Fresh back from the wonderful Wild Goose Festival and still soaring on the wings of its creative energy and compassionate community. If you weren’t lucky enough to get to this first-ever spirituality/justice/music/arts festival of its kind this summer, I strongly encourage you to begin planning to be there next year! The speaker line-up was stellar, the music was moving and the overall conversation and vibe was deeply joyful, inspiring and hopeful.
True to its spirit and invitation, the festival was welcoming and inclusive of all — including it turns out, conservative Christians! I met one such young man, Devin Murphy, the first night at a party at the Patheos RV. Devin, a theologically conservative Calvinist who is a member of a PCA church, was there – partly in response to a challenge blogger Tony Jones issued to conservative Christians to come to the festival, find him and engage the conversation. Devin not only came, but volunteered for all four days. Upon returning home, he has written the first of a series of posts about his experience hanging out with a bunch of Progressive Christians for 4 days in the woods of North Carolina. We’ll share his posts here over the next few weeks. I am grateful and honored that he would choose to reflect so thoughtfully and graciously about his time at Wild Goose with us, in the spirit of charitable conversation and reconciliation.
The Emergent Church And Me, A Disclaimer
By Devin Murphy (@21centkid)
Ok, I have to come out and say this now so when others say it, it’ll have already been said.
I went to the Wild Goose Festival studied up and ready to sort through Emergent theology with those who subscribe to it. I didn’t go and street preach and I’m beginning to believe that street preaching is not a universally productive approach to call people to the cross. There, I said it.
Anyways, I did have hopes to meet some folks and hear them out, especially their concerns and reasoning for not being theologically conservative (like me). I got that without having to argue with them. I then noticed that the faith of the people attending was expressed differently at such an event than in a podcast interview or listening to a public talk. It’s kind of like if I was hanging out with my Reformed buddies and really letting my true thoughts fly as opposed to sitting with some friends at work and having to hold my tongue. I realized that the most productive thing that I could do would be to just listen to everyone. This consisted of making it known to everyone that I talked to that I was a Calvinist and a member of a PCA church etc… Everyone treated me like a person, just like they treated everyone else there. Although there was one person in particular that expressed some hatred for myself and what I believe in a not-so-gracious way, but that’s another (tough) blog that I will have to write in this series.
I remember listening to D.A. Carson talking about becoming conversant with the Emerging church and ultimately he said that they won’t have a conversation with you. That assessment was proven wrong by merely one night of myself having some mixed drinks next to a couple of RVs with nearly every prominent leader within the Emergent movement today. I got hit with a few jokes about being a Calvinist but that was expected and they were actually funny.
On the grand stage of blog-fights both sides (conservative vs. liberal) have said the wrong things or have said the right things in the wrong way, but my experience was excellent and educational as I tried to really think deep about everything I heard. Even though on the surface I heard things that I had immediate responses lined up for, I decided to stop and listen. For that fact, I know that some will read this and say that I wimped out or that I compromised. To that all I can say is that maybe I did.
I was conflicted about whether to try and stop the fun and get down to business but I feel wisdom told me not to. The fact that I met and spoke with numerous people at the festival who know (mostly) what I believe will grant me access to their thoughts and beliefs and enable me to challenge them based on what they say as opposed to what others say they say. In the grand scheme I can now have more of a chance to say something to them as their token Calvinist friend instead of as another brutal critic with no love for them. A big reason why I didn’t chirp up on everything I heard them say that I believe to be incorrect is because that’s what they always hear. You think these guys haven’t heard all of the arguments before? Seriously, how do you witness to a guy like Frank Schaeffer who was drilled with Reformed Theology and was raised by perhaps the best Reformed Apologist ever to grace the planet Earth? The most that could be done is listen to him and figure out responses later in order to try and steer his thinking in another direction. Notice I said try. When you hear him talk about all of the people of Reformed greatness that he has met and probably bounced on their knee as a child, you will soon realize that this is a guy with his mind basically made up when it comes to anything that a 20-something Calvinist hoping to evangelize him could say.
The fact of the matter is that so much has been said about the Emergent Church and it’s leaders that is utterly bogus. There has been very accurate assessments of their methodology, philosophy and hermeneutic. It can’t be denied that overall they have been painted as the boogeyman and many of their critics would rather shove them out of their congregant’s sights instead of really assessing what is fueling the movement. The Church is infected with slack anti-intellectualism when it comes to critiques that come from the outside. It is a tradition of men to ignore the popular philosophers of our day because they don’t share our theology. We all know that much of the material is liberal theology that has been tweaked for our time in an attempt to get Jesus into places that are usually afraid of Him. While I don’t line up with how this is done, I have seen them provoke more thought about the person of Christ among secular communities far more than I’ve seen in any street preaching venture. There, I said it.
The most interesting dynamic is that I really feel that somebody could be accepted within the Emergent movement no matter what belief about Christianity they hold. If you are a nice person who is gracious to all people and willing to hear people out, you could be a voice within the Emergent movement without compromising what you believe. Many will say that if you believe an LGBTQ lifestyle is a sin or that Hell is real and a lot of people are there, then you couldn’t and wouldn’t be accepted within the movement. After my experience in the heart of the movement and face to face with it’s biggest and most prolific defenders and promoters, I don’t think that’s the case. Such a person would be a tough sell at an event like the Wild Goose Festival but the attitude and graciousness would be welcomed because the conservatives are the ones that the Emergent Church is crying out to. The movement is pushing back with open arms practically begging to be heard and seen as meaningful to the typical American Christian conservative. That may be lost in translation when it comes to public writings or public speaking, but that is really what I saw. They don’t care if they are seen as heretics. They don’t care if they are slandered and scolded online and behind pulpits. Even though they are hurt by that sort of rhetoric, they have heard it all before.
It is painful to have to do damage control when talking to folks typically described as Emergents. Many of them would be more prone to have an open ear to assess various arguments against their position if the tone was one of grace as opposed to caricature. It’s one thing to say they have a theology that is based upon a denial of Sola Scriptura, it is another to say their theology is one of “anything goes”. Those accusations make all the difference. For instance, many assume that such a crowd isn’t much on church discipline or is licentious in matters of holiness, when in all actuality I saw girls at the festival being absolutely gaga over some of the speakers and yet every speaker I saw kept their distance as if they could tell that they could take advantage. While I may have a very different view of sin than they do, I was very impressed by a general piety from them that is rooted in their seriousness about Jesus Christ. That isn’t a justification for how they view Christ or anything of the sort, but by granting them that they firmly believe they are living for Jesus, from what I saw they are living up to it.
By now you can probably see why I chose to make this disclaimer. I will be clear and say that I love the 2% of street preachers that really do preach the Gospel of free grace to sinners. I even love many of those faithful men of God who just aren’t sensitive enough to other people’s feelings to actually take the time to accurately represent them. Every side of this debate has shown themselves capable of shining the spotlight on character flaws, but that needs to end if either side wants to be serious about the conversation.
I could go on for a long time, so I’ll stop now.
Is that the longest blog disclaimer you’ve ever seen? If so, you can thank those who have muddied the waters of conversations in the name of Christ for it.
If there are any questions or concerns about this, do not hesitate to e-mail me at [email protected]. I would hope that I can respond, but even if I end up not, please know that I actively make it a point to at least read all of my e-mails.
Thank you,
Devin Murphy (@21centkid)
http://www.21centkid.tumblr.com
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