A Precipice Magazine interview with Tony Jones, continued... [CLICK HERE FOR PART 1]

Darren King: Tony, in Dispatch 16 from your book, you write: “Emergents believe that church should function more like an open-source network and less like a hierarchy or a bureaucracy”. For those not so familiar with how open-source networks work, could you describe what you’re getting at here?

Tony Jones: A couple of computer scientists at Notre Dame, in ’98, ’99, set out to track the initial growth of the Internet. They kind of went back to see how the Internet started and they charted its growth. And they were surprised that it wasn’t a strictly egalitarian kind of network. They thought it would be totally flat. They knew it wouldn’t be hierarchical, top-down. They thought it would be flat, bottom-up. But it was somewhere in between, where there were certain hubs of content that were more significant in the network than others. And the more inbound links – like we talked about earlier – a hub had, the stronger it was. The more it was able to avoid viruses and all sorts of things that used to wipe out whole areas.

Now, it would be nice of us to re-conceive of the church along those lines. Not that every church is completely equal, or that every local iteration of God’s Kingdom is equal to the next one. There will still be hubs of content. But if we can think of a seminary as a hub of content where everyone in the Kingdom can make a connection to it, regardless of whether you’re Presbyterian or Methodist or something like that, as opposed to thinking of seminary as some sort of factory for pastors, or a vocational school for pastors. And not only seminaries would be hubs. But publishing houses would be hubs of content, para-church organizations, Precipice Magazine, the Oooze… I mean there would be any number of hubs of content people would attach themselves to. I really think it would be better for the Kingdom if the Presbyterians were linked up, not just to other Presbyterian hubs, but to of all sorts of different hubs.

Darren King: Right. That reminds me of something you were saying to us when you were here in Central Oregon. You were saying that when it comes to guarding against heresy and protecting Orthodoxy and all that, an open-source-like network is actually much safer- you know, that there’s safety in numbers. And you used the example of David Koresh, saying, its when you’ve got a couple of people at the top controlling the entire system that you get these kinds of wacked-out theologies.

Tony Jones: Yeah. I think the more open-source it gets the less abuse there will be in the system. I think there’s abuse whenever it’s a dictatorship or an oligarchy. I think that in a democracy there is much less abuse. I think that’s been shown time and time again. And this is why, I’m sure, that you and I feel very grateful to live in a democracy instead of a fascist dictatorship.

Now, I don’t see why the church operates differently, where there are certain elite people who get to make the decisions because they’re “bishops” or “ordained”. I get that its supposed to be from the bottom-up, that the people are actually ordained by the body of Christ. But it’s in very few churches that it actually works like that. In Congregationalist and Baptist churches that’s how it works. But for the most part it’s a top-down type if thing and we need to get away from that.

Darren King: I remember reading where you had written in the book that theology is more fluid and evolving than we sometimes want to admit. And sometimes what you’ll do is ask someone to think of a couple of issues where they’ve shifted in their perspective over the last few years, just to demonstrate how much that happens in someone’s life. So, what about for you? In the last couple of years, what would be an issue that you’ve shifted on- or maybe an issue that you’re kind of mid-question on?

Tony Jones: I have been mid-question on how gay persons are given leadership in the church, ever since I was in seminary, which was, well, I graduated in 1993. So, it’s been a long time. You’d think that somebody would have landed the plane on an issue like that by now, and I suppose some people think that they have. But I continued to be vexed by that question, simply because I refuse to just dismiss the six biblical passages on that issue. On the other hand, I find most of the arguments not that compelling, in terms of how those can be understood as Pederasty. I am also convicted by the fact that there are only six verses that mention homosexuality in the church.

I’ve actually come at it from a completely different angle over the last year or so, especially because of my experience at Solomon’s Porch, and because of a lot of conversations that Doug Pagitt and I have had on this issue- just the two of us. Maybe the problem isn’t with the gay persons in the church. The problem is with the church and how we have a tiered structure of leadership. Probably that needs to be changed and dismantled.

You know, the line I've said in public - that has sometimes got me in some hot water - is, when I’ve been with a couple of Episcopalian crowds “Hey listen! For us Emergents, the problem isn’t with the fact that you guys have a gay bishop. The problem is that you have bishops!” You know, rim shot! And they don’t like that of course because it undermines their entire ontological thinking about clergy. But I really do think that’s probably the root of the issue: why do we have these different ontological categories of leadership in the church? And how do some people – based on their sinfulness – not qualify, while other people do qualify?

Darren King: That reminds me of something that Brian (McLaren) once said, I think it was in Christianity Today. He called for a 10 year moratorium on the issue. Do you remember that?

Tony Jones: Yeah.

Darren King: And there I guess you could say the question comes down to whether or not biology is going to land the plane. You know, is there going to be a gene or something that makes us go: “Okay, this settles the issue- one way or the other.” What do you think about that kind of approach?

Tony Jones: I think you’re wise to see that, in some way, Brian might be buying time for science to weigh in on this. I mean, I don’t know that he was deliberately thinking that, it might have been more unconscious. But because my PHD is in practical theology I’ve spent significant amounts of time and have done a lot of writing on my preferred method of interdisciplinary studies. And I think that most Christians, and theologians, probably haven’t spent a whole lot of time on that.

You know, some people on the Left will hear you say that and they’ll be like “Oh yeah, it’s just a matter of time before science solves that problem for us." Now, people on the Right are going to say “That’s letting culture set the agenda for theology!”. I actually think that – I’m pretty sure of this actually - theology and other disciplines work in a symbiotic relationship.

Darren King: Sure.

Tony Jones: I mean, I’ve blogged about this, and written about it. It’s a method called transversal rationality, where what you do is: you look for intersections between theology and another field of rationality. Now, that might be physics. That might be biology in the case that you’re talking about. It might be something else. Psychology is a big one. And I think that’s right. I think we’ve got to take very seriously what science is telling us. It doesn’t need to dictate the conversation. But neither does theology hold some sort of supernatural trump card; as if we ultimately get to ignore what science is saying- like Creationists do. You just don’t get to do that! That’s not playing by the rules. Some people will say, "Well, theology deals with eternal things. So, we’ll have a conversation with you about evolution, or about the biology of homosexual orientation. But when it comes right down to it, we’re going to slap down our trump card and we win the game!” And it doesn’t work like that. People may live in some fantasy land, where they think theology holds the trump card. Those are the people who don’t leave the church or the seminary very much. And, I meet a lot of people like that.

Darren King: Yeah, that reminds me: a friend of mine recently sent me some stats regarding a polll where they asked Americans about their belief about origins. The question was: Do you believe in A.) A literal six day Creation where the earth is only thousands of years old, B.) Evolution, or C.) Evolution, but God had a hand in the process,. And 45% said they believe A. - that the earth is only a few thousands years old and the theory of evolution just doesn’t hold any water. And that blew me away! The sheer size of that number: 45%!

Tony Jones: Yeah, I know. Well, didn’t we have three or four Republican presidential candidates who thought that?

Darren King: Yeah. That’s right.

Okay, next question: Tony, you’ve called for this thing called “radical contextualization”- in terms of how we understand theology, ecclesiology, etc. Can you speak a little about what that means to you? I think some people, even in hearing the word “radical”, get scared. So what does radical contextualization mean to you?

Well, this is probably the way that getting a PHD ruins you, because, a term like “radical” has a fairly technical meaning in PHD studies. What it does is it implies a little bit of Marxism. When I say radical contextualization, another way, I guess, one could say it is: hyper-localization.

I was with some Presbyterians two weeks ago, and they were talking about doing missions trips with other Presbyterian groups from other parts of the country. And part of the thing that they were struggling with was the fact that the kids in their youth group just don’t have that much in common with Presbyterian kids from four or five states away. I mean, it’s not like they’re all Reformed. I mean, they’re sixteen! They’re not really Presbyterian just because they go to a Presbyterian Church. They’re parents might be. But even there the parents probably aren’t Presbyterian in some theological sense. So, I say, "Why don’t you do a missions trip with the Lutherans that are literally on the same block as you?" This is what blows me away. Churches are divided up by their flavors of theology. And the fact of the matter is, there are very few people still holding to those theologies.

That’s why the “Reformed Resurgence” is such big news nowadays. It’s because of how rare it is! Rare that a group of people would be so completely committed to one theological paradigm, at the expense of all others. It’s kind of like those guys are the exception that proves the rule. Most people are pretty moderate about what they believe and hold to a pretty generous orthodoxy, quite honestly. I don’t think most people who go to a Presbyterian Church in America somewhere – if you pinned them down - and you asked: “Do you believe in Total Depravity?" or, "Do you believe in Double Pre-destination?" or something like that, would say “yes”. They’d be like “No. I just love this church. My kids love the youth group and I sing in the choir.” You know? So, when I speak of contextualization, when it comes to the church, one of the things that I really mean by that is that people should be a lot more concerned about where they are, than about some national body, or, some transcendent set of doctrines that they think they share with people around the planet.

Darren King: But, at the same time, when you say contextualization, that isn’t to the exclusion of ancient Orthodoxy and the Church Fathers, etc, etc…You’re saying that all has its place in there as well, right? It’s just that it ultimately boils down into the local context.
Tony Jones: Right. I mean, this is, I think, part of the thing we need to remember about Augustine. He was dealing with the contextual issues of his day; namely: Palageanism. I mean, that was the big one for Augustine. Now, it’s not the big one for us today. Well, maybe it is. There are people who would say that it’s had its own little resurgence. But, for the most part, every theologian in his age was dealing with the issues that confronted him or her at the time. And that’s what we should be doing too. So, I’m not saying we shouldn’t be in dialogue with all the saints that have gone before us. I’m just saying we should do what they did, which is, be faithful in our time and place. We should confront the issues that confront us.


END OF PART 2

The third and final portion of this interview will be published later this week.