Emergent Friends

As I was recently looking over several blogs, some of them local, all of whom are critical of Emergent as they understand it. I've been reflecting.

The obvious first observation is the gap between those who are very vocal critic and those who in some way shape or form consider themselves to be a part of emergent.

My first thought is to write some of them off as having been burned by the church and now disillusioned with the institution in some significant way. this is true of some. but not all. I suppose folks who think like this will come with the territory of anything, or anyone who says something new. People who didn't like the old, will lump you in with their disillusionment.

My second thought is that they are very conservative fundamentalist, sometimes evangelical, often republican, who love reason, rationality and scientific thouht (as long as it fits their worldview then they rebuke science.) Since I went to a Southern Baptist University, I often think of Southern Baptist first in this catagory, which is a bit unfair to my SB friends. Generally though, these folks are strongly reformed theologically. Though a high percentage of these folks are reformed in theology they are more often than not, pre-Barthian. Which is interesting too.

Both of these are true. but not always.

Third. Now this is a stretch. But I think there is a strong contengent of people who love Ideas more than they love People. (this can be true of anyone in this conversation either emergent of otherwise) I think this is important because of my next point.

Forth.
Emergent is primarily about relationship. Friendships. Most of the critiques of people who are in the emergent conversation are critiques by folks who are not in relationship or dialogue with folks in the actual conversation. I would contend that these folks would at least have a better framework for understanding what is going on with emergent if they had regular conversations with those folks.
blogs are not communities. blogs are not conversations.
blogs are not condusive for this kind of conversation because they are too slow.

So when a blog declares Tony Jones as the "stupid church person" of the year it's not within relationship. They sit down with Tony and realize they are one the same page on many issues. And to the Stupid Church Person blog, they did a good job finding common ground with Tony in their podcast.

Which leads to an intersting quote I hear recently. "Friendship precedes orthodoxy"
i like that.

what do you think?