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. Of the book, Pagitt
says it "provides a rare glimpse inside the emerging church." Pagitt couldn't
have said it better. The book actually lays out the agenda of the movement, an
agenda that has for the most part been hidden from view by the majority of Christians.
Emergent Manifesto is the emerging church's coming out of the closet. The
movement had its official start in the late nineties when a well-financed effort
by Leadership
Network set the movement in motion by hiring Doug Pagitt to pull together
some other young church leaders. That initial group included Mark Driscoll, Doug
Pagitt, Dan Kimball, Tony Jones, and Brian McLaren. 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." On the contrary,
it is a collection of anti-Christian, anti-biblical essays that not only expose
the emerging church for what it really is, but leaves a discerning Christian with
a terrible gut feeling that dark days are ahead should the emerging church continue
on its road to success and influence under the guise of Christianity, while manipulating
and deceiving evangelical leaders who continually show their public support for
the movement. 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. 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). 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 is some sort of 'socially established cooperative
human activity'"(p. 14). "Cooperative" is a theme that runs through the book.
Doug Pagitt says that Emergent is a "call to friendship" with the world. Pagitt
calls this "friendship" a "dangerous leap" and many ways have been created to
connect (p. 19). These ways to connection include: 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 addition, there
is a thread woven throughout the book that declares the "present availability
of the kingdom of God," and that God is going to "remake and restore all of creation"
(i.e., a dominionist/Kingdom Now theology, p. 26). 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). Emergent Manifesto
agrees with this when it says that "all of life is sacred" (p.27); this is similar
to Sue Monk
Kidd who says that God is in everything, even excretment. 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). 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 fullfillment 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." One of the women writers of the book, a Presbyterian
minister 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 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. Clearly the Emergent Village, in our events
and communication, 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) "[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? They want you ... they
want the church to join up with them. Listen to them explain their objective:
"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? Yes, that is exactly what they are doing! 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? They don'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).
While the book goes on and on with anti-biblical notions, liberal socialism, anti-Christian
jargon, mysticism, interspirituality, universalism, panentheism, there is another
underlying theme that is permeating the pages of this book and many of the other
emerging church books, including Kimball's. There is a continual hammering away
and chiseling down of the image of Christians (the kin who take the Bible literally
and stand by its authority). This effort to villianize 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 immediatley 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 Hilter 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.
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 or the writings of Karl Marx. 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. To him who has
ears to hear, let him hear...
So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the
Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and
his angels were cast out with him.... Now when the dragon saw that he had been
cast to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male Child
[Jesus]. So the serpent spewed water out of his mouth like a flood after the
woman, that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood. But the earth
helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the flood
which the dragon had spewed out of his mouth. And the dragon was enraged with
the woman, and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring [Christians],
who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. (Revelation
12:9,13,15-17)