Karen over at Submergence wrote a great comment on her blog explaining to me the distinction between the Emergent and Alt Worship movements, in response to a comment I had left there. I wasn’t sure how to link straight to her comment, so I’ve copied and pasted the comment below. But to read her original post, my comment and other comments on the matter, click here. Karen’s words are right below. (note: when she writes "COTA" she’s referring to Church of the Apostles, the community she pastors in Seattle).
alt comes from a liturgical base with underlying mainline/catholic theology and sacramentality BUT with an emergent/pomo ethos and ‘native’ ability to navigate and speak into to today’s culture (and therein lies the BIG difference between alt emergent and modern mainline – the theology is not different, but is taken with radical seriousness and given radical practice for today’s culture, so alt emergent is ‘vatican III" whereas the modern mainline church is at vatican II or 1.5.
nota bena – giving ‘radical practice’ to catholic/mainline theology will be quite different in practice but not in theology (essence) so some modern mainlines will say ‘we are doing different theology,’ but our reply is that we are not doing different theology, we are just putting to radical practice the theology we have inherited.
for example, at cota i do not wear vestments. for us, vesture is ‘adiaphora’ (not required) yet dress is very important in all cultures. so i wear the ‘native dress’ of our seattle boho culture (jeans and t shirt or sweater) and also for us this ‘a’ way to radically express ‘priesthood of all believers,’ so priest and priestly people look/are the same. – we value the symbols of liturgical color and beauty, so we vest the space with radical color, fabric, art and media projections for the liturgical year, we just don’t vest me, as in our postmodern and secular culture here the more powerful symbol is not ‘priest set apart’, but ‘priest set among,’ which is communicated better in our context by me wearing the same clothes as our other apostles. however, we do ‘robe up’ for weddings when the couple decides on formal wear (tux and white dress…) so in this setting, having priests in formal wear is fine as we are at the same level of symbolic dress as those attending.
when it comes to the difference between alt/emergent and usa emergent, there is a difference in theological starting points. most usa emergent folk have started from free church evangelical theology and tradition (tending less ‘liturgical’ and less ‘sacramental’) wheras alt emergent starts from a mainline/catholic theology and traditions which tend more ‘liturgical’ and ‘sacramental,’ so both alt emergent and us emergent are ‘post,’ but post from different origins – one is post-evangelical and alt emergent is post-mainline, or mainline in the next stage of ‘morph.’ so the difference is not in essence but in ethos.
the mothership site for alt emergent is alternative worship you can get lost in there, so enjoy the ride. cheers!
The Lutheran Zephyr 