Posts Tagged ‘doug pagitt’

By Ken Silva
Apprising Ministries

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. (2 Timothy 4:3-4, NASB)

Professing To Be Wise They Became Fools

Apprising Ministries has been pointing out that with the arrival of A New Kind Of Christianity (AKNoC), the latest book by Brian McLaren, we’re seeing some Dissention Growing Around The Emerging Church. In what’s beginning to look like a major tactical error, in AKNoC McLaren, unquestionably a leading theologian in the sinfully ecumenical Emerging Church aka Emergent Church—that morphed into Emergence Christianity—(EC), finally has begun clearly stating his reimagined ( i.e. post) form of liberal theology aka Progessive Christianity, which so many in the EC have actually adhered to all along.

With this backdrop I now bring to your attention a very telling interview with John Shelby Spong conducted by EC leader Doug Pagitt December 20 on his Doug Pagitt Radio program. Interestingly enough Spong, who’s billed as a Champion of progressive Christianity, has an upcoming appearance in something called The Sacred Awakening Series from the The Shift Network, which is dedicated “to our Evolution.” Click here to listen to the interview and to read more.

by Bob DeWaay
(author of The Emergent Church: Undefining Christianity)

Imagine a world where the polarity of time is reversed so that history moves backward toward Paradise rather than forward toward judgment. Consider a world in which God is so immanently involved in the creation that He is undoing entropy1 and recreating the world now through processes already at work. Think of a world where the future is leading to God Himself in a saving way for all people and all of creation. This imaginary world is our world viewed through the lens of Emergent eschatology.

Several acts of God’s providence brought me to know the nature of Emergent theology and its unique eschatology. The first happened in 1999 during my final year in seminary when the seminary hired a new professor, LeRon Shults. Shults, a theological disciple of the German Theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg, became my professor for a logic class. Shults often described his beliefs with this simple statement: “God is the future drawing everything into Himself.”

Some years later, several people suggested that I consider writing an article for Critical Issues Commentary, our ministry newsletter, examining a new movement called “The Emerging Church.” For my study I carefully read Brian McLaren’s book A Generous Orthodoxy.2 What baffled me about his theology was that his views were nearly identical to those refuted 40 years earlier by Francis Schaeffer, who had called it “the new theology.” But as Schaeffer so clearly showed, the result of this theology is despair because under it there is no hope of knowing the truth. But the Emerging writers describe their theology as one of hope. If there is no hope of knowing the truth about God, man, and the universe we live in (as they claim), then how is hope the result? It turns out that a theology from the 1960s, first articulated in Germany when Schaeffer was writing his books, is the answer.

That leads to a second providential event. A member of our congregation handed me a book that she thought might be of interest in my research: A is for Abductive – The Language of the Emerging Church.3 Under the entry “Eschaton,” the heading “The end of entropy”4 appears. It then says, “In the postmodern matrix there is a good chance that the world will reverse its chronological polarity for us. Instead of being bound to the past by chains of cause and effect, we will feel ourselves being pulled into the future by the magnet of God’s will, God’s dream, God’s desire.”5 Reading this brought my mind back to 1999 and Shults’ interpretation of Pannenberg: “God is the future drawing everything into Himself.” Could this be the ground of Emergent “hope”?

The third providential event was the debate with Doug Pagitt, the 2006 event on the topic of The Emergent Church and Postmodern Spirituality. That event gave me the opportunity to ask Pagitt, a nationally recognized leader in the Emergent movement, whether or not he believed in a literal future judgment. He would not answer either way but did state that judgment happens now through consequences in history. His refusal to answer that question convinced me that the Pannenberg/Shults eschatology was behind the movement!

The fourth providential event was a meeting with Tony Jones of the Emergent Village with the goal of setting up another debate. It turned out that they did not want another debate, but Jones offered to answer any of my questions about Emergent. I responded by e-mail asking about Stanley Grenz, Wolfhart Pannenberg, LeRon Shults, and Jürgen Moltmann and their influence on Emergent theology. Jones replied that Grenz (who, as I will later show, praises the theologies of both Pannenberg and Moltmann) was influential and that Jones himself was studying under a professor named Miroslav Volf who had studied under Moltmann. Also, he helped me with his comment that their hope-filled belief generally leads them to reject eschatologies that “preach a disastrous end to the cosmos.”

The fifth providential event was when I fell and fractured my ankle while trimming trees. The broken ankle required that I sit with my leg elevated for a full week in order to get the swelling down. I had found a copy of Jürgen Moltmann’s Theology of Hope that I knew I had to read if I was going to write this book and prove my thesis. Reading Moltmann was so laborious that finishing the book was not likely to be completed quickly. But because of my immobility I finished Moltmann, taking notes on the contents of every page. The same week I read Moltmann I obtained the just-published An Emergent Manifesto of Hope with Pagitt and Jones as the editors. I read that as well and found Moltmann cited favorably by two emergent writers.6 In that same book, Jones describes why this theology is so hopeful for them: “God’s promised future is good, and it awaits us, beckoning us forward. We’re caught in the tractor beam of redemption and re-creation, and there’s no sense fighting it, so we might as well cooperate.”7 Or as professor Shults always said, “God is the future drawing everything into Himself.”

All of this leads me to my thesis: That the worldview represented by the theology of Grenz, Pannenberg, Moltmann, and Shults is the bedrock foundation of the Emergent Church movement. Their language and ideas present themselves on the pages of many Emergent books. For example, McLaren writes, “In this way of seeing, God stands ahead of us in time, at the end of the journey, sending to us in waves, as it were, the gift of the present, an inrush of the future that pushes the past behind us and washes over us with a ceaseless flow of new possibilities, new options, new chances to rethink and receive new direction, new empowerment.”8 Here is Pagitt’s version of it:

God is constantly creating anew. And God also, invites us to be re-created and join the work of God as co-(re)creators. . . . Imagine the Kingdom of God as the creative process of God reengaging in all that we know and experience. . . . When we employ creativity to make this world better, we participate with God in the recreation of the world.9

These writers often refer to “God’s dream.” Apparently they mean that God imagines an ideal future for the world that we can join and help actualize. When this dream becomes reality in the future, it will be the Kingdom of God.

This series of providential events in my life worked together to help me accurately understand a movement that works very hard to stay undefined. Definitions draw boundaries. Definitions are static. But definitions are necessary in order for us to understand anything. With no defined categories we would be hopeless human beings because, for example, we need our rational minds and valid categories to distinguish between food and poison. Definitions are valid, and no amount of philosophical legerdemain can change that reality. Definitions, to their way of thinking, impede the process of the “tractor beam” of redemption they are experiencing. They consider definitions too “foundationalist,” as we will discuss in a later chapter. I believe that I can now define the Emergent Church movement more accurately because I understand what they believe.

The Emergent Church movement is an association of individuals linked by one very important, key idea: that God is bringing history toward a glorious kingdom of God on earth without future judgment. They loathe dispensationalism more than any other theology because it claims just the opposite: that the world is getting ever more sinful and is sliding toward cataclysmic judgment.10 Both of these ideas cannot be true. Either there is a literal future judgment or there is not. This is not a matter left to one’s own preference.

(The article above is taken from The Emergent Church: Undefining Christianity by Bob DeWaay, pp. 15-18; used with permission.)

 Note: In September 2009, Bob DeWaay attended the “2009 Emergent Theological Conversation” where Jurgen Moltmann was a guest speaker. This substantiated DeWaay’s findings regarding Moltmann’s significant influence in the emerging church.

Author:Bob DeWaay is the pastor of Twin City Fellowship in St. Paul, Minnesota and the author of The Emergent Church and Redefining Christianity. He also writes for the Critical Issues Commentary, a hard-hitting, Scripturally based commentary and articles ministry covering some of the most important issues affecting the church today, including mysticism and spiritual formation.

Notes:
1. Entropy is the principle by which physicists describe heat loss in a closed system. The existence of entropy is a proof that the universe is not eternal because if it were infinitely old it would have already died of heat death.
2. CIC Issue 87, March/April 2005. http://cicministry.org/commentary/issue87.htm
3. Leonard Sweet, Brian McLaren, and Jerry Haselmayer, A is for Abductive – The Language of the Emerging Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003).
4. Ibid. 113.
5. Ibid.
6. In An Emergent Manifesto of Hope,Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones editors (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007); Moltmann is cited favorably by Dwight Friesen on page 203 and Troy Bronsink page 73 n. 24.
7. Ibid. Tony Jones, 130.
8. Brian D. McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy; (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004) 283.
9. Doug Pagitt, Church Re-imagined(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003/2005) 185.
10. Please note that classical amillennialism also believes that the world is facing future judgment. Emergent is not merely opposed to dispensationalism, but any version of eschatology that asserts that God will bring cataclysmic judgment at the end of the age.

 

by Roger Oakland

In order for the emerging church to succeed, the Bible has to be looked at through entirely different glasses, and Christianity needs to be open to a new type of faith. Brian McLaren calls this new faith a “generous orthodoxy.”1 While such an orthodoxy allows a smorgasbord of ideas to be proclaimed in the name of Christ, many of these ideas are actually forbidden and rejected by Scripture.

Doug Pagitt believes that he is part of a cutting-edge response to the new postmodern world. It’s a response he and others see as completely unique, never having been tried before in the history of man. Pagitt states:

It seems to me that our post-industrial times require us to ask new questions-questions that people 100 years ago would have never thought of asking. Could it be that our answers will move us to re-imagine the way of Christianity in our world? Perhaps we as Christians today are not only to consider what it means to be a 21st century church, but also and perhaps more importantly-what it means to have a 21st century faith.2

Many people I meet at conferences who come from a wide variety of church backgrounds tell me the church they have been attending for years has radically changed. Their pastor no longer teaches the Bible. Instead, the Sunday morning service is a skit or a series of stories. The Bible seems to have become the forbidden book. While there are pastors who do still teach the Bible, they are becoming the exception rather than the rule.

Emergent leaders often say the message remains the same, but our methods must change if we are going to be relevant to our generation. The measure of success for many pastors today is how many are coming, rather than how many are listening and obeying what God has said in His Word. Let’s consider how Doug Pagitt uses the Bible in his own church. He states:

At Solomon’s Porch, sermons are not primarily about my extracting truth from the Bible to apply to people’s lives. In many ways the sermon is less a lecture or motivational speech than it is an act of poetry-of putting words around people’s experiences to allow them to find deeper connection in their lives… So our sermons are not lessons that precisely define belief so much as they are stories that welcome our hopes and ideas and participation.3

What Pagitt is describing is a contextual theology; that is, don’t use the Bible as a means of theology or measuring rod of truth and standards by which to live; and rather than have the Bible mold the Christian’s life, let the Christian’s life mold the Bible. That’s what Pagitt calls “putting words around people’s experiences.” As this idea is developed, emerging proponents have to move away from Bible teachings and draw into a dialectic approach. That way, instead of just one person preaching truth or teaching biblical doctrine, everyone can have a say and thus come to a consensus of what the Bible might be saying. Pagitt explains:

To move beyond this passive approach to faith, we’ve tried to create a community that’s more like a potluck: people eat and they also bring something for others. Our belief is built when all of us engage our hopes, dreams, ideas and understandings with the story of God as it unfolds through history and through us.4

You may not have heard the term before, but contextual theology is a prominent message from the emerging church. In his book, Models of Contextual Theology (1992), Stephen B. Bevans defines contextual theology as:

… a way of doing theology in which one takes into account: the spirit and message of the gospel; the tradition of the Christian people; the culture in which one is theologizing; and social change in that culture, whether brought about by western technological process or the grass-roots struggle for equality, justice and liberation.5

In other words, the Bible in, and of itself, is not free-standing-other factors (culture, ethnicity, history) must be taken into consideration, and with those factors, the message of the Bible must be adjusted to fit. As one writer puts it, “Contextual theology aims at the humanization of theology.”6 But two questions need to be asked. First, will the contextualizing of Scripture cause such a twisting of its truth that it no longer is the Word of God, and secondly, is Scripture ineffective without this contextualization? To the first, I give a resounding yes! And to the second, an absolute no. The Word of God, which is an inspired work of the living Creator, is far more than any human-inspired book and has been written in such a way that every human being, rich or poor, man or woman, intelligent or challenged will understand the meaning of the Gospel message if it is presented in their native language; and thanks to the tireless work of missionaries for centuries, the Gospel in native languages is becoming a reality in most cultures today.

Dean Flemming is a New Testament teacher at European Nazarene College in Germany and the author of Contextualization in the New Testament. In his book, he defends contextual theology:

Every church in every particular place and time must learn to do theology in a way that makes sense to its audience while challenging it at the deepest level. In fact, some of the most promising conversations about contextualization today (whether they are recognized as such or not) are coming from churches in the West that are discovering new ways of embodying the gospel for an emerging postmodern culture.7

These “churches in the West” Flemming considers “most promising” are the emerging churches. He would agree with Bevans’ model of theology, but he has an answer to the emerging church’s dilemma. He states:

Many sincere Christians are still suspicious that attempts to contextualize theology and Christian behavior will lead to the compromising of biblical truth … we must look to the New Testament for mentoring in the task of doing theology in our various settings.8

There’s good reason some Christians are suspicious. But it can seem harmless at first because Flemming suggests the answer is in the New Testament, which he believes should be used as a prototype or pattern rather than something for doctrine or theology. New Testament theology is always open for change, he says, but we can learn how to develop this change by studying New Testament stories and characters. The premise Flemming presents of contextualizing Scripture is that since cultures and societies are always changing, the Word must change with it and be conformed to these changes. But I would challenge this. The Bible says the Word is living, active, and powerful:

For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)

And if the Word is this powerful, then it is stable and eternal as well. God, in His magnificence, is the Author of Scripture, and He surpasses time, culture, and societies. Contextualizing says people and cultures change, and therefore God’s Word must change. But, on the contrary, it’s people who need to change to conform to Scripture. If we really believe that the Bible is God’s Word, this would be clear to see; but if we think to ourselves that the Word is not infallible, not inspired, then contextualization would be the obvious expectation.

While certain parts of the Bible may be read as poetry (as Pagitt suggests), for indeed the Bible is a beautifully written masterpiece, it is also a living mechanism that is not to be altered-rather it alters the reader’s heart and life. It is much more than putting words around people’s experiences as emergents suggest.

The Bible tells us God is always right; it is man who is so often wrong. When we rely upon human consensus, we will end up with man’s perspective and not God’s revelation. This is a dangerous way to develop one’s spiritual life-the results can lead to terrible deception.

Brian McLaren put it well when he admitted it isn’t just the way the message is presented that emerging church proponents want to change … it’s the message itself they are changing:

It has been fashionable among the innovative [emerging] pastors I know to say, “We’re not changing the message; we’re only changing the medium.” This claim is probably less than honest … in the new church we must realize how medium and message are intertwined. When we change the medium, the message that’s received is changed, however subtly, as well. We might as well get beyond our naivete or denial about this….9

While reaching today’s generation for the cause of Christ is something we as Christians should all desire, we must remember Jesus Christ challenged us to follow Him and be obedient to
His Word. Scripture commands us to “be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2). But the emergents are leading followers in the opposite direction, teaching that the Word of God needs to be conformed to people and cultures instead of allowing it to conform lives through Jesus Christ…. reimagining Christianity allows a dangerous kind of freedom;
like cutting the suspension ropes on a hot air balloon, the free fall may be exhilarating but the results catastrophic.(From Faith Undone, pp. 42-45.)

Notes
1. Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan,
2004).
2. Pagitt, Church Re-Imagined, op. cit., pp. 17, 19.
3. Ibid., p. 166.
4. Doug Pagitt, Church Re-Imagined, op. cit., p. 167.
5. Stephen B. Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis
Books, Seventh Printing, November 2000, http://www.cca.org.hk/resources/
ctc/ctc94-02/1.Yuzon.html), p. 1.
6. Paul L. Lehmann, “Contextual Theology” (Theology Today, Princeton
Theological Seminary, 1972, http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/apr1972/v29-1-
editorial2.htm).
7. Dean Flemming, Contextualization in the New Testament (Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005), p. 14.
8. Ibid, pp. 14-15.
9. Brian McLaren, Church on the Other Side, op. cit., p. 68.

by Ken Silva,
Apprising Ministries

Right Back To The Dark Ages

Following a trail that was initially cut by the online apologetics and discernment ministry Lighthouse Trails Research years before Apprising Ministries has been covering the rise in popularity within Protestant evangelicalism of practicing corrupt Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism (CSM) ala Living Spiritual Teacher and Quaker mystic Richard Foster, with an assist from his spiritual twin Dallas Willard. It’s a rapidly spreading—and very dangerous—fad; and if left unchecked by spiritually timid evangelical leaders, CSM is going to be the cause of much division within the church visible.

My research shows that as far back as the early 80’s even conservative evangelical seminaries were using—in a positive way—Foster’s magnum opus Celebration of Discipline, which Dr. Gary Gilley rightly calls a virtual encyclopedia of theological error. However, Foster and Willard’s speculative so-called spiritual disciplines were really given a boost under the guise of spurious Spiritual Formation (SF) by the the egregiously ecumenical Emerging Church aka Emergent Church—morphing into Emergence Christianity (EC)—which is a cult of postliberalism now firmly within mainstream evangelicalism. Click here to continue reading this article.

More on Lectio Divina, click here. Also read Castles in the Sand, which is a novel about lectio divina and contemplative spirituality.

by Roger Oakland
Understand the Times

Do you remember the Communist and Humanist Manifestos? Do you recall the statements that were made to establish the religion of atheism and humanism? Now we have the Emerging Church Manifesto. If you have not read it, you should. Apostasy is underway.

The word manifesto is a fairly strong term. The idea that a document has been drafted promoting a particular position designed to change the planet is clearly insinuated. However in the case of Christianity, the promotion of a manifesto at the beginning of the 21^st century implies that Christianity needs to be upgraded to provide a new and re-invented belief system.

Such is the case with the publication of a book titled Emergent Manifesto edited by Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones, two emergent leaders both members of Leadership Network, a think tank group of Christians founded in the 80’s by Bob Buford and inspired by Peter Drucker. This group led an onslaught of ideas promoting the emerging church as we know it.

The Emergent Manifesto is a declaration to the world and the church that Christianity as we once knew it, will be no more. Clearly there is an agenda by all contributing authors that the next generation of Christians will be devoted to building the kingdom, through and by whatever means it takes.

For example, one of the contributors is Samir Selmanovic who wrote:

The emerging church movement has come to believe that the ultimate context of the spiritual aspirations of a follower of Jesus Christ is not Christianity but rather the kingdom of God. …to believe that God is limited to it [Christianity] would be an attempt to manage God. If one holds that Christ is confined to Christianity, one has chosen a god that is not sovereign. [1]

I find this statement very interesting in light of what several of my former colleagues in Canada now believe. They believe they are training students to build the kingdom by taking “Jesus” to the people.

You see the emergent church is headed towards building a kingdom. This kingdom will include anyone and everyone. All religions are welcome. You can throw Jesus into the mix if you want. However the common denominator is not Jesus. The common denominator is the kingdom.

Further, Selmanovic clarifies what is meant by “kingdom building.” He stated:

Is our religion [Christianity] the only one that understands the true meaning of life? Or does God place his truth in others too? Well, God decides, and not us. The gospel is not our gospel, but the gospel of the kingdom of God, and what belongs to the kingdom of God cannot be hijacked by Christianity. [2]

Perhaps there are those who are going emerging and they don’t know where “emerging” is diverging from biblical Christianity. They only want to do what is effective to reach this generation for Jesus. This of course is understandable.

However, this is a perfect example of how deception works. You must always start with the truth. If you told the lie up front, then those with even the least bit of discernment would soon understand the plot. This is what has happened to many in the emerging church. What they are doing, they think, seems right. Now you have been warned. I hope and pray some will see the light. (For more information, read Roger Oakland’s book, Faith Undone.)

Note:
[1]  Pagitt and Jones, editors, An Emergent Manifesto, p. 192
[2]  Ibid. p. 194

Related Information:
Tickle’s Great Emergence: A Reformation Every 500 Years?

 
by Ezra McGill
Free-lance writer

In his book, A Christianity Worth Believing, emergent leader Doug Pagitt presents a theology that is worth exposing, because it is neither biblical nor Christian. This is the unfortunate power of media-savvy emergent leaders–errant theology is couched in Christian terms, and the undiscerning are drawn in.

As others have noted, Doug Pagitt undoubtedly cares about his flock, the homeless, coffee farmers in Guatemala, and the environment. Yet, if the emergent movement could be summed up in one phrase, perhaps it is this: “Tiny men shaking tiny fists at the biblical God.”
The Bible tells us, “The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the LORD shall have them in derision.(Psalm 2: 2-4)

The author of A Christianity Worth Believing vigorously disputes the authority of Sola Scriptura–the Word of God. He writes, “The inerrancy debate is based on the belief that the Bible is the word of God, that the Bible is true because God made it and gave it to us as a guide to truth. But that’s not what the Bible says” (p. 65).

He further explains, “This is how it works. We are characters in the stories we hear. The living Bible invites us to step into the stories, not as observers, but as participants in the faith that is alive and well and still being created” (p.67).

That’s right. The author believes Christianity is still in the process of being created. Obviously, this theology that is being created is in total opposition to biblical Truth. Like the author of The Shack, Pagitt categorically denies the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ.

He states, “the early evangelists recognized they could help the Jesus story make sense if Jesus was seen as someone who was chosen to appease the wrath of God–hence, the ‘anointed one’ who could do what no one else could do” (p. 181).

So, minus our Savior, how does this emergent leader view receiving forgiveness for sins? Before we get to this, let us understand that he spends a good deal of time making the artificial distinction between Christians’ alleged Greco-Roman understanding of God (Pagitt sees this as a distant God), and the Old Testament Hebrew God (always present, understanding, and intimate).

Incredibly, the author presents the Old Testament as his “proof” that there has always been accessible forgiveness for sin. He notes that his wife was raised in a Jewish family, and she “tells [the congregation] each year that the Jews would celebrate the Day of Atonement by gathering lint from their pockets, every little corner of them. She invites us to do the same. Then we write confessions on pieces of paper or pick up leaves to represent each sin and walk to the edge of a stream. As we drop our leaves and papers into the stream, we read from the Psalms” (pp.163-164).

Psalm 103:11-13 is then read to Pagitt’s congregation: “For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him.”

Following this, he writes, his wife, “reminds us that just as the water carries our words away, God takes our sins from us. As far as can be, sin is removed, taken, gone. Yes, sin exists, and when we find it, we should get rid of it” (p. 164).

But what defines “sin” if the Bible is not really the authoritative Word of God? If Christ is not Savior? Pagitt never really gives a satisfactory answer to this.

“Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee: and they have not discovered thine iniquity, to turn away thy captivity; but have seen for thee false burdens and causes of banishment”(Lamentations 2:14). Pagitt assures us he understands this new theology can be upsetting. “This can come as a shock to those Christians who are so used to hearing that Jesus is the solution to sin that they assume that the remedy started with the death of Jesus. The Jewish Tradition tells us otherwise” (p. 163).

A Christianity Worth Believing is the presentation of a distorted version of our faith. It is the tepid celebration of a powerless, false “christ.” It is textbook emergent heresy. Those reading this book who do know and love Christ may feel disgust, disbelief, even scorn. Well and good. But may we also be very afraid for those who are exposed to such teaching.

“But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14).

One gets the sense that Doug Pagitt seems compelled to deny the Truth–he simply cannot see it. He is the angry blind man striking out with his cane. He swings, he slashes; he jabs and stabs. Unfortunately, that sharpened cane has poked out many an eye.
And seems poised to pierce many, many more.

“And he spake a parable unto them, Can the blind lead the blind? shall they not both fall into the ditch?’” (Luke 6:39)

Related Information:

More on Doug Pagitt’s spirituality, click here.

The Process of Reimagining by Roger Oakland

Emergent Manifesto of Hope is the new release from Emersion, a publishing partnership between Baker Books and Emergent Village. The book, edited and compiled by emergent leaders Tony Jones and Doug Pagitt, is a collection of essays by various emerging church leaders. Pagitt says the book “provides a rare glimpse inside the emerging church.” This “rare glimpse” actually lays out the agenda of the movement, and in essence Emergent Manifesto is the emerging church’s coming out of the closet tribute.

The back cover of Emergent Manifesto describes it as a “front-row” look at this “influential international movement” and promises readers that they will come away with “a deeper understanding of the hopeful imagination that drives the emerging church.” Readers are also told that they will “appreciate the beauty of a conversation that is continually being formed.” However, the book fails to deliver any “beauty.”

A more accurate title for this book would be Emergent Manifesto of False Hope, and a subtitle (albeit a lengthy one) that would describe it perfectly would go something like this:

The Kingdom of God is already here on earth, includes all people, all faiths, and in fact is in all people and all of creation and can be felt or realized through mysticism which connects everything together as ONE.

This new collective spirituality leads people into a socialistic community where rituals, practices, and social justice become a means of salvation, but not the salvation you think of in a personal sense of being born-again through Jesus Christ. This is a collective salvation 1 that includes whole cultures and communities who follow the way of someone referred to as Jesus.

Tony Jones lays the ground work for the book by referring to the “highest good” (for humanity) and explains that when Emergent began (in 1998) the group was “engaging in some sort of ’socially established cooperative human activity’”(p. 14). “Cooperative” is a theme that runs through the book. Doug Pagitt says Emergent is a “call to friendship … with the world” and this “friendship” is a “dangerous leap” in which many ways have been created to connect (p. 19). Throughout the book, these ways to connect become quite obvious. While often called other terms in the book, the concepts behind them are interspirituality (all religions coming together), panentheism (God is all creation), universalism (all are saved), and mysticism (the means by which this connecting takes place).

In this “sense of interconnection,” the book states:

[R]enewed popularity of the “kingdom” language is related to the emerging global narrative of the deep ecology movement – a consciousness and awareness that everything matters and is somehow interdependent (p. 27).

New Age sympathizer, Leonard Sweet (in his book Quantum Spirituality) calls this the Theory of Everything. This theory not only says that all creation is connected but that it is all inhabited with Divinity (God).

The Manifesto describes “themes” of “integrative theology” as: Interest in monastic practices, contemplative and bodily spiritual formation disciplines, celebrating earth, humanity, cultures, and the sensuous (p. 28). In a chapter titled “Meeting Jesus at Bars” the Manifesto favorably includes visiting monasteries, practicing yoga, engaging in silent retreats, and chanting with monks (p. 38). One writer in the book has this to say:

“I am a Christian today because of a Hindu meditation master. She taught me some things that Christians had not. She taught me to meditate, to sit in silence and openness in the presence of God…. I believe that all people are children of God.” (p.45)

While the book does list praying and reading Scripture as one of the practices to engage in, it offers a disclaimer that this is not what is most spiritually nourishing but rather “our relationship with others give us the most insight into who God is and where God is leading us” (p. 38). And this is really the essence of the book. Harmless, some may say. No, anything but. The Emergent Manifesto belittles personal, one on one relationship with the Lord and insists that it is a collective salvation that really matters. The goal of this cooperative movement is to participate in “the healing of our world” and to “collaborate with our Maker in the fulfillment of God’s reign on Earth” (p. 30).

The Manifesto makes clear that followers of this new, collective religion should not be concerned about saving “people from the jaws of hell,” but should rather be “motivated … to be in relationship with people who in many ways are different” (p. 35). The focus should not be on conversion as much as “cultivation of relationships.” The lofty language used in the Manifesto, reminiscent of legal or medical language, makes the writers seem highly intellectual but the reading difficult to comprehend. However, while the language in the book is often obscure and metaphorical, the ideologies are evident. To describe interspirituality, the book says:

“If the Emergent conversation is to have a ‘next chapter,’ it will need to learn from other sketches outside of Western Christendom” (p. 68). Translation: incorporate the belief systems of other religions.

Or this one:

[T]he environment that Emergent seeks to create – a studio for sketching, a place of freedom and divergence … [Emergent Village] is more committed to equipping any and all for the process of emergence (p. 70).

Manifesto talks significantly about those who refuse to change and bend with this “process of emergence.” Pagitt states:

While immovability may be a fine role for religion, it may not serve the story of God’s action in the world very well … I don’t think it is possible to tell the story of faith from the posture of sameness and stability …. Ours is a story of the expanding life of God generating new creation … of collective faith. (pp. 75-76)

When Pagitt speaks of “expanding life of God” and “new creation,” he means that we cannot contain truth or reality within the confines of the written Word of God but that truth is always changing and being created.

Universalism is a pronounced theme in the book as well. Manifesto calls salvation “a collective experience.” A Manifesto poem illustrates this:

Not only soul, whole body!
Not only whole body, all of the faithful community!
Not only all of the faithful community, all of humanity!
Not only all of humanity, all of God’s creation!(pp. 82-83)

And panentheism (God is in all) is exhibited through statements like the following, which talks about the “holiness of humanity”:

“[W]e are agents for change in the world (salvation, redemption, and reconciliation … it is a celebration of the holiness of humanity in which the fullness of God was pleased to dwell … it is our holy fleshiness” (p. 88).

What do the emerging church leaders hope to accomplish? Well, they tell us. They want you … they want the church to join up with them. Listen to this explanation:

“The existing church/emerging church matrix can dissolve into missional collaboration and generative friendship” (p. 107).

And hearing that, we must ask, Is that what Josh McDowell is doing by endorsing Dan Kimball’s book, They Like Jesus But Not the Church,2 and is that what David Jeremiah is doing by consistently promoting Erwin McManus?3 Are Christian leaders helping to bring about this dream of the emerging church by dissolving into it? Unfortunately, the answer to that seems to be yes. But how can we as believers follow them into this dark abyss?

In regard to biblical descriptions of last days apostasy, how does the Manifesto relate? It doesn’t. In speaking of the days that the Book of Revelation describes, the Manifesto states:

[F]olks who hang around the emerging church tend to see goodness and light in God’s future, not darkness and gnashing of teeth … [some] take the view that we’re in a downward spiral, and when things “down here” become bad enough, Jesus will return in glory…. We’re caught in the tractor beam of redemption and re-creation, and there’s no sense fighting it, so we might as well cooperate” (p. 130).

There is another underlying theme that is permeating the pages of this book and many of the other emerging church books in print, including Dan Kimball’s. There is a continual hammering away and chiseling down of the image of Christians (the kind who take the Bible literally and stand by its authority). This effort to villainize Christians is reminiscent of Germany in the 30s when artists would draw distorted pictures of Jews with certain facial features making them look weird, and when rumors and stories would run amuck even suggesting that Jews would rape your daughters, so don’t trust them. This all out effort to get society to hate and mistrust the Jews worked. It was a campaign, not based on fact, but based on a demonic kingdom that hates anything that has to do with Jesus Christ. In the Manifesto, Brian McLaren boils down the world’s evils to the fault of Western Christians and suggests that these resisting Christians might even become militant against people one day. (Hitler was able to persuade people that the Jews were a threat so they better take them out before the Jews got them.) McLaren states:

What are we in the so-called emerging churches seeking to emerge from? I asked myself. We are seeking to emerge from modern Western Christianity, from colonial Christianity, from Christianity as a “white man’s religion … into a faith of collaborative mission … It is immediately clear that this kind of emergence must lead to a convergence — in the West, across denominations and across current polarizations, a convergence of postconservatives and postliberals into what Hans Frei and Stanley Grenz termed a new “generous orthodoxy.” (p. 150)

[M]any will react and oppose this emergence, seeking to maintain the hegemony of the West … perhaps even seeking a revival of crusading Christendom. (151)

In Ray Yungen’s upcoming book, For Many Shall Come in My Name, he discusses this very thing and shows how New Age leaders have been framing a social mindset that will eventually become hostile to Bible believing Christians. Yungen explains how it will all be justified as doing humanity a favor by getting rid of them, and when he quotes the words of New Ager Neale Donald Walsch as saying that God believes Hitler did the Jews a favor by killing them, it sends chills up the spine. And whether they realize what they are doing or not, Dan Kimball, Brian McLaren and other emergent leaders are framing a similar mindset for people to climb into.

While it is sad to think about persecution that may be coming upon believers, it is even more tragic to realize how many unsaved people will never hear the gospel because so many Christian leaders have given the emerging church a thumbs up. The publishers and editors at Baker Books should be ashamed of themselves for exalting such anti-Christ teachings or at the very least stop calling themselves a Christian publisher.

For those who are still skeptical about the Emergent Manifesto’s message, pick up a copy sometime of Alice Bailey’s The Externalization of the Hierarchy, or Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance. And when you read those words by those “change agents” see if you notice that the message is the same, just dressed in a different outfit called Emergent.

Emergent Manifesto does indeed “provide a rare glimpse,” but not one of hope. Rather it is a look into the near future of a world that is racing toward spiritual destruction through severe deception as the Bible predicts when it says that Satan will deceive the whole world in the days prior to Christ’s return (Revelation 12:9).