The Age of the Spirit

December 9, 2013
Reading this pair of veteran authors is like being invited as a freshman into the office of an admired professor and then being brought up to speed like a colleague. Tickle (The Great Emergence) and Sweeney (The Pope Who Quit) embrace the reader of this book, third in a series about the emergent church movement: they use “we” and never patronize. The back story from early Christian history, comprising enigmas and heresies, confusions and creeds, and “Breath, Bread and Beards,” covers the greater part of the text. The front story is today’s emergent church, based in the spiritual more than the religious, the holy more than the hierarchy, and in the image of “God as an activity more than as an entity” and the Holy Spirit as “like unto fire.” With poetic prose, Tickle and Sweeney mix known words (“trinity”) and new (“nescient”); they stir in big ideas, sweeping summaries, and don’t-miss footnotes, in laying the intellectual foundation for their analysis.

February 15, 2014

Tickle (founding editor, Publishers Weekly religion dept.; The Great Emergence) and Sweeney (editor in chief, Paraclete; The Pope Who Quit) have undertaken a challenging task: a recounting of the history of the cult of the Holy Spirit and how its repercussions have led to division, cultural misunderstanding, and even bloodshed. Yet all is not lost; Tickle and Sweeney seem hopeful that some new age is about to arrive, ushered in by the Spirit, that will sweep away institutions and creeds. VERDICT Even those less confident that what we see is an Emergent Church rather than ceaseless change will be swept along by the deft account of the shifts in doctrine and the characters who drove it. For thoughtful church groups and divinity schools.

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