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In Search of the Emerging Church
Outline of new life
by Tom Roberts on Dec. 03, 201027th and last in a series
Eighteen months ago, I started out on a reporting project that soon became a series and took the name “In Search of the Emerging Church.” Twenty-six reports later, looking back through scores of interviews, demographic data, anecdotes and personal experience, what emerges is the outline of new church life, much of it quite healthy, if less fastened than the church has been to traditional clerical structures.
Urban monk works to see 'the church we dream of'
by Tom Roberts on Nov. 01, 201026th in a series
PHILADELPHIA -- Reporting on the “emerging church” is a slippery matter, somewhat like reviewing a partially written play, or judging a meal by reading recipes.
It is one thing to understand that something new is under way, if only because outside forces make change inevitable in both the Catholic and evangelical Protestant worlds. It is quite another thing to understand what those two words, emerging church, might mean in real circumstances.
Perhaps the need to pin something down, to give form, however incomplete, to such an outsized idea, is why Shane Claiborne has become a highly visible sign of what many call the emerging church, or more audaciously, emerging Christianity. Claiborne himself prefers identifying with a movement that is a kind of subset of emerging Christianity, called “the new monasticism.”
For the rest of the story: Urban monk works to see 'the church we dream of'
The 'had it' Catholics
by Tom Roberts on Oct. 11, 201025th in a series
Patty Fitzpatrick spent years wrestling with Catholicism, mustering the will to show up at church with her husband and two children, pushing back against teachings she didn’t agree with and attitudes about women that made Sunday Mass a weekly occasion for anger. Pope John Paul II’s pronouncement that women would never be ordained and that Catholics were forbidden to even think or speak about such an eventuality sent her over the edge.
She started meeting with a small group of other angry and distressed Catholic women in the Kansas City, Mo., area. Ultimately, she tired of complaining about the church, stopped going, and began attending St. Andrew Christian Church in nearby Olathe, Kan., a Disciples of Christ congregation. She’s never looked back.
For more of the story The 'had it' Catholics.
Unformed future
by Tom Roberts on Jul. 21, 2010
Shane Claiborne24th in a series
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- When Shane Claiborne hops to the podium in the meeting room at the Hotel Albuquerque, he looks as stylistically unbounded as his spiritual quest that’s outlined on a bio sheet. He’s long and lanky with a goatee. He looks bookish in dark-rimmed glasses, his thin face framed by dreadlocks held in place by a handkerchief bandana. He projects a kind of urban underbelly chic with an accent as pure as the early days of NASCAR.
He is a product of East Tennessee Protestant evangelical Christianity transplanted to the Northeast, where he engages in a robust version of Catholic Worker-type community, advocating for the poor and for nonviolent solutions to problems.
Laypeople are the future of mission work
by Tom Roberts on Jun. 28, 201023rd in the series
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URBANA, ILL. -- Twenty-six years ago, Susan Nagele, just out of medical school, took a leap into the relatively unexplored territory of lay mission work when she joined the young movement of Maryknoll lay missioners. A three-year commitment grew, year after year, until it became her life’s work, a vocation that drew her simultaneously to the front lines of war in Sudan and to the quieter pursuit of a deeper interior journey.
Longevity makes hers an unusual tale, but foreign mission work is one of those staples of U.S. Catholic life that is shifting because of increased involvement of laity and changing needs in the field. The initial impulse to involve laypeople as active missionaries at Maryknoll, a peculiarly American organization, was provided by the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and its emphasis on the roles and responsibilities of laypeople within the church.
Our writer reports in
by Tom Roberts on May. 04, 2010The "In Search of the Emerging Church" series has not been submerged, just sidelined for a while. I was diverted to help with coverage of the expanding sexual abuse scandal and by a move East.
Previews of coming stories
In coming weeks I’ll be reporting on Dr. Susan Nagele, a physician from Illinois who was honored in January for her 25 years (and still ongoing) service as a Maryknoll lay missioner in several countries in Africa. As the U.S. church tries to fill the ranks of a diminishing priesthood with priests from other countries -- too often from developing countries with far worse ratios of priests to people than we experience here -- Nagele and others like her show the face of the future. If the U.S. church is to have a meaningful mission presence in the future, it will occur because of dedicated lay people who perceive a vocation to serve.
The 'new monasticism'
by Tom Roberts on Dec. 28, 200922nd in the series
Here's my latest installment in this ongoing series. This story features a group of twenty-somethings, living in community and exploring the “new
monasticism,” a term that is difficult to precisely define but that roughly describes a search occurring in communities, ironically often of Protestant evangelicals, that have formed with a strong focus on social justice and reforming Christian practice.
On of the people in the feature, Chris Haw, describes the new monasticism as “somewhere between a monastery and a potluck dinner.”
Here's the full story: A place for renegades: Community confronts the 'dark side of the American dream'
Sacred Heart Parish in Camden, N.J.
by Tom Roberts on Dec. 14, 2009My story about Fr. Michael Doyle and Sacred Heart Parish in Camden, N.J., which appeared in the Dec. 11 issue of National Catholic Reporter can be found here: A Love For Transformation.
My extended interview with extraordinary priest can be found here: A conversation with Fr. Michael Doyle.
A conversation with Fr. Michael Doyle
by Tom Roberts on Dec. 08, 200921st in the series
In mid August, I spent a day with Fr. Michael Doyle at his parish, Sacred Heart Church in Camden, N.J. He’s been there for 35 years and has become a bit of a legend in the city and well beyond for innovative ministries and for programs that have begun to transform areas of South Camden. He and I had a long conversation, only portions of which could be used in the profile that appeared in the print edition of NCR and online. (See A love for transformation) as part of my "In Search of the Emerging Church" series.
I thought many readers would enjoy his more extended comments about such matters as the nature and purpose of a parish, his view on art and beauty, on peacemaking, liturgy and on honoring the poor. Below is an edited version of the conversation. As possible, I’ve tried to break up the interview into topic sections.
--Tom Roberts, NCR editor at large
Patrick Keenan: A dose of Advent hope
by Tom Roberts on Nov. 23, 200920th in the series
One of the privileges of getting out and around the Catholic community reporting on The Emerging Church series has been the opportunity to meet up with a new generation of Catholics who carry a deep witness to some of the most troubled corners of the country.
Patrick Keenan is one of them. He comes out of a Franciscan formation and a serious understanding and experience of the Catholic social justice tradition.
