Book Review on the Great Emergence : How Christianity Is Changing and Why

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This paper is a review of Phyllis Tickle’s book, “The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why,” published in 2008 by Baker Books. The author Phyllis Tickle introduces the book as a piece that seeks to use history as its background to being a conversation about the change that is slowly taking place in our society today in Christianity – that the American church is on the cusp of a major change on the scale of the great schism and the reformation. Tickle begins the book explaining what she describes as “The Great Emergence,” through the illustration of a rummage sale – in that a rummage sale the owners seek to clear out what is unnecessary and no longer relevant or needed. Tickle proposes that this is exactly what the church needs and is heading towards, if not already there. The traditions, beliefs and practices that the church has held up to this point will be sort out and discarded as a result of the changing times. She continues on this thought by tracing the historical pattern of the church with the reformation as the starting point – though she does note the great schism of the east and the west, she spends much of her time in the reformation. Using the reformation as a center point to the present age – Tickle proposes that there is a historical cycle of 500 years in which major changes take place in the history of Christianity and this 500 year cycle is closing in on our age – which implies that there is a pending major change that is dawning on present day Christianity. Tickle’s default form of evidence for her theory or hypothesis comes from historical research and accounts pointing to the events that have taken place in Christian history. In steering the direction moving forward and where Christianity in the present age is heading, she touches upon the various schools of thought and dominating beliefs of today such as psychology and survival

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