Intellectual Defenestration

The Same Mistakes

For various reasons, extra-curricular reading has been even more limited than usual. However, I did finally manage to finish D. A. Carson's Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church. Carson's book is a fair and even critique of the movement and (I think) provides some needed warnings to it. Some of the things, for example, I had wondered about after reading McLaren and others, but couldn't define well, Carson does.

Several of the Amazon reviewers seem to be pretty upset with Carson's work and charge him with gross misrepresentation of the movement/conversation/whatever. That may be true. Still, when a movement almost seems to pride itself on being vague and imprecise, it shouldn't be surprised when it is misrepresented. And that, incidentally, was one of Carson's points: too much rhetoric and vagueness and after a while no one knows what you're talking about.

Anyway, one critique Carson made that I found intriguing was that elements of emerging church theology are actually repeating the same mistake as elements of fundamentalism. Carson notes the irony that, "Of all the Christian writers who explore postmodernism, none is quite so modernist - so absolutist - as the emerging church movement leaders in their defense of postmodern approaches." He then goes on to observe

One of the striking commonalities among [the emerging church] leaders is the high number of those who come from intensely conservative or even fundamentalist backgrounds. When they describe the kinds of churches from which they spring, a very high percentage of them have emerged from a tradition that is substantially separated from the culture. These churches often lay considerable emphasis on getting certain doctrine, often cast in fundamentalist mode, nicely constructed and confessed. ... [This] shows that a fair amount of its heat and overgeneralizing seems to spring from the mistaken assumption that most of traditional evangelicalism is just like the conservative churches from which they came. That betrays the narrowness of many of their backgrounds and helps to explain why their rhetoric and appeals to postmodern sensitivity sound so absolutist: this is the language and rhetoric on which they were weaned.

There are, actually, a number of things I do like about the emerging church. Still, I think Carson is right on this. When I've read some of the leaders rail against excesses and weaknesses within evangelicalism, sometimes I've wondered who they were actually talking about.

Current listening: I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness, Fear Is On Our Side

May 28, 2006 08:59 AM
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