Fundamentalists vs. the Emerging Church

In the June 12 issue of the Sword of the Lord Newspaper, David Cloud published his heated warning about the newest hottest heresy. "The emerging church is a magnet for those who have rejected the old-fashioned New Testament faith and who despise traditional Bible-believing churches, dogmatic biblical preaching and biblical 'judgmentalism' in regard to lifestyle choices."

Cloud portrays the emerging church as being lax, not just about morals, but also and especially about the source or basis of morals. He gives the example of Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz, who felt like he had to either "reduce enormous theological absurdities [i.e., Garden of Eden, universal Flood] into children's stories or ignore them" if he wanted to embrace Christianity. "In other words, he wanted to pick and choose what parts of the Bible he would believe. He despised dogmatic Bible preaching and hated it when preachers 'said we had to follow Jesus,' because 'sometimes they would make Him sound angry'".

Cloud also mentions the infamous Brian McLaren. McLaren's book, A New Kind of Christian, "recounts the man's journey from a fairly solid faith in the Bible as the absolute standard for truth in which doctrine is either right or wrong, scriptural or unscriptural, to a pliable, philosophical position in which 'faith is more about a way of life than a system of belief, where being authentically good is more important than being doctrinally right'".

To top it all off, Cloud gives a quote from David Foster's A Renegade's Guide to God: "We won't be 'told' what to do or 'commanded' how to believe". Cloud seems so aghast at this proclamation, you'd think it was the first time any self-proclaimed Christian insisted on forming and following his own interpretation of the Bible.

Cloud closes by revealing McLaren's conspiracy to "infiltrate biblicist churches from without through 'resources' such as books, videos and websites" that offer emerging church perspectives. "It is more imperative than ever that pastors train their people to discern the error of these heresies and that they exhort them to avoid the writings of false teachers." But no matter how diligently his advice is followed, Cloud might find it ineffective.

Young evangelicals don't need influence "from without" to be drawn to a "shopping cart" religiosity. Movements like the emerging church are just natural byproducts of Christian fundamentalism. The moral absolutism and rigorous dedication to consistency that fundamentalists pound into their children's heads give birth to that thorny distraction I call "a screaming conscience". Young fundamentalists who actually start reading and thinking about the Bible can't help but notice a violent conflict between the Bible and conventional morality. If killing babies is wrong, they reason, then it's always wrong. If they want to keep this moral absolutism they were raised in then they have to take the scissors to the "Word of God". To not would be to succumb to relativism. Don't blame the sandal-wearing yuppies who take coffee-stained volumes of "St. Jacques" Derrida to cafe Bible studies. It was the fundamentalist church where the kids learned to criticize Catholic superstition, and where they learned that stealing is always wrong even if your mother's starving. And it's the fundamentalist church where they'll turn critical thought and moral absolutism onto fundamentalism.

Cloud's advice to teach congregations to recognize and reject emerging church heresies might actually push young people out of the fundamentalist churches and into the emerging church camp. Young people would need to know the proper doctrine to contrast the heresies against. But if you want someone to accept fundamentalism, the LAST thing you wanna do is teach them what fundamentalism actually is.

A youth pastor was giving his youth group an overview of the Bible, and he was covering the story of Achan, when one girl murmered "Why the kids?" The youth pastor shook his head, and with his eyebrows raised and his eyes half-closed said "Well there's sin, and sin has consequences, and Achan sinned, and this was the consequence of his sin," as if the outcome of wrongdoing is just by default of being the outcome of wrongdoing. How many kids would want to stay in a fundamentalist church after hearing THAT kind of explanation? When pastors teach their churches how they should read the Bible, how they should think about God, and just how irrelevant their own intuitions are, some people will get the idea that the church they're in isn't where they want to be.

The emerging church is the way Christians in my generation rub their eyes, shake their heads, and say "Wait, wait, WHAT?!" Given the typical fundamentalist response (which is to call them heretical, backslidden, or hell-bound), Christian seekers can choose one of two things: they can find a body where they're encouraged to draw up, share, and piece together their own ideas of "the Divine", or they can forget God alltogether. The less creative they were programmed to be, the more likely they are to choose the second option. Of course, the second option isn't all that likely, because Christian spirituality is all about being creative.