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http://www.understandthetimes.org/eca.shtml

Read through these 2 things. They are just a small sample of many more things I have read. My church hasn't gone that far out and called themself an emergent church, but they are getting close everyday.

The way I see it is the Emergent church wants to go back before the reformation happend, or basically say the reformation is over and now we are all one together, Catholics, and Christians. I am not a Catholic and I know many here are so I'm not trying to offend them or their beliefs. Anyhow, the reformation took place for a good reason and we can't just say it is over and accept all roads to heaven is acceptable.

I believe in justification alone and that is the key reason the Reformation happend. I'm not a real scholarly person but what I'm seeing is that the Emergent movemant is accepting of others ways to get to Heaven.

Anyhow, there is a lot of other reasons I have issues with the Emergent CHurch, but it would take all day to type them out, lol! Do some research on your own. I'm stay far away from this movemant. It is just another seeker friendly church and takes away from the truth and tries to spice it up. We don't need spice, we just need the truth.

Ok. In the interest of full disclosure, I am a staunch Roman Catholic so I will obviously be in strenuous disagreement about the Reformation being a good thing. But I absolutely don't want to go down that road in this thread, so I'm basically going to totally skim over the first link you posted, because its argument is essentially the "Emerging Church is bad because it is a road to Rome." Since that point rests upon the very thorny issue about whether the Bishop of Rome teaches infallibly on doctrine and morals (as I believe) or whether he is an apostate at best or antichrist at worst (I presume you are somewhere in that range), we can't really discuss that point except in a much wider context.

I would, however, like to say a point or two about the concept of the Emerging Church in general.

I can certainly see why--in view of the classical Protestant opinion about icons--the use of holy icons would cause alarm within Evangelical circles. But other things like candles, which have no great theological impact either way, are throwing me for a loop. Candles would have been in every church before the advent of the electric light. And I do not know of a single Scriptural prohibition against using them. I think the objection to things like candles (and the sign of the cross while we are at it) is not so much because there's a theological basis for them but because they look...well...just too Roman. But that's not a good reason; anymore than it would be a good reason for us not to study Scripture because it is too "Protestant". So I am happy to see that some denominations are rethinking some of these prohibitions for which there is no theological justification.

And liturgy also. There have, since Luther and Calvin and Henry VIII themselves, always been liturgical churches within classical Protestantism (Lutheran, Presbyterian, Anglican especially). And there have also been very aliturgical ones (Quakerism). It would seem to this outsider anyway that whether a congregation decides to have a set liturgical form should be no skin off anyone's nose.

As a final point, I'd just like to point out that, from everything I know of evangelical Christianity, the *essential* aspect to being a Christian is accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Once you do that, you are saved, and what goes in the denomination does not affect that.

Given that belief, I find it a little strange why some would be so strenuously objecting to "saved" Christians adopting practices like icons, candles, and liturgy. You can argue, "it's heresy!" Well, if it is, then it is heresy that is (ostensibly) not affecting the eternal destiny of the folks that are practicing it. If a person accepts Jesus as Lord and Savior, and then lights candles, prays in front of icons, etc....do they suddenly become unsaved? Was their salvation phony to being with?

I really fail to see why we should be critical of such practices. And I'm not even speaking as a Catholic here. If I were Anglican or Lutheran I'd say the same thing.