The Emerging Church & Christopher Columbus

From time to time I've made mention of the "emerging church movement". As you may be able to tell I am somewhat ambivalent about the whole phenomenon. A few of you have expressed interest regarding my hesitation. My general perception is that just about every good observation or "inovation" by the emerging church is not new. Nor is it even paticularly ancient (nods to Webber). But rather everything good and helpful about the emergent can already be found in a Reformed world and life view. Just read the works of John Frame, Francis Schaeffer, Cornelius Van Til, Herman Bavinck, Abraham Kuyper, Louis Berkhoff, and follow the chain back sdown to John Calvin himself. Read all the folks in line with this tradition and you'll find the same things the emergent movement thinks they are discovering. (Even down to the counter-cultural facial hair). The one exception is a new emphasis away from merely propositional preaching to a narrative, more artful form of preaching which addresses the whole person rather than just the intellect. Granted the Reformed folks have traditionally been a bit imbalanced, leaning heavily towards the propositional appeal to the intellect in their preaching. But the Black preaching tradition has always had the characteristics that the emergent movement now extols.

Now this is not to say that I am against the emerging movement in totality. I am not. There are some good and helpful things going there. They just aren't as new or as innovative as the emergent set seems to think. As a reformed Presbyterian, I sort of feel like the indigeneous people groups must have felt on this continent when Columbus showed up and announced that he had "discovered" their land and renames them all indians. It's like, "well...um... We're glad you'll be joining us for dinner, but we've kinda lived here for a long time already".

I'd like to eventually give specific examples of emergent thought and its corollary in Reformed Theology, and I suppose I will eventually. I just find that when I do get some free time to blog, I seldom am in the mood to do more theological study. But I will. I'd like to hear KDNY weigh in on this topic as well.