History will decide whether Tickle is a prophet or not.

Here’s her idea: Every 500 years the church undergoes major change. During that period of change, a new form of Christianity is born which becomes the dominant form of the age. The remaining forms of Christianity stick around but lose their priority. Every time this happens, the gospel is proclaimed to more people than ever before.

Around 500, Gregory the Great laid the foundation that saved the Church during the fall of the Roman Empire and into the dark ages. Around 1000, the Great Schism took place which separated the Eastern and Western church. Of course, around 1500, the Great Reformation took place which spawned Protestantism. Now, 500 years after the Great Reformation, Tickle places us on the cusp of The Great Emergence.

Her final chapters on how modern denominations are shifting towards a common center are very important. Tickle seems to know precisely how to interpret the multitude of changes that are taking place in our churches.

This is a book about hope. Even the forms of Christianity that do not get involved with the Great Emergence have an important role to play in the future of the Kingdom of God (albeit as ballast).

I think history will treat Phyllis Tickle very well. ( )

This is a great little book - very easy to read and pretty incisive. Tickle takes a quick overview of church history and observes that every 500 years or so Christianity goes through a major period of upheaval and redifinition, a "rummage sale" is the metaphor she uses. Looking in more detail at the Reformation she notes how this process is inextricably entwined with changes in culture, technology, philosophy. She then goes on to point out how in terms of time, and in terms of recent history, that the church is ripe for another such upheaval, the "Great Emergence"

So far so good. I like the way she puts it and agree with her analysis. Where the book leaves a little to be desired is her analysis of what the great Emergence will look like. Examining a number of current streams of Christianity she ponders the directions in which things are moving and the burning religious questions of our time, among which she correctly raises the nature of scriptural authority and Christian exclusivity. But she does not suggest answers to these questions or paint a very clear of what the 'ascendant' church of the Great Emergence will look like. I can't seriously fault her for this, as I don't think it's possible to accurately predict the outcome of a current period of turmoil. Could Luther have predicted where his 95 theses would lead?

Definitely worth a read by anyone with an interest in where the church has come from and where it might be going. No clear answers, but some great history and some very good questions. ( )

While describing herself as an "academic," the author makes broad generalizations without validating her historical "facts," and presents herself as an expert in an area in which she admits she has no expertise. Clearly not an historian, she assigns events to five hundred year time spans, implying contemporaneity where none exists. She sees "recurrent patterns" in these artificial groupings of events and uses them to make predictions about how Christianity is changing. The best that can be said about this book is that Tickle is a much better writer than she is a researcher, and it is short. ( )

Phyllis Tickle sets out in this book to show how Christianity is going through a radical reformation in the 21 century. This is a process already underway and is evident in much of the English-speaking world. Religion goes through major shifts in the world about every 500 years. This can be seen through what Christianity did to survive into the Dark Ages from around 500, the severing of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox forms in the 11 th century, the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century (think Martin Luther), and now the appearance of emergent Christianity. This is marked by a greater sense of community, and the amelioration of the central Protestant idea of "sola scriptua" which has been under bombardment since the abolition of slavery in the 19th century. As we are living in the midst of this change, it is not obvious that Christianity right is going through this big change, but Tickle makes a vreyintersting case for it, and the book is a worthwhile read. ( )

Helpful analysis of the current "emerging church" reformation occuring within American Christianity.200 ( )