Comments

Help me understand why you would quote Frank regarding the serious issues presented by the emerging church? Was it to ridicule? Emerging heretic Brian McLaren doesn't even believe in a literal hell yet he is welcomed to Willow Creek's Arts Conference to discuss church growth. Rob Bell and his wife Christian have said that they discovered that the Bible was not "Divine fiat" but rather a human product. I had Doug Pagitt on my radio show announce that we should look for the Gospel's presence in OTHER world religions. Is this not worth warning about? CT has not begun to cover the genuine and scholarly refutation of emergent authors and leaders that abounds now. By posting this quote, CT once again attempts to make those who disagree with the emerging error look like idiots. The classic line is, "I'm no fan of emergent, BUT......" You just post a link to Tony Jones on the CT blog. We get the message...

Once again American 'Christian' culture resorts to eating its own. To dismiss the 'emergent movement' the way Pastore does is not only reflective of his amazing ignorance of what 'emergent' stands for and is trying to accomplish, but exposes a profound lack of awareness of the challenges postmodern cultural and social contexts, not to mention contemporary philosophical thought, are exerting on Western society. Shame on him for exposing himself through such a blatant display of inadequate and uninformed analysis. Both Pastore and Ingrid Schlueter make me glad I'm a Canadian Christian.

I'm not even sure who these people are, but its a sign of their flimsy argument that they pull the tired old "Terrorist Card".

Emergent theologians have become the victim of a smear campaign by skeptical evangelicals. True, there are some who have veered to far from historic Christian faith, but most do their ministry out of a desire to be faithful to Christ. There are some in the emerging movement who are infatuated with post-modern epistomology, but many others simply read the witness of the scriptures and say, "this life of faithfulness little resembles Modernity." And with that they seek to engage the world in a community dedicated to the same understanding.

Slanderous fearmongering is old school (and I can confess, some emergents deffinately do as much to their conservative evangelical counterparts).

I agree with Matt K

This stuff is heartbreaking to me - but I suppose it is to be expected.

I guess evangelicals have their own version of Rush Limbaugh. Oh, well. Jesus and His followers were ridiculed in their time much worse than the emergent church will ever be. Stepping on the toes of the establishment in order to seek the truth has its price, but at least Pastore and Ingrid aren't coming for Brian McLaren with a cross and nails.

So what he is saying is that he is against radical nationalistic fundamentalism of religion found in Islam and he thinks the only solution is the radical nationalistic fundamentalism of religion of Americanized Christianity? And he thinks the emergent church is the enemy?

Attack the control structures of people and they begin to fight back. Pastore is making much the same arguments as the Pope did back in Luther's day.

It's not about Christ. It's about power and influence.

The missional attitude is happening because of those empty church buildings in Europe. And Pastore wants to respond to those empty churches using the same patterns that emptied them in the first place?

Ah well. Thank God he's not actually a Pope from earlier centuries and the most he can do is hurl angry rhetoric. The most we can do who disagree with him is ignore his frustration and keep pursuing the Spirit who is the great missionary and tends to often upset all sorts of power structures for the sake of the Kingdom.

Incredible...what a thoroughly disgusting article by Pastore...nothing that even remotely contributes anything intelligent to the ongoing emergent debate other than rank Limbaugh-esque bashing...and this is supposed to fall into the category of "genuine and scholarly refutation"?
This is heartbreaking, sickening, and should be as widely condemned by those opposed to the emergent movement as they are to those within the movement...

Pastore is a bit strident and is primarily aping wit by seeing how many Emerging stereotypes he can string together. BUT... There's a kernel of truth in those stereotypes and a grain of legitimacy in his fears. It's good to question The Man and it's laudable to pursue non-propositional means of sharing truth. But authority and orthodoxy have their place. Many Emergents are so infatuated with cutting loose and hanging loose that they lose the non-negotiables of Jesus and scripture in a relativistic haze. There are absolutes and there are inviolable truths. Let's not forget that.

Pardon my ignorance but this is the first time I've heard of Frank Pastore since I live in the wilds of Canada, but after reading his article I believe that he is stark raving mad and in no way, shape or form what Jesus would call a follower. The less reference one gives to his sort, the less his form of hate will spread. Jesus said, "Love your enemy and pray for them." Pardon me but I need to go wash.

They evangelical church for the most part is a reflection of the culture at large;homogeneous, fearfull,quick to demonize and becoming shallower by the year. But do not fear, we are quietly invading your sanitized, morilistic, institutions you like to call churches and will make you relevant again by the grace of God!lol!

To quote that great L.A. theoogian Rodney King, "Can't we all just get along?"

In defense of Pastore, whom I have interviewed once for CT, he is a passionate, likable, and, yes, thoughtful believer. His show is also one of most interesting and wide-ranging three hours on Christian radio in L.A. -- which is why he has the most listeners of any local Christian radio host in the country. His opinions may lean toward the outrageous at times, and, in this case, finding any connection between emergent and Al Qaeda is a real stretch. But bringing the emerging movement before a general Christian audience is certainly useful -- it's not as well known by the average evangelical church-goer as one might think -- and his instincts on some aspects of the emerging "conversation" may prove to have merit. Pastore is a former MLB pitcher, and he came out throwing heat on this issue. Not every fastball can catch the inside corner for a strike, but I, for one, can't help admiring that he tried to make the difficult pitch. It's why I like to hear what he has to say, even when I disagree.

Pride goes before a stumbling, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

It looks like the Emergent crowd is "starting to smell themselves," as my Big Mama used to say. While you guys pat your self on the back for being so cool, hip, withit, etc, why is it that you are so homogeonous, so middle-class, so...WHITE PRIVILEDGED????

You talk about being real but I don't see anybody in my hood flocking to the E banner...

Check yourself, before you wreck yourself.

Why is it an embarrassment?

Why not blog about the emergent's core belief that is contrary to basic Christian doctrines? Hell, truth, atonement, etc.

I guess you will be more friendly to the Pharisees as well since Jesus was pretty rough with them when He called them snakes, vipers, hypocrites, etc.

It is quite often to have people who don't do any evangelism that has the most to complain about other Christians who actually do some evangelism.

Andy, because those aren't the Emergent's core beliefs. That's the thing, there has been an artificial declaration of what Emerging folks believe then this has been used to deride the whole movement. That's why the book by Gibbs and Bolger is so great as it describes those who are actually involved, and I dare say the aspects they emphasize, starting with an absolute emphasis on Jesus, is quite basically Christian.

Delwyn, I am being real. Real to who I am, and who God has made me. And those in the emerging church are being real too. Real to who they are not real to some artificial idea of someone else's reality.

Don't know what hood you're in, but my impression is there's very little flocking to any churches going on in just about every hood and so it's not just an issue the emerging movement has to face. If everyone really was real, real to Christ's call on their lives, truly living as servants in their own setting and never looking for their own advantage or power, then I would guess this situation would change.

As far as being white, I am. As far as being privileged, you don't know my life and the lives of those other involved. Check yourself first is a great policy indeed.

Hi PaddyO-

What about the issues of the Bible's authority and there not being a literal hell? If in fact that is being taught - then why the need for heaven or Jesus for that matter?

Alan, I've never heard of a emerging/missional church deny the authority of the Bible. There are various views on it, however, and many wouldn't hold to what is commonly called inerrancy. Scripture is certainly used in these churches and I daresay with a seriousness about the message that I didn't often see in more traditional churches. The emerging churches seek to act on what they read, rather than hold up the Bible and conveniently forget to mention the parts they don't like. Very, very few churches take the Bible really as authorative. Most of the conservative ones deny the authority in essence if not in statement by picking and choosing the parts to emphasize. Emerging church folk are really taking the Gospels and other parts seriously as guides to action.

As far as the need for a literal Hell. Well, some do teach that I suppose. Not all. I believe in a literal Hell, however it doesn't take a stretch for me to say we don't need one. What if, for instance, Jesus will save everyone, not because all religions are the same but because God really, really wants to win the whole show. The theologian Jurgen Moltmann argue this. Or what if there's a situation like annihilationism, which some of those within the Evangelical fold such as John Stott (I think) believe.

There are certainly variations within Orthodox thought on both of these topics but what is at the core of the emerging churches is the absolute solid belief that Jesus is in fact Lord.

To be sure there are those within this movement who would fall outside of what I consider orthodox Christianity. But I'd say that is true about every single denomination in the world.

The American evangelical movement has always been modeled upon white privilege anyway...so why am I not surprised to see a tacitly racist conspiracy theory element in Pastore's quote. God's glorious, supernatural, born-again race of all things light, must prevail over those inferior infidels of darkness...

Christian, read "white," Europeans are hardly an oppressed minority, since they own most everything worth owning; and having coffee with a neighbor is probably a good start to building good will....unless the neighbor is Mormon? Then serve juice...unless the neighbor is a Mormon diabetic...iced water with a twist of lemon? In any case, I didn't know that it was ungodly to try and love your neighbor.

The European economy is doing tolerably adequate, and there doesn't seem to be a loss of intellectural vigor to me. I see all sorts of exciting research, building and infrastructure projects going on, like CERN, just for mere starters. Where is our supercollider competition? Abandoned in Texas.

I'll have to look into the emergent church movement. Looks like a fun research project, if this piece is anything to go by.

Judging from what I've read so far on the Wilkipedia, the emergent church movment sounds like the Jesus Movment of my college days...only maybe better groomed. But then, so am I.

I thought the Jesus movement was too unselfconsiously reactionary, emotionally manipulative and ripe for little cults of personality.

Or maybe, I think now that I thought that then. It was a good while ago. Anyway, I was unimpressed and distrustful. Not a good first association.

I don't trust personal narrative and testimony, even my own; especially religious narrative and tsstamony.

Consciousness is an awake dream, more or less, and we make a lot of it up after the fact. A reliance on narrative is often deliberately emotionally manipulative to be emotionally manipulative, and intellectually lazy.

Still, a good story can reveal what statistics hope to do, only more entertainingly. Just be properly skeptical...an undervalued virtue, I think.

Apparently, Peter Burger is an important influence on the emergent church movement.
I have read Peter Berger's "The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion." A fun read, way back when, I remember, but unconvincing in the whole.

Still, I've gotten a lot of milage from the word "reification." Thanks, Berger. I'll have to try and dust if off soon and read it again. Maybe I've gotten smarter in my middle age, though I doubt it.

Reductionism is fine by me, too, but apparently not held in high esteem by the emergent church. It's a useful tool for trying to find out what's reliable and probable. I recommend it.

The reporter's creed: "Follow the money." is evergreen advice as well. What is happening to resources in the emergent church. Who, what, when, where and why? Them thats got, gets...which song did that come from?

Google says: God bless the Child, by, of course, Billie Holiday and A. Herzog. Hear THAT voice...

Them thats got shall get
Them thats not shall lose
So the Bible says and it still is news...

Of course, this is all a cheap and superfical overview....subject to change at whim. Where should I go from here?

Maybe we should read the whole article before we start juding Frank Pastore, or maybe we should read the whole article and then not judge Frank Pastore. That's Jesus' job.

Here's the address for the whole article, for those of you who would like an informed opinion.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/FrankPastore/2007/07/22/why_al_qaeda_supports_the_emergent_church

Thanks very much for the link. I thought the excerpt was bad, and the full article is...well...I feel a need for a shower. The piece brings to mind that maybe Adorno's "The Authoritarian Personality" could use updating for the 21st Century.

The whole article reeks, not of that dreaded postmodernism, some of which I agree, but of post-Jim Crowism...Only the supernatural, born-again race, God's regents, His natural ariscocracy, can save America from those swarthy evil conspiracists...give me a break.

I probably would not be happy in a conservative Islamic country, just as I wasn't happy in the Bible Belt closer to home. It's not the religions, it's the conspiracy theories: the fancies of the poitics of inchoate resentments that are endlessly recycled to justify an unearned sense of superiority and entitlement...of being in God's favor and thus deserving, commanded, to prevail over all others..for their soul's sakes, for the soul of America, of course, not Pastore's rather naked greed.

I tend to agree with the above writers who think the vitriol against the emergent church movement has much to do with protecting turf, sort of like the Vatican in Luther's time. The intellectual laziness of biblical literalism (and social irresponsibility that arises from that) requires suppressing people from reading the Gospel with new eyes.

I think a lot of it also has to do with a guilty conscience. One clue as to why many conservative Christians feel threatened by the emergent church can be found in the reason they felt threatened by the social gospel of the 50's and 60's: it puts Christ's teachings right in the face of the status quo, and calls into question the God-and-America philosophy and tacit acceptance of materialism (and in some cases even injustice) that prevails in conservative churches. Make people feel uncomfortable about their Hummers or force them to ponder the consequences of the war they mindlessly cheered on? Of course they'll come out swinging.

Not one of us is perfect, and I'll be the first to admit I have materialistic tendencies myself, but I'd much rather belong to a church that jabs my conscience about it than one that says it's okay as long as I believe in a literal virgin birth. Jesus' rebukes to the Pharisees show us that if the Gospel truth doesn't make us uncomfortable about our doctrinal smugness, then it ain't the Gospel truth.

Its been suggested in the comments that the Emerging Church is somehow racist, and yet the subtext of white supremacy comes rather from Pastore.
Pastore's own words "u Africa, Asia, and South America seem to be already lost...

Only the United States, and more specifically, only the conservative, evangelical Christians of America are who stand between radical Islam and their quest for global domination."

Frankly Pastore knows nothing about Africa, that much is obvious for those of us who actually live in Africa.There are no doubt some in the widely heterogeneous Emerging Church movement, who believe things which some evangelicals consider heretical, but isn't a denomination in which "the" all believe the same. Those of actually in the developing world, since we aren't pandering to an Orange county drive time demographic consider the global issues of Just Trade far more important than whether LA based Emerging Churches are eating into Pastore's fan base.

As an exercise search and replace Al Quaeda with communist and emerging church with liberals/Jesus People/charismatics.... then you'll realise where you've heard this before

In response to Patrick, I agree that there are some Christians who fear the "emergent church" because it questions the status quo and prevents people from seeing the Gospels with "new eyes." However, not everyone rejects the same teachings for the same reasons. I embrace a literal interpretation of the Scriptures, which actually requires me to really dig to find answers to difficult questions. In other words, I don't find the Bible any easier to follow than I would if I accepted the emergent theologies. The path is still hard to walk either way. Many Christians, including myself, are cautious of the Emergent Church because they do not want to risk watering the Gospels down or risk getting the message entirely wrong. Don't get me wrong, I'm not accusing you of watering down the Bible or drastically missing the mark. But please be careful when you call biblical literalism lazy. In many cases, it takes more thought and struggle to justify a literal reading of the Bible than it does to simply agree with critical scholars or attribute what the Bible says to allegory.

Aside from all the discussion about the benefits and drawbacks of the Emergent or maybe more reformed/traditional Evangelical approaches to the Christian faith, I find the use of former celebrites as qualified commentators to be a disturbing trend in modern culture. Everyone is allowed to have their opinion but Frank Pastore clearly has not taken the time to think about the excessive negativity of this kind of rhetorical approach. That individuals gleefully publish this kind of crass journalism is a step back for culture and Christianity. I think Jesus refered to this as the speck and plank problem. I really like what Matt just wrote because he shows a willingness to be self critical (that is see the plank or log in his own eye) while at the same time as pointing out what he believes is a problem in another persons view (a small speck). That is, monitoring our own spiritual weaknesses is one of the most critical and important things we can do. I think Matt is somewhat Kierkegaardian by stating the challenge of faith whether our readings are more self-consciously "literal" or literary. Doing genuine acts of faith is much tougher than participating in some sort of low ball (i hope we can catch the pun here) scapegoating.

Tell me is the current view toward the emergent church of the Evangelicals any different than the Pharisee's view of Jesus and his movement? I do not follow Brian McLaren, but I see more truth in what he says than that of so many accepted evangelical writers.

All I know, is I believe in my Christ as God, the son of God, part of the Trinity, the virgin birth, His mercy, love, forgiveness and call to mission. I know that He was in the streets, with common people, less than common people, rejected people, showing love, mercy, forgiveness and hope to those that were abandoned. He called those that were uneducated to serve, not the scholars, the religious "experts". In fact, I recall that the religious establishment are the one HE rebuked. Call it what you will.

But, our churches have become status symbols and temples of excess rather than communities that reach out and humbly and vigilently serve their communities. Not to say that they do no service, but so many do limited service. I believe we are called as christians, all of us, evangelicals AND emergents to serve every waking hour. We are known by our fruits.

How many of us can truly say, we've done enough, that we have become close enough to Jesus-like that we don't need to do more? And even if we can say that, we are told we can do greater works than Him. Let us all seek God, repent of our bickering and judgment and get on with the work of the kingdom.