Roger Olson Compares the Emergent Church with the Jesus Movement

I’ve heard it for years: “The emerging church is nothing more than the Jesus Movement warmed over.” Well, I don’t really think so, but who am I to say? Roger Olson is, as he states, one of the few persons who is qualified to really speak to the parallels, making this a must-read:

It’s dangerous to generalize about either the JPM or the ECM. Neither had/has a headquarters or unifying organization. Both were/are grassroots movements that seemed to spring up spontaneously and then snowball first into apparently relatively cohesive movements and then fall apart over deep differences of philosophy, theology and practice. Both had/have strong, public personalities that provide a certain degree of identity to their movements, but neither had/has any single personality looked up to by everyone associated with them. Both were/are very diverse but unified by a common, minimal ethos that set/sets them apart from the “mainstream” of American Christianity—evangelical or mainline.

Read the rest at Emerging Churches and the Jesus People Movement Compared (you’ll have to overlook Roger’s poor formatting)