Emergent and the Conversation

The Emergent conversation is at a critical point, in my opinion.  You can gather some of my personal thoughts about the conversation in previous posts.  I would categorize my own position as emergent-minded and thoughtfully sympathetic.  That said, I don't want this post to be about me. 

I want to turn a little bit of the focus to the extra-emergent conversation, the conversation about the conversation between evangelicals and emergent types. 

I think right now is the time when a lot of evangelicals are getting scared.  I don't mean that as a put down.  They see a movement coming and react in a way consistent with an evangelical mindset.  Some have characterized the emergent movement as problematic.  Others as heretical.  Most claim it is a sellout to postmodernism. 

I think most who consider themselves in the emergent conversation will say they are trying to get back to the historic Christian faith.  Postmodernism has provided a wonderful opportunity to reclaim and redeem in Christ that which the Church has allowed modernism to steal away.

I also know there are more extreme positions among evangelicals and emergent types.  I don't want to discount that.  But I think that emergent is more of a conversation than a movement and evangelicals are more of a movement than a conversation.  And that matters when we try to critique and judge and pigeonhole people and issues and movements.

So to try encourage more conversation between evangelicals and emergent types (of which I consider myself both), I want to offer some links to the extra-emergent conversation.  Some of you will have already read or listened to these resources.  Others of you will be getting some new things to think about.  Even others will be introduced to the conversation for the first time. 

I hope that some of you who have access to resources not mentioned here will comment and add to the list. 

R. Albert Mohler weblog
-Truth-Telling is Stranger Than it Used to Be Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
-"A Generous Orthodoxy" - Is It Orthodox?

Doug Wilson weblog
-Theology to Make the Teeth Ache
-Postmodernism category blog posts

Brian McLaren website - many interactions with the conversation throughout including...
-A Brotherly Critique and Response
-Dialogue section   
-Annotation of "The Emergent Mystique" article by Christianity Today (found below)
-Open Letter to Chuck Colson on Colson's Christianity Today article "The Postmodern Crackup"
-Various other articles

White Horse Inn
-Emergent Church Movement, Part 1 - free streaming currently available   
-Interview with three young members of an Emergent Church congregation
-Interview with Shane Rosenthal, producer of WHI, on emergent experiences

Christianity Today - emergent conversation resources
-The Emergent Mystique - Christianity Today article

Books
-Becoming Conversant With Emergent by D.A. Carson - due out in April 2005
-The Church in Emerging Culture - Five Perspectives: Leonard Sweet, Andy Crouch, Brian McLaren, Erwin McManus, Michael Horton

You can also Google search various issues, names, or words like "emergent" or "emerging church" and you will find other articles, links, interviews, and a billion blogs and posts that add to the conversation.  Helpful emergent blogs found at Planet Emergent.

I hope these links are helpful.  I don't put them here because I agree with everything said, but because I value the conversation.  Please feel free to add something you find helpful.

Comments

[Tim]

I have to say that I am intrigued by the emergent church stuff. I have some sympathy for it but I'm still skeptical. Perhaps because of the extremes I've seen.

I'll have to peruse your list here and see if I can form a better understanding.

For my Political Theologies class I have to write a term paper. One of the possible topics I'm considering is the question of whether the Emergent Church is Liberation Theology for the West.

[Steve McCoy]

Tim, I understand (and have shared) your skepticism. But my growing skepticism of the pat answers and other frustrations of evangelicalism has led me to think differently about things. My theology hasn't changed as much as my approach to theology and sinners and saints and church. I found many in emergent thinking the same things, and so have found a conversation that I think is helpful to the whole community of God's people.

By the way, I think emergent as a movement (if we can speak that way) is not liberation theology. But the conversation is so vast that you may find a pocket who fit somewhere near that category and you will be tempted to broadbrush the whole by the part. I'm sure you will resist that urge.

If you write it, let me read it sometime. Sounds interesting.

Craig Blomberg reviews the book "A Generous Orthodoxy" here http://www.denverseminary.edu/dj/articles2004/0300/0302.php

[Steve McCoy]

Good call, I forgot that. Thanks

[Steve McCoy]

Doug Wilson has added another post.

[Tim]

Actually, the way you describe your attraction sounds a lot like how I feel about it. There is something wrong, something missing in American Evangelicalism today. We consider Religion like we do the rest of life: as consumers. Just listen to some of the ministries on WMBI and hear how the hawk their gifts. It's like an infomercial.

There must be a more authentic approach to Christ. It must matter that he is God, that he died, that he rose, that he ascended, that he will return. Christianity must go farther than making my family a nice place to live. The Bible must be more than nice tips for living. God has got to be interested in more than making me comfortable and optimizing my efficiency. I don't know if the emergent conversation is heading that direction or is just more of the same in metro-sexual clothing. If seminary ever ends I'll have to look more deeply.

When I consider emergent church and Liberation Theology, please understand that I don't think of either as necessarily pejorative terms. LT seeks to do good for the poor and marginalized. Emergent church seeks to do the same for the post-modern who are marginalize in our thoroughly modern churches. I just wonder how much similarity there is. Of course, LT has its "issues" since it is born out of Marxism, which emergent never gets anywhere near. So there are clearly differences.

Wow, this turned out to be a long post! :)

If I write that paper, I will send it your way.

[Steve McCoy]

Thanks Tim. Yeah, I think you are seeing things in much the same way I am.

Emergent is a conversation, not quite a movement and definitely not a set of doctrines. I have heard of some who said "I tried being emergent, but after a while I had to take down the candles and start wearing a suit again because it just wasn't right." That's not emergent. That's the seeker movement in different garb.

[JACK]

Steve:

I happened across your site through the Touchstone Mere Comments blog. I noticed that one of the resources you listed was Andy Crouch, who I knew through his old magazine R:Q and The Vine conferences. So I started to check out the resources and I realized just how much I didn't get about it and that, despite having dealings with evangelical culture over the years, I lack a certain understanding of the culture and vocabulary to understand what is meant by emergent. Any thoughts on whether any (or a different) resource is a particularly good starting point for a non-evangelical to understand what this is about?

[Anthony]

I see some deep similarities between Liberation theologies and Emergent-type theologies. I do not see that necessarily as a bad thing. There is a over-blown simplification that liberation theologies were born out of "Marxism". Not true. Liberation theologies are contextual theologies that are born out of the experiences of historically marginalized people trying to find God in the world. They just find God amongst the poor...not at high rise buildings and self-help seminars. One major similarity I see between Emergent and Liberation theologies is the conviction that the Church of Jesus Christ is an eschatological missional community that bears witness to the age to come in the present age. There is a realized eschatological component that I see in Emergent that I think is healthy. Where the stanza in the Lord's Prayer isn't trivialized, but taken with the seriousness of a Martin Luther King Jr., "Thy Kingdom come on Earth as it is in Heaven."

Ant

[Mark DeVine]

I have posted the first of what I expect will be a number of entries on my blog in which I try to interpret the emerging/emergent conversation through the lens of original Schleiermacherian Liberalism and Karl Barth's critique of the father of Protestant Liberalism and indeed of Modern Theology. I believe the monumental achievement (sell out?) of Schleiermacher and Barth's assault upon Schleiermacher illuminates much of what is transpiring before us.