Sect, Denomination or Church?

I was fascinated by kesters post a few days ago questioning whether the emerging church will ever become a denomination. It got me thinking about typologies of religion and particularly 'The Wallis Typology'.

Wallis helpfully uses an emic-etic model; emic being the perspective of the insider and etic that of the outside. He asks how members of an organisation how they understand it’s legitimacy, do they understand it as uniquely legitimate (ie the sole repository of truth) of pluralistically legitimate ( ie one of several legitimate paths to salvation). He comes up with this typology:

It helpfully places the church and denomination as respectable, and the cult and sect as deviant. However, I wonder what the relationship is between sect and denomination and whether the emerging church (whilst remaining within the Christian tradition) is a sect of denominationalism.

A sect usually forms when a person leaves an established religion and sets up another one which is perceived to be deviant. Christianity was first seen of as a sect of Judaism and I’m sure that through Christian history various respectable denominations have been seen as sects when they first started.

Charisma within the sect usually rest within an individual leader, a pioneer who has established it and who leads it. This is often unfortunately the case with the emerging church, a person will pioneer the church and the charisma lies with them and hence when the leader moves on there can be problems.

Within a denomination the charisma is relocated in an office, such as a priest or bishop. When new leaders come along they inherit the office and the charisma that goes with it. Weber refers to this as the routinization of charisma. Denominations and sects can be distinguished by the nature of their Charisma. In a sect it has often resided in a leader, with a denomination it is found in an office.

I think that the emerging church needs to move beyond these two models and relocated the charisma in the congregation. Yes, there do need to be certain offices, and some of these offices require training, external validation etc. but the congregation must own and inhabit the charisma rather that it being located within a person or an office.

Comments

[Mike Noakes]

Excellent post. I thinkt that if the movement were to inspire others within the congregation to take leadership positions within their communities, churches, workplaces, etc... There would be an increasingly more significant force in chritianity that would show everyone the love of Christ, even when they mess up...