Co-hosted by the Arizona Foundation for Contemporary Theology and the Emerging Desert Cohort, the event sought to bring together a wider range of voices in the current theological conversation that continues to ferment within the wider church. Speakers included more established voices in progressive and emergent circles and newer contributors to the conversation.
Big Tent Christianity pushed the boundaries of conference chaos with a format that consisted of a short presentation by “established voices” followed by feedback from three “new voices” and concluding with a panel discussion and audience participation. Though the format seemed to resonate with some attendees, others were notably discomforted by it. The same could be said of the guitar-lead worship leadership of conference co-creator Tripp Fuller of HomebrewedChristianity.com.
But Big Tent Christianity is not always about being comfortable, Philip Clayton reminded those gathered. Clayton, a faculty member at Claremont Graduate University and Claremont School of Theology and one of the conference’s key planners, acknowledged that conference participants ranged widely in age and likely in worship style. Big Tent Christianity, suggested Clayton, also means being willing to tolerate discomfort in order to learn from one another.
Through topics ranging from Brian McLaren’s “Reframing Jesus” to Marcus Borg’s discussion of “What is the Gospel,” speakers and participants alike sought to find common territory while at the same time questioning assumptions and pushing the boundaries toward a wider, more expansive perspective on the Christian faith.
“When your eternal destiny depends on having all the right ideas, there is a lot of pressure in the realm of beliefs,” admitted Brian McLaren. Rachel Held Evans, one of the younger participants and one of the few female voices, shared that she had received a Christian education that promised to provide answers to every question, “but the problem was that we were equipped to answer questions, not to ask them.” Marcus Borg shared that people will often admit to him that they do not believe in God. “My response to them,” said Borg, “is consistently, ‘Tell me about the God you don’t believe in,’ and they are often surprised to find out that I don’t believe in that God either.”
Mark Scandrette, founding director of ReIMAGINE, a collective that invites people into integrative spiritual experiments and practices, shared stories of his experiments with creating a ‘Jesus Dojo’ in San Francisco. A Dojo, as Scandrette described it, is “a space in which the ideas and the wisdom are embodied in the practice that people do together.”
Shane Hipps, teaching pastor at Mars Hill Bible Church, noted that across every tradition and almost every time, spiritual practices are meant to foster a relationship with time and space that encourages being the present moment. As many conference participants hastily Tweeted each speaker’s insightful comments (a list of the Tweets can be found on Twitter using the hashtag #bigtentx), Hipps made perhaps the most controversial statement of the event: “Almost every single technology we use now is opposed to that.” … “What does it mean to a culture that is trying to develop people spiritually when all of the tools we are using are facilitating the opposite of what we are trying to do?”
Big Tent Christianity Phoenix concluded with the same creative chaos that characterized it throughout, but in its wake left questions, conversations and practices percolating.
