Out emerging Emergent

I reviewed Phyllis Tickle's book, The Great Emergence, a while ago and I finished Tony Jones' The New Christians just last week. (Review to come this week or next.) Jones' book reminded me of reading Clark Pinnock's, Most Moved Mover. Pinnock's was a defense of open theism, which, at the time of my reading, was intriguing me. After reading MMM, however, it didn't captivate me.

Jones' work was similar. I am sympathetic with large chunks of the emergent church, not only in content but philosophy. But Jones' book left me with less, I don't know, satisfaction in my sympathies. This week, I put my finger on part of what this feeling was.

Jones quite helpfully shares some of Emergent's early narrative--its meetings, discussions, people, etc. He shares one time in a restaurant talking theology and blurting out, "The Bible is propaganda!" He defended it by saying propaganda is meant to convince, call, and win to its side. I couldn't disagree that I think the Bible does this, but something was off. Eugene Peterson's Eat this Book let me in on the secret. He writes, "Words spoken to us under the metaphor of eating, words to be freely taken in, tasted, chewed, savored, swallowed, and digested, have a very different effect on us from those that come at us from the outside, whether in the form of propaganda or information. Propaganda works another person's will upon us, attempting to manipulate us to an action or a belief. Insofar as we are moved by it, we become less, the puppet of a puppetteer writer/speaker. There is no dignity, no soul, in a puppet" (p. 10). That seems to me a much better description of the Bible.

Here's the irony: Jones and Emergent talk about conversation a lot. I would say it's one of their core values. (This is one of the things I really like about them.) But if Jones really thinks the Bible is propaganda, then the Bible is not about conversation. Even if it's not as severe as what Peterson says, propaganda does not aim to listen, whereas the Bible is a constant development of voices who have kept on listening to each other even in its form revealing the listening God.