Opinions concerning the Emerging Church

Deconstructing the Church
By: Phil Johnson


November 2004—The current Christianity Today features a cover article titled "The Emergent Mystique." It's a breezy introduction to the latest fashion in "cultural relevance" and evangelical
apostasy: the Emerging Church.

If you haven't heard that expression, get ready. You're going to hear it a lot in the months and years to come. "The Emerging Church" is a nickname for a frightening trend that is capturing fringe evangelicals by offering an unlikely syncretism between Christianity and postmodernism.

At first glance, "the Emerging Church" may appear to be merely a younger generation of purpose-driven and seeker-sensitive churches—a super-hip version of Willow Creek. Or Saddleback for the pierced and tattooed generation. Indeed, it probably would not be far off the mark to characterize this new movement as seeker- sensitivity gone to seed. The man whom CT calls "the de facto spiritual leader for the emerging church" is Brian McLaren (pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church near Washington, D.C.). And McLaren credits Rick Warren with helping him see "that the church could be evangelistic."

But whereas most disciples of Hybels and Warren have claimed at least a nominal fidelity to historic evangelical doctrinal standards, leaders of the Emerging Church have no such scruples.
McLaren himself has written a controversial book (A New Kind of Christian, winner of CT's 2002 Award of Merit), which expressly argues that the Bible should not be regarded as infallible or authoritative. McLaren also rejects the exclusivity of Christ; he claims that what Christians believe is not as important as what they do; and he expresses a preference for doubt and mystery rather than certainty and conviction.

In other words, he is thoroughly postmodern. Naturally, almost every major evangelical distinctive has come under fire from McLaren at one point or another.

Yet as the November CT cover article demonstrates, McLaren has struck a chord with young evangelicals who are disaffected with the movement they grew up in, and the result is a loose coalition of churches who describe themselves as "Emergent."

The article highlights Mars Hill Bible Church, "one of the largest and youngest churches in the country, with 10,000 meeting weekly for worship in a converted mall outside Grand Rapids, Michigan."

The teaching pastor at Mars Hill is Rob Bell. Bell and his wife Kristen are Wheaton College graduates. But they are as outspoken as McLaren in their contempt for their evangelical heritage. In Kristen's words, the Bells regard A New Kind of Christian as "our lifeboat."

The article gives a thumbnail account of the Bells' "emergence"
from evangelicalism:

After launching Mars Hill in 1999, they found themselves
increasingly uncomfortable with church. "Life in the
church had become so small," Kristen says. "It had
worked for me for a long time. Then it stopped working."
The Bells started questioning their assumptions about
the Bible itself—"discovering the Bible as a human
product," as Rob puts it, rather than the product of
divine fiat. "The Bible is still in the center for us,"
Rob says, "but it's a different kind of center. We want
to embrace mystery, rather than conquer it."

"I grew up thinking that we've figured out the Bible,"
Kristen says, "that we knew what it means. Now I have no
idea what most of it means. And yet I feel like life is
big again—like life used to be black and white, and now
it's in color."

Notice that like most in the Emerging Church movement, the Bells are not the least bit reticent to acknowledge that they have abandoned doctrinal convictions they once regarded as essential to the Christian faith. In fact, historic evangelicalism is precisely what these churches are "emerging" from.

"This is not just the same old message with new
methods," Rob says. "We're rediscovering Christianity as
an Eastern religion, as a way of life. Legal metaphors
for faith don't deliver a way of life."

Those familiar with McLaren's published works will instantly recognize the code language. "Legal metaphors for faith" are classic biblical doctrines like substitutionary atonement, justification by faith, and even the concepts of sin, punishment, and personal salvation.

And the oft-repeated appreciation of "mystery" rather than certainty reflects the Emerging Church's canonization of postmodern skepticism. Notice how many times this mystery-motif is repeated in the CT article:

[Rob Bell:] "We want to embrace mystery, rather than
conquer it."

"I grew up thinking that we've figured out the Bible,"
Kristen says, "that we knew what it means. Now I have no
idea what most of it means.

They are looking for a faith that is colorful enough for
their culturally savvy friends, deep enough for mystery,
big enough for their own doubts.

We are entering "postmodernity," an as-yet ill-defined
borderland in which modern values like objectivity,
analysis, and control will become less compelling. They
are superseded by postmodern values like mystery and
wonder.

The real significance of A New Kind of Christian may be
not its answers but its openness to questions that are
clearly widespread.

[Brian McLaren:] "I don't think the liberals have it
right. But I don't think we have it right either. None
of us has arrived at orthodoxy."

CT has had a love-hate relationship with postmodernism for some time. Contributing editor Charles Colson has often pointed out correctly that postmodern thought is inherently hostile to Christianity, because the postmodern perspective, distilled to its pure essence, entails a rejection of the very concept of absolute, objective, knowable truth.

Colson wrote an excellent article saying as much in CT last year, pointing out that postmodernism has proved effete and may already be losing its stranglehold on the secular world. In the wake of September 11, the central canons of postmodern opinion—that we can have personal perspectives, but we can't really know truth; that good and evil are therefore merely subjective ideas; and that it ultimately doesn't really matter much what you believe—those ideas just aren't quite as appealing as they used to be.

At the same time, however, Colson noted that evangelicalism is busy "dumbing down, moving from a Word-driven message to an image- and emotion-driven message." The church seems to be bending over backwards to embrace postmodernism, at the very moment when we have an opportunity to answer it with truth and dispel the haze of postmodern uncertainty with biblical answers that are sure and certain.

Colson closed his December column with these words: "It would be the supreme irony—and a terrible tragedy—if we found ourselves slipping into postmodernity just when the broader culture has figured out it's a dead end."

That article earned Colson a rebuke in the form of an open letter from Brian McLaren. Colson replied with patience and grace, but with firmness and sound reason. Colson is right in this debate, of course.

Yet CT's own editorial policy now seems to be leaning toward McLaren and the postmodern Emergent movement. The November cover article is almost totally positive, brushing aside several profound and serious criticisms of the Emerging Church movement, and concluding by saying that evangelicalism "could do a lot worse."

Colson had better have a talk with the rest of the editors at CT.
It would be the supreme irony—but frustratingly typical—if CT found itself hopelessly mired in the morass of postmodernity after one of their own editors has already demonstrated clearly in their own pages why postmodernism is a dead end.

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-- Phillip R. Johnson
The Spurgeon Archive
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