The Emergent group/cohort is a leadership segment of a Christian theological/ecclesiological sub-culture which seeks to rediscover and recast the Gospel message in a highly contextualized manner to more authentically communicate Christian theological claims and ethical norms to a post-Christian culture. They, generally speaking, embrace radical post-structuralist hermeneutics (ala Fish, Rorty, Foucault, and Derrida, etc) and cast a post-liberal vision for theological re-formation that is specifically targetted at non-believers. This post-liberal theological vision has, in the end, primarily objected to the theological positions of conservative evangelicalism and replied by recasting late 19th Century Liberalism akin to the Modernist controversies of that era stretching to the first quarter of the twentieth century. The group has embraced theological teachings which radically derivate from conservative evangelical scholarship and has ended up being post-positivist, universalist/inclusivist, feminist, and biblical errantist in its outworkings. The unofficial, but ironically group identified leaders, include Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, Tony Jones, and maybe a few others. IMHO, this group is increasingly isolated from the evangelical conversations they sought to shape.
SolaSaint said:
I think he's 100% correct. Notice his wording "Christians...are viewed as..." We have the data for this. The lost and dying world believes all this stuff (and more) about us. Go pick up (or check out) UnChristian by Dave Kinnanmon and Gabe Lyons and Next Christians by Gabe Lyons. They talk all about these views.
Basically (to sum up UnChristian, the authors took polling and interview data they did with outsiders (non-Christians) 18-34 (I think this age range is correct) and asked them how they viewed Christianity. The data, the raw data, is amazing and reinforces all these conclusions.
I think it is both honest and necessary to have this conversation. Heck, look around this forum and you see a lot of posts to back this up. The whole conversation about the nature of nouthetic counseling is my first salvo. We, Christians, aren't known by the marks which the early church was known by...our love for each other. Also, Christians in America are highly anti-intellectual and perceived to be hateful. Listen if some of this is incorrect so be it, but I think we all need to have the conversation.
When I hear the Republican Party being touted by most evangelicals as the way to get stuff done or the "Christian" political party that is a HUGE part of the problem. Andy is trying to address this as honestly as possible. In our context a huge part of our ministry is 20somethings who are very disenfranchised with Christianity. We have to work very hard to undo the damage done by well meaning but biblicall incorrect teachings. For a lot of millennials how Christians are saying things is just as important as what they're saying.
So, I still challenge your statements. I think (as I have read you) you have sought to label Andy Stanley and then criticize his ministry and message here unduly. You said it yourself he didn't actually say that Christian are homophobic, well he never did and never said they were. So maybe its time to be a little more careful with our rebukes of leaders/preachers.
