A Whirlwind in Search of Orthodoxy

The Emerging Church (EC) seems to be a whirlwind looking for orthodoxy (right teaching or right doctrine). It seems to be somewhat grounded in a simple orthopraxis, (right worship or right practice): live like Jesus, although that is different things to different people. The EC community seems to find some common ground in the belief that the movement we know as Evangelicalism, that has dominated Christian thought in the 19th & 20th centuries is on the way out. Too many young people are turned off by the close proximity of the Evangelical movement and “Religious Right” political activism. To followers of the loose Emerging movement the evangelicals have lost their spirit and traded it for political action. They see Evangelicals as people who are attempting to enact change for God through the ballot. This is one reason many EC communities are more liberal. I am more conservative in my belief, which is why I am in search of orthodoxy to put down as a foundation to my emerging views.

For the EC the praxis of loving God with everything you have and loving your neighbor as yourself is one that transcends politics (and everything for that matter) and therefore is the real way to see change in this world. I would agree, and I think Jesus would as well since he said these two things were the greatest commandment of the Law (Mat 22:37-39). The only problem is that many in the EC seem to want to be so welcoming that they have little doctrine (to many a bad word) to stand on. I don’t think that they are all Universalists (thinking everyone gets into Heaven) but I don’t think it would take too much of a breeze to blow them over into that camp.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a believer in the movement. I think at its core the EC movement has (through the guidance of the Holy Spirit) “stumbled” across a genuine and biblical way to follow Jesus. I think what we have done to the Church over the last 400 years of Pietism has created a Church that is more focused on us and our needs than Christ and God’s will. The quest we must be on now is to discover what it is we believe.

I fully believe that we can enter into this Christian community and dialogue without compromising our basic Christian foundational beliefs as clearly laid out in the Apostles Creed, Nicene Creed and others. As I look around the EC community I see a broad cloth, and I am glad. Where we must be careful is not to slip over the edge of the Kingdom into the area of the cultus that in another century people will look back and see we simply traded the political activism of evangelicalism for relativism and a lack of a foundational core of beliefs.