Tony Jones: I Received a Fascinating Email…
…from one of my heroes and a pioneer of the internet. He encouraged me to post this but asked that his identity be withheld.
Dear Tony,
I actually procrastinated a bit this morning and read your chapter (partly because I’m interested in new books, as I’m writing one of my own). Obviously (given the length here) either I really wanted to procrastinate, or your writing struck a chord. Probably both....
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The only other movement I can think of that really successfully mixes the cherished doctrines of the traditional left and the traditional right is the libertarian movement. But libertarianism is still an ideology! It still takes specific positions on the above ideological divides: less legislation of morality, less control of economic life, more secularization.
Still, I think it’s great, if true, that a new kind of Christianity is emerging in which left and right are brought together and put their differences aside. If it does so by pretending that there aren’t differences, or that the differences aren’t meaningful or that they don’t matter, however, they’re fooling themselves and the facts sure to come back to bite them in their fantasies, as facts are wont to do!
If I had to guess, I would say that the leaders of the emergent Christianity phenomenon (as you’ve described it) are, in fact and perhaps unadmitted to themselves, good old-fashioned liberals. It is one of dear old habits of the left to reject all “categorization” in political terms, or to say that they lack ideology, or are “mainstream” or “moderate” (with everyone to their right often being dismissed as knuckle-dragging right-wingers). But if they are liberals that actually tolerate conservatives, instead of dismissing them as knuckle-draggers, that’s wonderful. Likewise, if the movement has fundamentalists who nevertheless are willing to break bread with gays instead of saying they’ll go to hell, great. Sounds like real Christian love to me.
The point, which I’m not saying you don’t already get, but which doesn’t come out in the first chapter, is this: you can’t escape ideology except by escaping politics altogether. You can, of course, form communities in which ideology doesn’t matter so much. ...
And this goes to one of my biggest irritations about Emergent. It isn't that Emergent leaders appear to be political liberals. I spend much of my time within the hierarchy of the PCUSA, where in meetings I'm nearly always in a non-liberal minority and not infrequently in a minority of one. I can live with that. What I find irritating is the persistent proclamations by Emergent-types of being an expansive movement that transcends all boundaries (political included) and foreshadows the emerging work of the Holy Spirit in the world while using (with only very narrow shades of difference) the same religious left perspective that Mainline denominations (i.e., National Council of Churches club) have been using for decades. Whether influenced by denial, naivete, or cold calculation, many of these folks need to get in touch with their inner liberal and own it. :) Then maybe we could ratchet down the messianic sanctimony and really have conversation.
