Vocation in the Valley

Emerging Church Movement

So I just came across this new movement called the “Emerging Church Movement.” It basically sounds like a bunch of people who are dissatisfied with the “arbitrary rules” that churches set down. I can understand this perspective when applied to overly legalistic churches, but everything is up for debate in this movement. The divinity of Jesus, the Bible as God’s word, whatever. They wouldn’t say they don’t believe these things, but that they are and should be debated. You see, “emerging” means taking apart what a Christian means by today’s standards and “emerging” with a new Christian and new version of Christianity.

Well, when I start seeing redefinition of terms and the relativism this movement is throwing around, I start smelling Liberals. When I did a little more digging, I found a podcast with one of the gurus of this movement, Brian McLaren. Here are some excerpts:

“To do Christian faith in the aftermath of the religious-right is very different. You say the name, Jesus, today, people immediately think of somebody holding up a God hates fags sign.”

Ah, “aftermath of the religious-right” and the only people whose first association with Jesus is a God hates fags signs are liberals. I’d agree that many people associate Christians with being judgmental and to them I’d respond to them in a kind fashion, “I’m not judging you, I’m telling you what’s in the Bible and those are the rules that God will use to judge you.”

What’s next:

Because of the activity of certain people, you can’t say the name of Jesus or Christian without evoking… some people think that means your a Republican. That it means you’re pro-war. It means your anti-poor.

Wow, the sad thing is that it was this guys liberal buddies in the mainstream media that equated Jesus and Republican and Christian and pro-war. As for equating Jesus or Christian with anti-poor I’ve never heard that asserted so I’m guessing he’s throwing something new out that he hopes will stick.

I can understand a Liberal who is a Christian not wanting to be stuck with these Republican/pro-war associations. The same as a Republican not wanting to be labeled as part of the religious-right. The problem is in order to do that this movement has decided to redefine Christianity to their likings instead of changing their mainstream media buddies who caused this problem in the first place.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 2nd, 2006 at 5:53 pm and is filed under Christian. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.