The Truthinator recently run an interesting interview with an anonymous guest who was once Emergent. It is a highly recommended interview. Here is a quick teaser:
Truthinator: Since you came from an Emergent Church background, please describe what attracted you to them and how long you stayed. Also, when did you become a Christian and did the Emergent Church have anything at all to do with exposing you to God’s truth (Gospel)?
Guest: The church I attended since I was a teenager was a Pentecostal church. They had increasingly become more and more charismatic. Biblical teaching was shallow. I had a huge hand, however, in my biblical illiteracy. I just took everything that was taught and said as the truth. I had no discernment. I started feeling disillusioned with church. There were things that just seemed so wrong but I couldn’t explain it. My husband and I were married for two years when we decided to go to Bible college at Prairie Bible college. It was there that what I found to be troublesome with my home church became clear. I started ‘asking questions’ and being critical of where I came from. I started examining everything. I discovered the weak theological background of where I came from. I discovered how unbiblical my church was. But then, I was wrong too. I started thinking in a postmodern mindset. I can’t exactly pinpoint how or where it came from, but I think it may have started before I went to college. At least the foundation for it was there already. I started dabbling in relativism. There were so many people around me who would nurture that sort of thing. It was fun. I felt so enlightened and so much more smart than the narrow minded fundies in the church. I felt at the time that I had a righteous indignation against the behind the times church filled with legalists (or so I thought that’s what they were). I became liberal in my religion and liberal in my politics. I would spew things about how theology is in flux, about how the gospel is saving lives and feeding hungry people, about how we have to take care of the poor or we are hypocrites. I showed deep disdain for the preaching of the Word, though I didn’t realize it at the time. I would cheer on Tony Campolo, Brian Mclaren and all those guys who seemed to ‘get it’ where no one else did.
I think I was truly saved before this when I was 19 but my faith and knowledge was shallow. I had barely read the Bible for years, so I was easy pickings for emergent thought. In my senior year I took a class under an emergent professor called Integrative Seminar. I had no idea at the time that he had an agenda. I had no idea at the time that emergence was such an issue. I barely knew what it was at the time. But he got us to read all sorts of emergent books that really got stuck in my brain. I was oblivious to my ugly cynicism and disdain. I was truly a hypocrite. After I graduated, by God’s grace, I came to the bitter end of emergence. Disillusionment once again. There is an end to it, thank the Lord. No, I didn’t learn truth in the emergent movement. They have no idea what the gospel really is and their goal is to deconstruct the Bible. Many people who are in that movement don’t even realize they are emergent…Continue here to find out long the guest was in the Emergent Church and what was instrumental in his turn around plus the big question on Emergent Christianity’s impact on youth and missions plus the Church. Quite a good interview!
Tagged: emergents, interviews, Seeker Sensitive Movement, Truthinator's blog
