My Thoughts Exactly on "Emergentitis"

HT JohnMcG for linking to this great piece by Lydia McGrew. It's short, so I'll just post the whole enchilada here.

Let's Keep the Church Political

Now that I have your attention...

My Right Reason blog colleague Dan Bonevac has a post on the "emergent church" and "church growth" movements in evangelicalism and their goal to move evangelicals to the left in political activism. To my mind this is numinously evident from overwhelming evidence, one prominent bit of which is Rick Warren's switcheroo from listing abortion as a "non-negotiable issue" in 2004 to his appearing recently with none other than Barak Obama to oppose AIDS. (Was someone in favor of AIDS?) His response when challenged is given by a commentator in Dan's thread: "Left wing, right wing. I want the whole bird!" This, to my mind, more or less defines "shallow," but apparently not everyone agrees.

What bothers me most of all as I've been googling things like "abortion" and "Brian McLaren" (guru of "emergentism") is the pretense that these folks are trying to make the evangelical church apolitical. Right. Crusading about global warming and hollering about the terrible "dominance of the religious right" on evangelical churches is so apolitical.

A couple of weeks ago I had a close Catholic friend visit. She went to Mass at our local parish, St. Monica's (on Mother's Day, which was especially appropriate) and came home mentioning how pro-life of a parish it is, how there was a special prayer at the end for an end to abortion and so forth. I guess Mr. McLaren and his friends would also deplore this as the "dominance of the religious right" at St. Monica's.

Let's admit: In the present social context, when emergentists and their ilk tell us that they want to "shift the focus away from politics in the church," here's a translation: "Let's not talk in religious gatherings about abortion, because it makes lefties uncomfortable. But rallies about poverty, AIDS, and global warming are wonderful. That's speaking prophetically to the present age."

Glad to have that little misunderstanding cleared up.

I couldn't have explained it better myself. The only thing I have to say to Mrs. McGrew is that every left-winger knows that the so-called religious right is in favor of AIDS and that Pat Robertson concocted it in his sercet lab.