History repeating?

I freely admit to not knowing that much about the whole “emergent” church phenomenon, but if this article is at all accurate, it really is starting to sound like a re-hash of liberal Protestantism. Or liberal Protestantism with jangly rock guitars, a more casual dress code, and some faux-medieval trappings.

The two elements that stand out are an emphasis on “social activism” over a narrow focus on individual salvation (it’s interesting how the evangelical Right gets criticized both for not being concerned enough about politics and for being too concerned about politics!), and a focus on “following Jesus” rather than the “rules and doctrines” of the institutional church. But isn’t this just liberal Protestantism in a nutshell? Though it styles itself as a movement “that rejects what it sees as the rigidity of the religious right and the timidity of liberal mainline churches,” it’s hard to see anything radically new here.

And despite all the postmodern mumbo-jumbo, the idea of peeling away “doctrine and rules and just loving people” in order to uncover the essential kernel of Christianity is the quintessential modern project. Will emergent leaders start writing books about how the “simple faith” of Jesus was obscured by the theological chicanery of Paul who excessively Hellenized (or Judaized, depending on the critic) Jesus’ message of brotherly love?

(Also, from a Lutheran point of view it’s worth pointing out that simply telling people to “follow Jesus” is a classic confusion of Law and Gospel. If you keep telling people they should be like Jesus without preaching the Gospel you threaten to simply terrify consciences and leave people in their sins. As Luther liked to say, Christ must be received as a gift before he can be followed as an example.)

It’s hard not to see the notorious American evangelical penchant for ignoring history at work here. Will this just be an evangelical recapitulation of the history of liberal Protestantism, or will it result in a genuinely new form of Christianity for the 21st century? And do we need such a thing?