Guilty as charged

"You might be an emergent Christian... 

• if you listen to U2, Moby and Johnny Cash’s Hurt (sometimes in church), use sermon illustrations from The Sopranos, drink lattes in the afternoon and Guinness in the evenings, and always use a Mac; 
• if your reading list consists primarily of Stanley Hauerwas, Henri Nouwen, N T Wright, Stan Grenz, Dallas Willard … and Lesslie Newbigin … and your sparring partners include D A Carson, John Calvin, Martyn Lloyd-Jones and Wayne Grudem; 
• if your idea of quintessential Christian discipleship is Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela or Desmond Tutu; 
• if you don’t like George W Bush or institutions or big business or capitalism or Left Behind Christianity; 
• if your political concerns are poverty, AIDS, imperialism, war-mongering, CEO salaries, consumerism, global warming, racism and oppression and not so much abortion and gay marriage; 
• if you are into bohemian, goth, rave or indie; 
• if you talk about the myth of redemptive violence and the myth of certainly; 
• if you lie awake at night having nightmares about all the ways modernism has ruined your life; 
• if you love the Bible as a beautiful, inspiring collection of works that lead us into the mystery of God but is not inerrant; 
• if you search for truth but aren’t sure it can be found; 
• if you’ve ever been to a church with prayer labyrinths, candles or beanbags (your youth group doesn’t count); 
• if you loathe words like linear, propositional, rational, machine and hierarchy and use words like ancient-future, jazz, mosaic, matrix, missional, vintage and dance; 
• if you grew up in a very conservative Christian home that in retrospect seems legalistic, naïve and rigid;
• if you support women in all levels of ministry, prioritize urban over suburban, and like your theology narrative instead of systematic; 
• if you disbelieve in any sacred-secular divide; 
• if you want to be the church and not just go to church; 
• if you long for a community that is relational, tribal and primal like a river or a garden; 
• if you believe doctrine gets in the way of an interactive relationship with Jesus; 
• if you believe who goes to hell is no one’s business and no one may be there anyway; 
• if you believe salvation has a little to do with atoning for guilt and a lot to do with bringing the whole creation back into shalom with its Maker; 
• if you believe following Jesus is not believing the right things but living the right way; 
• if it really bugs you when people talk about going to heaven instead of heaven coming to us; 
• if you disdain monological, didactic preaching; 
• if you use the word “story” in all your propositions about postmodernism 

– if all or most of this tortuously long sentence describes you, then you might be an emergent Christian."

- Kevin Deyoung, Why we’re not emergent: by two guys who should be

I stand guilty as charged. And proud of it. Not in every detail. For example, I haven’t even heard of some of the authors listed and I would want to adjust the wording on some of the theological items in the list. But yep, this looks like real Christianity, authentic following Jesus (with or without the beanbags).

Would it ‘work’ to compose an opposite list, that would show the typical non-emergent Christian? – Doesn’t listen to U2, doesn’t drink Guinness (or probably any other alcoholic beverage), reads and agrees with Carson but not Wright, supports George W. Bush and big business, figures Left Behind represents good exegesis and hermeneutics, figures it’s more ‘Christian’ to be anti-gay marriage than concerned about global warming, figures that women should be restricted in ministry, etc. Hmmm…

Journeying together - Michael