|
Warning
the Emergent Church
Elisa Padilla
"When I was eighteen I decided to leave home
and attend college in the United States. ...In evangelical circles,
though most sectors held on to the traditional missionary message, a
minority began to think, meet, write, and publish in another
direction. "How does the gospel respond to a context of
poverty, injustice, and abuse?' they asked. .. They proposed that
the gospel was relevant to all of life, all areas of life, and all
people. ...
The evangelical culture shock I experienced had
everything to do with the good news of the kingdom getting so
entangled with cultural values that it taken on the culture's image.
... the gospel of Jesus had been recast as the individualistic,
spiritualized, pragmatic, verbal infomercial of North American
culture. this means that if your gospel is only about yourself, your
spirit, your converts, and your words, and in practice your highest
loyalty is to your flag, you can easily live in peace, accumulate
wealth, and call it a blessing from God, In your naivete and
passivity you can support racism, land expropriation, inequality,
abuses of power, wars for oil, nuclear build-up, economic
exploitation, contamination, and all kinds of injustice, and still
remain a good Christian, because your too-small gospel has nothing
to say to the issues of your times.
The question I would like to leave with our
readers is the following: what gospel will the Emergent movement
embrace. ... In this analysis we wander at times if the emerging
movement is in danger of emerging into a new package of the same old
content. You are in danger of repeating the old paradigms of 'me and
God,' 'the poor that need our help so desperately' (and we are so
good that we give it), 'excellence in praise' (which means paying
professional musicians to give a good religious show), 'homogenous
units' (because mixing brigs conflict), 'we know how to do things
best' (and since we contribute the money we decide how things are
done), and 'having a successful church' (measured in the size of the
membership, of the annual budget, and of the church buildings). All
this is done with doughnuts and coffee, a rock band instead of organ
music, bare feet instead of shiny black shoes, jeans and T-shirts
instead of suits and ties, candles and colored cloths instead of
rigid pews, projectors and colorful images instead or red hymnals.
It's the same content, just different wrapping."
Elisa Padilla is executive director of the
Kairos Foundation. "A Justice Emergency" in The Justice
Project edited by Brian McLaren, Elisa Padilla and Ashley
Seeber, Baker Books, 2009.260-5
|
CSCO, P.O. Box 60123, Dayton, OH 45406; email: