a good article at Challies: The Death Knell for the Emergent Church Movement (I)

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Community Blog: The Death Knell for the Emergent Church Movement (I) It's not that we are saying different things, its just who can say it better now.

Comments

Geoff Gordon said…
There is a tone this guy has (and honestly you have a similar one in some of your critiques) that leaves me sad. I understand that he's trying to persuade with sarcasm, but instead he just comes across sounding like a jerk. More than that has just as many cultural lenses and straw man arguments as the next guy. I resonate much more with the EC than I do with the echoes of fundamentalism that come across in his post. And I found his borderline misogynistic comments about Rob Bell's wife offensive. Just trying to shoot straight.
August 03, 2005
John Umland said…
i think the cultural lenses and strawmen are worth exposing. perhpas you don't want to do it at challies, but if it's worth your effort could you list his invalid arguments? the thing i really liked was his recognition of Barth's theology in the EC. i've seen it too, but haven't felt qualified to point it out. also, there is a comment from an "emerging" non-US person at this article who points out that emergent US and "emerging" elsewhere are not the same. this boiled over at the forge, an australian emerging church site, where they posted a mclaren and emergent-US disclaimer. it happened over my vacation i think, because they ended up taking it back down. you can read the saga at andrew jones' tall skinny kiwi blog - who is emerging, who postedthe disclaimer, then removed it when they requested him too. and it was tony jones, from ECUS, who really lobbied hard for the forge to not put out a position paper. its all there in the kiwi comments discussion.
August 03, 2005
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