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To: ktupper

There are plenty of emergent/emerging church republicans. I have met several myself. The emerging church is about going against evangelical culture—not any doctrine or political position. I say this from the experience of attending an admittedly conservative emerging church though. The evangelical church has been struck with scandal, overreached in Biblical interpretation, and became a kind of subculture of extra-Biblical values.

The emerging church is a backlash against evangelical christian culture to make people realize that Christianity is about Jesus, not church practices. They are reaching out to a generation that has been fed anti-church propaganda to the point that they will lash out against anything that feels too churchy. As a fledgling movement, there are some proponents who would prefer to substitute liberalism as the emerging church’s religion, but at the same time the emerging church does not want to be seen as opposing liberalism. The idea is more that Christianity is discovered individually through the Spirit through the Bible, and not declared from pulpits, so the emerging church will not force interpretations or strong theology on people, nor will it back away from difficult parts of the Bible in order to make Christianity look better. It is humble to a fault, and nonjudgmental to a fault.

All this said, I am not an emergent, but I see value in their pursuit. Some Christians I know have no real contact with the anti-Christian secular world, especially on the coasts of the U.S.. They don’t realize just how humble and non-judgmental you have to be to reach out to a person who has been seeped in anti-Christian propaganda. The purpose isn’t to force doctrine into someone, but to break down barriers of stereotypes so that nonchristians will take a deeper look into the core of Christianity. It depends far more on the community of believers than a strong doctrine, a worship band, or charismatic speaker.


73 posted on 04/24/2007 3:55:12 PM PDT by dan1123 (You are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. --Jesus)
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To: dan1123
Without strong doctrine how do they know their community is a "community of believers" or not? Believers in what exactly?

As for humility, emergents are the most arrogant people I have ever come across. They are like someone who wrote a book entitled "Humility and how I attained it, with six 8X10 glossy pictures of "me" in "my" most humble moments." Humble people don't announce their humility. And humble is not a synonym for dumb. The other thing emergents do is talk endlessly about their fasting and other rituals. Excuse me but wasn't that a major sin of the Pharisees (hardly a humble group) who would flaunt their fasting before men? And the emergents give lip-service to your idea of a "Christianity [that] is discovered individually through the Spirit through the Bible..." but what they really mean is a Christianity discovered from the depths of their own mysitc imaginations, while the Bible collects dust on the shelf. If they use their Bible at all it is for visualization stories or for mantra ideas to help them reach the mystic "cloud of unknowing."

77 posted on 04/24/2007 6:50:29 PM PDT by The Ghost of FReepers Past (Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light..... Isaiah 5:20)
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