Phyllis Tickle, the longtime religion editor for Publishers Weekly wrote in her 1995 book Re-discovering the Sacred about the future direction of Christianity in America. She is uniquely qualified to make these predictions, since her work at Publishers Weekly has basically required her to keep a pulse on religion in America over the past several decades and identify upcoming trends so that book publishers know what kind of books to publish. I was struck by one prediction in particular:

"History would suggest that somewhere in the five present divisions of late twentieth century America's several Christianities [Tickle identifies these five divisions as Roman Catholic, Evangelical Protestant, Mainline Protestant/Liturgical, Pentecostal, and Other (e.g. Mormons, JW's, Christian Scientists, etc.)] and in the interacting tension, differences, and alliances among them there is indeed some much smaller, much humbler center around which the most theologically graceful elements of each are already coalescing. Whatever that attracting center is, once completed it will in time, I believe, become the Christianity of post-Christian America."

At one of her sessions at the Emergent Convention this past May Tickle basically identified this new center that unifies the different streams of American Christianity as the Emerging Church. And indeed if you consider a book like Brian McLaren's A Generous Orthodoxy which stands as probably the definitive work for the emerging church thus far, even the title itself points to the very centering and coalescing of traditions that Tickle predicts. In fact, speaking from her long experience as a trend watcher and religous book reviewer, Tickle even went so far as to say that A Generous Orthodoxy will likely be the most significant religious book published in the next few decades.

All I can say is I hope she is right. I hope in my lifetime I see a movement of Christianity emerge and bear fruit that brings together believers from all different streams of our faith in a way that will celebrate our commonalities and unite us in mission for God's kingdom. And I firmly believe, along with Tickle, that right now the emerging church is the best hope for that.