Here's one from the Tallahassee Democrat entitled "Emerging Church had a good year". Here's an excerpt:
This rethinking of the church in contemporary America is happening among both evangelical and mainline Protestants, but mostly among evangelicals. Some conservative evangelicals are critical of its tendency toward postmodern theologizing. They think it leads to a relativism that denies absolutes.
The critics are on to something in that the Emergent thinkers do deny absolute knowledge of God and a doctrinal exclusiveness. They don't accept the inherited theological tradition uncritically, and they certainly don't accept the prevailing version of evangelical social ethics.
Brian McClaren, a founder and perhaps the leading theologian of the movement, has said, "When we make it sound like we have all the bolts screwed down tight and all the nails hammered in, and everything's all boxed up and we've got it all figured out, at that moment, I think we have stopped being faithful."
And Rob Bell got a two-page spread in the latest issue of Time!
"He could be one of the most important 21st century Christian leaders," says Bible professor and evangelical blogger Ben Witherington. He and several other thinkers feel that in a "post-Christian America," whose basic assumptions are increasingly secular, the faith needs someone who can defend its tenets in the argot of the day. Bell does this effortlessly. The question now is whether he can sell his approach to the rest of Evangelicalism or whether, as Christianity Today editor Andy Crouch puts it, he will "remain more of a singular rock star in the church world."
Labels: emerging church
