This is going to sound silly and naive, but I know no other way to say it. Christians should let other people label them. They should use the moniker "Christian" and let everyone try to figure out what they believe based on what they do. They should speak to the press as rarely as possible, and they should almost never send a press release. Ah, hell, never send a press release. Ever. Unless it's to your tribe, and then it's called a newsletter or announcement.
In Comp II, we'd call that a thesis, and I'm prepared to defend it because no other method seems to make any sense at this point. I'm finally old enough (47) to have seen a dozen or more allegedly major movements come and go. Rarely did one stay for more than a decade, and most fizzled well before the decade mark, if by movement you mean a trans-traditional collection of doctrines and practices that is either reactionary or revolutionary. I take reactionary to mean against some set of doctrines and practices, as in Lutheranism contra Catholicism. I take revolutionary to mean innovative without being necessarily reactionary, as in the impulse is more new than angry.
Last post, in addition to pillorying Tony Jones, I stated why I think some of the new candidates for Christian labels are insufficient, if not outright silly, redundant, vague, or painfully obscure. It's a clear case of trying too hard to come up with a cool label that sounds theological. Here I confess my own historical guilt. In two successive emergent communities, I chose the names AWE (alternative worship experience) and Kaleo (as in God calls). My hands are clearly not clean. Just sayin'. I mentioned the post to the hhdw, and she said, "This is just stupid. They should just go with 'Christian' and leave it at that." I initially attempted to explain why I thought that was short-sighted, especially in light of the journalism angle. After thinking about it for a day or so, and after asking myself what I would do as a journalist if someone said in response to a tribal question "I'm just a Christian," I've decided that she's right. Sometimes the simplest response is the best response. We theo-philosophy nerds can get our knickers bunched so tight that the circulation to our balls (brains) gets cut off.
For every new label a tribe chooses, they will be required to answer follow-up questions. Remember the consternation among the masses when people started calling themselves "emergent?" Remember the shitty journalism that followed? The kinds of stories that confused an aesthetic for a theological position? The kind that confused theological questions for heterodoxy? The intractable emergents who refused to offer denotative definitions for the term? Ah, good times. Those times will come again, and this time, for the love of all that's holy, just say Christian. At least that way a small collection of gatekeepers can't insist they know Christian (emergent) books from non-Christian (non-Emergent) books. Most of the shitty journalism could have been avoided had emergents followed a simple plan. They just talked too much and never really said anything. Everyone who writes for a living knows that you eventually have to say something, anything that makes sense, or you're just full of shit. Emergents never did make much sense, but they couldn't shut the hell up.
The follow-up question is usually a variation of "what tradition are you?" This is the point where journalists like myself attempt to understand all the subtexts. This is the point we hope to trap you into a confession, or worse, a juicy heresy. Just fuck us over. Say Christian, and then we'll have to do our jobs. We'll have to think of better questions or follow you around. For every question about what you believe (Bible, inspiration, Trinity, tongues, Eucharist, politics, etc.) just answer with a simple statement of what your faith leads you to do: feed the hungry, go to law school to fight injustice, move to Africa to build fresh water wells, work in battered women's shelters, write amazing novels, make music. Just don't say "I believe" unless it's followed by "God wants me to X" where X is an activity every human being can agree is non-douchey.
Journalists, even religion journalists, aren't sufficiently schooled in religion to make up a label at that point. I'm schooled in religion, and I won't use a label unless I know what you believe or confess. If you say you're just trying to live redemptively, what label could I use? Redemptive Christian? That doesn't suck. If they're not schooled, and all goes well, worst case scenario is they call you activists or social justice Christians (depending on X, of course). Best case scenario is they write, "Christian A seems to defy categorization, but his life is dedicated to X." Wouldn't that be fuckin' refreshing...
