn’t suggest that people are merely feigning interest in Battlestar Galactica or designer cheeses in order to meet people. I think the enthusiasts of these things really like them. But in a world without one overarching cultural narrative where almost no commonality with a random passerby can be assumed, people are building sub-communities through the things that they like.

This has relevance for the church. In a weird way, we have the opportunity to be Jesus nerds in a way that we have not been able to replicate for 17 centuries. When 4^th century Emperor Theodosius I made Christianity the official religion of the Roman world, in one day, the word “Christian” went from describing about 5 to 10 percent of the population to 100 percent. Only one of two things could result: either everyone in the empire would start actively seeking to reflect Jesus in their lives—forgiving each other’s faults, protecting the vulnerable, renouncing violence, etc.—or the meaning of the term “Christian” would become diluted. I don’t need to tell you which one ended up happening.

It’s the paradox of church history that if everyone is a Christian, then no one is a Christian. Christians who fear that the faith is dying because smaller numbers of people are showing up to church on Sundays, or we don’t have the ten commandments posted in public schools, or we use of the term “holiday” rather than “Christmas” have likely not thought much about what it would really mean to embody Christ’s way of being in the world. In the US, the data is clear: there were way more people sitting in pews on Sunday mornings in the 40s and 50s. It’s not at all clear that the country was more Christ-like back then.

The decline of Christendom is a huge loss, if your goal is to get a large collection of warm bodies together once a week. But it’s so much the better for the more discerning Christian. Suddenly, we are entering a time where “Jesus nerd” might actually mean something.

Battlestar Galactica appreciation groups have a clear commitment to something and there is no ambiguity as to who they are. Finally, we are nearing a time where Christians can say no less than that. Perhaps we can even say more.