The Emerging Church Movement (ECM) is making a big splash in American Christianity, and so the release of The Deconstructed Church: Understanding Emerging Christianity by Gerardo Marti and Gladys Ganiel (Oxford Press, 2014) is noteworthy.
This book tackles the difficult task of defining the ECM. Most definitions of religious groups focus on organizational membership, such as denominations, or religious identity, such as being charismatic. The ECM doesn’t fit well with either of these. Marti and Ganiel describe it as a social movement guided by various themes, including being anti-institutional, ecumenical, using young leaders, being experimental and creative, and avoiding being traditionally church-y. They label it as a religious orientation aimed toward the practice of deconstruction (p. 6). In one sentence they write: “The ECM is a creative, entrepreneurial religious movement that strives to achieve social legitimacy and spiritual vitality by actively disassociating from its roots in conservative, evangelical Christianity. (p. ix)”
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