In the past decade the self-described emerging church movement has grown rapidly, fueled by the conviction that society has fundamentally changed and the Church must adapt in order to effectively witness in a new postmodern era. But what is the emerging church? What do its supporters mean by a postmodern era? And what do both of these have to do with God and his Word? D. A. Carson examines these questions in his new book Becoming Conversant With the Emerging Church. Carson explains the ideas that unite the emergent movement and their philosophical and spiritual implications from a scriptural perspective.

What Defines the Emerging Church?
To understand the importance of the emerging church movement it helps to understand what the emerging church is, but that remains somewhat undefined. The emerging church movement is diffuse and amorphous, and by its very nature rejects clearly defined doctrines. Many emergent Christians hold radically different views, making it difficult to identify what exactly it means to belong to the emerging church. In the first chapter of his book, Carson examines the beliefs of prominent self-identified emergent Christians, and finds that despite their differences, three shared beliefs unite and characterize the emerging church.

First, protest against the current state of evangelical Christianity drives many in the emergent church. They deplore what they see as a form of spiritual McCarthyism in the church today, where in some congregations pastors hold enormous influence over opinions in the church, and anyone who questions church traditions is depicted as a "liberal." Similarly, Carson finds that emergent Christians reject the spiritual isolation of many churches, which have moved from the cities to the suburbs, and are seen as ignoring the tough problems. Rather than engaging society, they see that churches have often withdrawn from it, and they find this deplorable.

The second and most defining aspect of the emerging church is its absolute rejection of modernism. Modernism is, roughly speaking, the philosophic idea that humans can search for and know the truth with certainty. Even if they do not always find truth, it is possible. The emerging church believes that our culture is rejecting modernism and thus the church must adapt to witness to a new generation.

Instead, the emerging church embraces postmodernism; a philosophy that they believe explains how people now view the world. In part, postmodernism holds that truth cannot be known perfectly, that everyone has a different perspective, and no one person's take on the truth is any better or worse than anyone else's take. This view can quickly lead to moral relativism, where right and wrong are only different points of view, so emerging church leaders strongly emphasize the fact that they oppose moral relativism. They do not, however, see objective or absolute truth as something individuals can ever learn, and they see no point in trying.

Third, the emerging church tends to reject the worship styles of modern churches, especially that of so-called "seeker sensitive mega churches." Instead, emergent Christians tend to believe that services should focus less on the preacher and more on God. They should be multi-sensory, often with more visual elements, such as candles, or incense burning in a corner. In short, the emerging church rejects the approach to worship taken by many modern churches.

Contributions of the Emerging Church
Having identified what defines the emerging church, Carson finds that it has many important strengths. Most obviously, our culture is changing rapidly, and it takes more than a superficial understanding of a culture to effectively witness to individuals in it. Premised as it is on the notion that a new church is emerging because of cultural changes, the emerging church is driven to deeply understand why our culture is changing, and how that affects our Christian witness. Leaders of the emerging church spend a lot of time thinking through and responding to cultural changes that many other Christians are oblivious to.

Additionally, an admirable hunger for authenticity drives many members of the emerging church. They are concerned that in many traditional churches worship often feels inauthentic. Carson writes that emergent Christians object to going to services where "we do not come out saying, in effect, 'Surely we have met with the living God!'"¹ Too often today the Church is complacent and driven by habit, not a passionate desire to serve the Lord. The emerging church deserves a lot of credit for working to change this.

Similarly, members of the emerging church exhibit an urgent desire to evangelize to outsiders who have traditionally been overlooked by the Church. This applies especially to people, such as artists, who live in postmodern environments and are shaped by postmodern assumptions. These traits are not unique to the emerging church, but they demonstrate the good that this movement can do.

The Emerging Church Loses Sight of the Shortcomings of Postmodernism
Members of the emerging church firmly believe that we live in a new era, and that the church must change to witness to a new, postmodern generation. However, Carson argues that in their eagerness to reject modernism and embrace the emerging postmodern worldview, the emerging church glosses over several troubling facets of postmodern philosophy.

Postmodernism, Carson explains, is founded on a false premise. Certainly fallen humans cannot know the truth perfectly, since we lack omniscience. That does not mean that all truth is unknowable, or that one perspective is just as valid as any other. Humans can truly know knowledge, even if they cannot know it perfectly. People can move beyond their assumptions and cultural background to better understand the truth, and even if they don't know the truth perfectly, they can still have better or worse understandings of it.

Similarly, despite the fact that most emergent church members are not moral relativists, postmodern philosophy inexorably leads to moral relativism. If truth is entirely a matter of individual perspective, then morality has no objective basis, and quickly becomes an individual judgment call. This worldview is profoundly un-Christian, as sin and death do exist. Emergent Christians should be more hesitant to embrace a philosophy that implies such an anti-Christian outlook, even if they do not share those conclusions.

Postmodern "Tolerance" Embraced by the Emergent Church
Carson also identifies a major intellectual shift that postmodernism has brought about and which the emergent church does not fully appreciate. Before postmodernism, tolerance meant that individuals supported the right of others to express their opinions, even if they strongly disagreed with those views. The quote famously misattributed to Voltaire neatly summed up this definition of tolerance: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Postmodernism rejects this view of tolerance. Instead, it redefines tolerance to mean that no one is right or wrong about anything, but everyone simply has a different perspective. It may be alright for you to worship Christ, but a tolerant postmodern person will also say it is equally right for another individual to worship Allah or Buddha.

In short, postmodernism redefines tolerance to mean that you disagree with no one. It refuses to tolerate anyone who rejects this assumption. 'Tolerant' postmoderns vehemently denounce individuals who claim that right and wrong are fixed principles that apply to everyone, that some religious beliefs are true while others are false. Obviously, this new tolerance is incompatible with a Christian witness, since it rejects those who would spread the gospel message that "there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).

Strikingly, the emerging church also embraces this redefined tolerance, at least in part. Carson documents that Brian McLaren and other leaders in the movement are extraordinarily hesitant to claim that almost anything is wrong: they go out of their way to avoid condemning other faiths, the belief that hell does not exist, sexual sins, and other unorthodox theological viewpoints. Instead, they will comment that Christians sin too and are not perfect. They make only one exception to their refusal to condemn anything: traditional, often conservative and evangelical, churches. These they passionately and repeatedly deride, belittle, and caricature. The only individuals they do not gladly tolerate are those Christians they disagree with.

The Emerging Church Waters Down the Christian Message
The emerging church welcomes postmodernism, seeing it as an inevitable cultural change that cannot be resisted, only responded too. In their zeal to adapt the church to changing times, emergent Christians frequently ignore the weaknesses and anti-Christian implications of postmodern thought, instead embracing postmodernism themselves. This would not present a problem if the emerging Church recognized and avoided the flaws of postmodernism. In some cases, they do. Unfortunately, however, Carson finds that the postmodern views of the emerging church often lead them to water down the gospel message. Christians should seriously consider this when evaluating the impact of the emerging church.

Postmodernism rejects absolute truth and certainty, instead embracing the value of diverse perspectives on the truth. The emerging church adopts this view towards revelation and theology. For many in the emergent Church, talk of knowing God's truth makes little sense, since knowing truth is impossible. Instead, they prefer to revel in mystery. McLaren writes that,

When we 'do theology,' we are clay pots pondering the potter, kids pondering their father, ants discussing the elephant. At some level of profundity and accuracy we are bound to be inadequate or incomplete all the time, in almost anything we say or think, considering our human limitations, including language, and God's infinite greatness.²
….
Our words will seek to be servants of mystery, not removers of it as they were in the old world. They will convey a message that is clear yet mysterious, simply yet mysterious, substantial yet mysterious.³

Certainly there are many mysteries about God we cannot understand right now, but we are far from ants gazing at an elephant. We may not know all of God's truth right now, but we do know some of it, because God has revealed himself to us. Jesus became a man, came to earth, and explained to us in language we can understand what He and the Father and the Kingdom of Heaven are like. We have God's word in scripture to learn from. "For by grace you have been saved through faith"(Eph. 2:8). This we know. We should not exalt in the mysteries God has not yet revealed to us, but in the certain truths that he has revealed to us. Yet in its embrace of mystery and aversion to claims of absolute truth, the emerging church loses sight of this.

Carson finds another consequence of the post-modern aversion to truth claims in the emerging church: it tends to duck elements of Christianity that smack of absolutism. Particularly, the emergent church avoids the subject of Hell. If those who do not place their faith in Christ go to hell, then that means that their beliefs are unambiguously wrong. It means that individuals can find the truth, and that whether or not they do so matters immensely. But when the subject of Hell comes up, leaders of the emergent church chide those who raise the question and avoid answering.

Similarly, since they wish to avoid the reality of Hell, the emergent church seeks another explanation for the necessity of Christ's death on the cross. The idea that Christ died on the cross to take the penalty for our sins does not make much sense if you ignore the eternal punishment He saved us from. McLaren writes, "That just sounds like one more injustice in the cosmic equation. It sounds like divine child abuse."⁴ And yet the Word of God teaches this: "He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10). Writers in the emergent church duck from this teaching because it conflicts with their beliefs about the non-existence of Hell. When scripture and our beliefs collide, we should not stray from the Word of God.

Carson also observes that emergent church leaders allow their postmodern beliefs to override scripture in the way they treat other religious truth claims. Emergent Christians are eager to live lives that give testimony to their faith, and will happily tell their story to anyone who asks. For this they deserve much credit. However, members of the emergent church rarely proselytize, and will almost never state that other religions are wrong or that non-Christian faiths lead to hell. When someone raises this topic, emergent church leaders frequently respond by noting that other Christians have committed atrocities and sinned deeply as well.

They are correct in so far as many Christians have done terrible things, and will probably continue to do so in the future. That does not, however, show the equivalence of the Christianity and other faiths; it merely demonstrates that some individuals do not live up to the beliefs they espouse. By their very nature, however, other religions worship something other than the living triune God. They are idolatrous, and do not lead to salvation. One searches the Bible in vain to find support for the idea that God does not mind individuals worshipping other gods. No, rather God repeatedly condemns and punishes Israel for worshipping idols and joining other religions.

Christians often fall short, but that does not change the fact that faith in Christ, and faith in Christ alone, leads to salvation from death and Hell. Carson finds that the emerging church does not want to deal with this, so at best they simply ignore it. At worst, they will falsely claim that other faiths can also lead to salvation. Because of their commitment to postmodernism, members of the emergent church water down the gospel until it fits with their postmodern assumptions about the nature of truth. Christians inside and outside the emerging church should find this deeply disturbing.

The Significance of Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Churc
In his book, Becoming Conversant with the Emergent Church, Carson makes one of the first serious efforts to systematically examine the emergent church, what it stands for, and its philosophical grounding. While several leaders of the emergent church, such as Brian McLaren, have written books explaining their vision for the church, these books almost invariably attempt to avoid defining emergent church and its beliefs.

Instead, these books explain the beliefs they reject, where they see that the church has fallen short, and suggest changes for the church to undertake. But being influenced by postmodernism, the authors want to avoid drawing boundaries and adhering to creeds, instead allowing everyone to bring their own perspective with them to the church. Consequently they tend to avoid spelling out "the emergent church believes this, for this reason." This fits perfectly with their postmodern presuppositions, but can prove frustrating to anyone who does not yet fully embrace these views but wants to examine what the emerging church believes and its consequences for the Church today.

Carson has studied the emergent church, and provides an informative and accurate guide to its beliefs, its strengths, and its shortcomings, that anyone who wants to understand this movement should read. He captures the key components that characterize the emergent church, while always noting the diversity of opinion within the emergent movement and the fact that many disagree even over those basic beliefs. Throughout the book, Carson makes every effort to be fair to both the emerging church and its critics, clearly presenting both their views and the basis for those views.

Carson clearly has an expert grasp of the philosophical issues surrounding postmodernism. He provides an informative and easy to understand guide to the motivations for and the consequences of embracing a postmodern outlook on life. In addition to this, Carson remains biblically grounded throughout the book, never losing sight of the fact that postmodernism simply represents another human philosophy far less important than the Word of God. The most powerful critique of the emerging church he presents in the book comes when he shows that some emergent Christians elevate postmodern first principles above faithfulness to scripture.

Conclusion
The emerging church movement has grown rapidly in the past decade. Many Christians sympathetic to, or completely unfamiliar with, this movement would like to learn more about its origins and beliefs. However, few books available today do explore the foundations of the emerging church. Becoming Conversant with the Emergent Church fills this important void. Carson identifies the core beliefs that unite emergent Christians, and finds many strengths that they bring to the church. However, Carson also sees that the emergent church has failed to fully analyze the implications of the postmodern philosophy its welcomes so eagerly, and at times allows postmodernism to weaken their Christian witness. Any Christian interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the emerging church should read this book and seriously consider both the strengths and weaknesses of the emergent movement that Carson identifies.

1. D.A. Carson, Conversing with the Emergent Church, p.50. ↩
2. Brian McLaren, The Church on the Other Side, p.65.↩
3. Ibid, p.89.↩
4. Brian McLaren, The Story We Find Ourselves In, p.102. ↩