(Ir)religiosity

I feel somewhat obligated to comment on the the latest “death of emergent” meme looping its way around the blogosphere. If you know what I’m talking about, you’re probably tried of hearing and talking about it — if you don’t, Tony has the most comprehensive link list I’ve seen. Just be sure you check out the post (and the comments) by Nick Fiedler that started it all, whether he wanted it too or not: “The Great Disappointment (A Post About Emergent). To be fair, Nick has further clarified his feeling in a later post, and perhaps best in a video chat with Zach Lind.

I’ve read/listened to all of these posts and commented on most of them, floating my thought on the whole thing. But after reading and commenting and re-reading and getting too upset and deleting comments I had typed up and ready to submit, I think I’m ready to publicly reflect.

I’ve expressed some of my own “disappointment” (as I originally called it) in some of my comments, but for different reasons. I said more than once and in a few different ways, that I’d like for the movement at large to move past a rejection of traditional Christianity and on to a different stage of the conversation. In other words, I’d like for us to get over the baggage that comes along with traditional evangelicalism and maybe even engage some fundamentalists from the other side of the spectrum who seem to think they have a monopoly on the prophetic voice.

Now I’m beginning to see that that’s not really disappointment at all. It’s my hope for the future of the conversation. That there is never any stasis in our dialogue and that we’re always pushing the envelope with a creative imagination.

And now you know where I stand. Read the rest of this entry »