My Response to "Our Response to Critics of Emergent"

emergent-us: Our Response to Critics of Emergent This is showing up all over the place in blogdom. I wanted to comment before iget contaminated with others' comments. a couple things provoked immediate responses in me.
"If few in the academy come to our defense in the coming years, then we will have more reason to believe we are mistaken in our thinking and that our critics are correct in their unchallenged analyses." Why does the academy become the final judge of the EC? The academy will have as much cacaphony as the rest of us unlettered bloggers do. So if there is not a united "Nay" from the academy that means the EC was right?
"yes, we believe that Jesus is the crucified and risen Savior of the cosmos and no one comes to the Father except through Jesus"
Here come the strawmen...This is nice but the issue that divides is whether the confession of Christ as Savior is necessary. In order to make their stand they might as well lay it out that confession isn't necessary in some EC soteriology.
"we do not pit reason against experience but seek to use all our God-given faculties to love and serve God and our neighbor"
here comes the strawmen again...the issue is how are these related. does experience keep reason in check or vice versa or are they equal?
"we value dialogue very highly, and we are convinced that open and generous dialogue – rather than chilling criticism and censorship – offers the greatest hope for the future of the church in the world"
now critics are headed off at the pass. if i sound mean or ungenerous, are my ideas invalidated? go read the major prophets and see if you can bear God's forthrightness.
i had no intention of getting on a roll...
"We regret that some of our critics have made hasty generalizations and drawn erroneous conclusions based on limited and selective data"
In other words, if you only had a little more data you'd lay off of us. It's the N.T. Wright defense. If you stick your nose far enough into the manure you'll smell the flowers. I'm sorry that wasn't generous. But then saying "critic passes will not be issued to anyone who hasn't had their card punched enough," is no different than saying "critic passes will never be issued, because there is no one smart enough to disagree with us."
MY last word and the word after that...
"we have repeatedly affirmed, contrary to what some have said, that there is no single theologian or spokesperson for the emergent conversation."
This is nice but if the hydra never turns on itself, why bother with it's individual heads? Where are the posts on Andrew"s blog that disagree with Mclaren or Pagitt? Why not defend Jesus first then your emergent buddies? I'm open to links...