Greenbelt Festival is finished for another year and since then I've been reading a bit about how identity is constructed in a network society - Castells stuff. Castells identifies three ways in which identity is found, two of the three different forms of identity are 'resistance identity' and 'legitimizing identity. These two identities do what they say they do, one resists the dominant culture and the other serves to legitimate it. As I've been reading this I've been thinking about Fresh Expressions and the Emerging Church...
A lot of the conversations that have been taking place around the Emerging Church movement seem to suggest that identity is found in resistance. Kester talks of Pirates, a force in resistance, Pete talks about Heretics, again a force in resistance and this resistance seems to be against the church. Whilst I think that we need some pirates and heretics I think that missionally our place of resistance should not be against the church - its too self-referential. If we are to find our identity in resistance then this should be in resistance to the dominant ideologies that serve to strangle humanity and the planet.
On the other hand legitimizing identities serve to legitimate the status quo. This is perhaps what Fresh Expression do - serve to legitimate the church. They say that the church is trying, it is reaching out, it is making an effort and hence it's okay for things to carry on exactly as they are. As Castells' puts it they 'rationalize the sources of structural domination' - now I think that's stretching it a bit. Something that I observed during my time with Sanctus1 was that some people wanted our identity to be found in resistance and others were far happier to legitimize. I wonder if the MSC church report served to legitimize that which was in resistance and by doing so became self-legitimating.
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