A quick summary of emergent Christianity… via @jonestony
Dispatch 1: Emergents practice a generous orthodoxy that appreciates the contributions of all Christian movements.
Dispatch 2: Emergents reject the politics & theologies of left versus right — they anticipate a more complex reality.
Dispatch 3: The gospel is like lava: no matter how much crust has formed over it, it will find a way to burst through.
Dispatch 4: The emergent phenomenon began when a group began talking about how postmodernism was affecting the faith.
Dispatch 5: The emergent movement is not exclusively North American; it is growing around the globe.
Dispatch 6: Emergents see God’s activity in all aspects of culture and reject the sacred-secular divide.
Dispatch 7: Emergents think that an envelope of friendship and reconciliation must surround all debates about doctrine.
Dispatch 8: Emergents find the biblical call to community more compelling than the democratic call to individual rights.
Dispatch 9: Emergent is robustly theological; the conviction is that theology and practice are inextricably related.
Dispatch 10: Emergents believe that theology is local, conversational, and temporary.
Dispatch 11: Awareness of our relative position—to God & one another—breeds biblical humility, not relativistic apathy.
Dispatch 12: Emergents embrace the whole Bible, the glory and the pathos.
Dispatch 13: Emergents believe that truth, like God, cannot be definitively articulated by finite human beings.
Dispatch 14: Emergents embrace paradox, especially those that are core components of the Christian story.
Dispatch 15: Emergents have a hope-filled eschatology: it was good news when Jesus came & it will be when he returns.
Dispatch 16: Emergents believe that church should function more like an open-source network and less like a hierarchy.
Dispatch 17: Emergents start new churches to save their own faith, not necessarily to make new converts.
Dispatch 18: Emergents believe that God’s Spirit is responsible for all good. Our task is to cooperate with God.
Dispatch 19: Emergents downplay—or outright reject—the differences between clergy and laity.
Dispatch 20: Emergents believe that church should be just as beautiful and messy as life.
I’m sure Tony will continue posting the rest of this list via Twitter (@jonestony)– or Tony’s book, The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier, is now available on paperback. It includes all these dispatches and it’s a great resource for those interested in understanding the history of the emergent church movement.
