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New Babel & the Neo-Nimrodians: “The Emergent Church”

A new “movement” is emerging called the Emergent Church.  At first it seems to be an appealing step forward, to emerge from traditionalism, to emerge from possible previous error.

But the questions that must be asked are, from what are they emerging & to where are they going?

Perhaps a reader may think this is simply an attack on the Emergent Church, perhaps a reader might assume we are out to be the grand censor of everything that deviates from our own ideas.  These are completely false assumptions.

We will demonstrate by letting the reader see how the Emergent Church defines itself.

 

Emerging Church - The church as it takes shape in a post-modern, post-Christendom, post-colonial and post-evangelical environment. (source)


 

If at the heart of Christianity, of being Christian is the “evangel” – the gospel message, what does that make a movement that is post-evangelical? Indeed, some within the Emergent Church (EC) still identify with some traditional Christian elements, but so many are moving beyond any semblance to Christianity & quickly approaching an “emergent religion” or an “emergent philosophy”.

Within the EC circles (& those influenced by them), you will hear many philosophical & sociological terms bandied about; Modernism, Post-Modernism, Open Source Theology, & many other terms. 

Simplified definitions,

  • Modern/Modernism/Modernist = Traditional
  • Post-Modern/Post-Modernism/Post-Modernist = Beyond traditional
  • Open Source Theology = Consensus belief system

Obviously these definitions really require definitions of the definitions, but that is the very nature of the Emergent movement.  It is a movement in constant flux, always redefining even to the point of evasion & ambiguity. A conversation with a proponent of EC can be extremely frustrating because of this evasive & vague approach. But traditionalism appears to mean anything with a previous long standing acceptance, thus anything that has not been re-examined recently.

When we look more closely at the concept of POST, or "beyond" perhaps we can better understand it by this analogy.

Suppose you had a society that was a primarily bicycle-riding society, but suppose at some point the society moved beyond its reliance upon bicycles & adopted automobiles as its primary means of transport. In this way, we could accurately define the society as a POST-Bicycle society.

Now, we reapply what the EC is proposing as being a post-evangelical movement, it is then accurate to say it is no longer Christian in nature but is becoming a new kind of religion – an ecumenical hodge-podge of philosophy, sociology, & psychology, mixed with theology.  We don’t mean that as a slander but simply as fact.

If that is what the EC wants to become so be it, but we must take issue with some of its misleading labels.  For instance, the word “church” is mainly associated with some form of Christian basis. I understand that westerners will often use the term outside that scope when referring to non-Christian based groups, such as a Muslim church.  I also understand that the word church can have a general meaning of simply “congregation” or community. But is it either accurate or fair to Christians who may think EC is simply an outgrowth of Christianity when in actuality it intends to move well beyond that frame?

The people that are adopting this beyondness are often beyond communicating with, as any attempt will be received either as an attack on them or as coming from a “small person” that doesn’t understand their beyondness.

In the mix of all this, are those Christians on the sidelines seeing all of this play out.  To them, this simply looks like mean-spiritedness or picking on the beyonders.  But I believe that it is more analogous with the parable of the Good Samaritan.  But this time, the wounded person (the beyonder) doesn’t even realize they are wounded, perhaps it is as if they were being stung by locusts & the Good Samaritan is swatting at the insects.  To the far off observer (in this case some Christians), it may appear as if the Good Samaritan is beating on the poor wounded beyonders.  The observer chastises the Good Samaritan to be “more loving”, “more gracious”, “more gentle”, all the while the observer does nothing to help the wounded beyonder – perhaps even lying down beside them in a show of unity.

In reality, the EC & the beyonders are attempting to construct a new theological tower, behaving more like neo-Nimrodians than Christians.  I suspect in 10-20 years these groups will no longer be identified with Christianity both as self-defined & as defined by the Christian community.

SEE GEN 11:1-4

By Roderick on 2006 Feb 3 - 16:54 | Ecclesiology | add new comment | email this page | printer friendly version | 5183 reads

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