Emerging Liberalism Part Four

As the old saying goes, "You are what you eat." If that is true in the physical sense, then I suppose the Emerging Church is in the intellectual and spiritual sense taking in a healthy dose of Liberalism from their favorite books (See some of McLaren's recommended books here). You can learn a lot about a movement by looking at what they enjoy reading. His reading list is like the "Who's Who" of liberal and postmodern thought. Guilt by association isn't always a logical fallacy, if you see a pattern developing in their reading and theology. The pattern in these books leads one to believe that they really despise theology that is definite, sure, and dogmatic.

From looking at the various websites promoting the Emergent Church, I see the same books popping up over and over again. They are always similar in subject matter and scope. Words like "postmodern", "rethinking theology", "emergent faith", "social justice", "Christian conversations", etc., keep coming up. Many of these buzz words are also found on various openly liberal websites promoting everything from homosexual Christians, to denouncing the Bible as evil and irrelevant. I wonder what would actually happen if they were to have a "conversation" with some of these openly liberal Christians? Would they earnestly defend THE faith, or would they concede important doctrines on the shrine of "love".

There is a Five Views book on the subject of the Emergent Church (Look Here). Michael Horton, from Westminster Theological Seminary, makes a contribution to this debate book, so it should be a good book on the subject. In my next post, I will attempt to summarize what I have discovered about the movement and give some final thoughts on the matter.