Part III. Emergent Influence in the British Church

PART III.  Emergent Influence in the British Church

INTRODUCTION

First, a BIG caution: Inclusion in this section must not be interpreted as a critique upon the individuals or organisations mentioned. The details which follow are given solely to illustrate the widespread infiltration of emergent theology in British churches.

Because the emerging church movement is broad and hard to define I have used as my criteria for inclusion in this database those organisations and individuals who acknowledge a link between themselves and the leading US emergent Brian McLaren.  I have only reproduced statements and references to McLaren which are in the public domain and available on the internet. If references to quotations are omitted they will be in the footnotes or with the complete entry in Appendix Two.

As has already been made clear, emergent teaching contains elements of liberalism and universalism which are contrary to the doctrine of orthodox evangelical Christianity; some of this so great a departure from orthodoxy that it is barely recognisable as Christian; churches which subscribe to these aspects of emergent teaching might justifiably be accused of slipping into heresy.

I have already said elsewhere in this paper that, by ‘Emerging Church’, I do not mean the genuinely evangelical part of the movement which has now separated from it because of doctrinal differences.  I also recognise that, particularly in the UK, there are orthodox Christians who would identify themselves as ‘emergent’ but have no idea that the main part of the movement that is centred around the Emergent Village in the US is liberal, heterodox, and theologically adrift. They would reject those teachings if they were aware of them.  The smears of heresy hunting must be resisted; no one is suspect just because they say they are ‘emergent’ Christians.

Individuals who make approving mentions of Brian McLaren, citing him or his books may be properly inspired by his challenge to the church to resist apathy or cultural inflexibility; they may not have noticed any error in his writing, or have read works in which the error is less evident. Some, however, will be at the other end of the spectrum, and may fully subscribe to McLaren’s redefinition of Christian orthodoxy and be in the process of ‘abandoning the gospel’ (D.A. Carson’s assessment of McLaren’s position[1]).

I must repeat again that the sole purpose of this section is to illustrate the widespread influence of leading American emergents on British Christianity. I cannot and would not make any judgment on an individual or organisation. I have said already that I have very little time for ‘heresy hunters’ who smear by innuendo on the basis of tenuous associations between individuals and movements which they draw by intellectually dubious and dishonest reasoning.

That having been said, many people or organisations included in this section have a clear, identifiable and sympathetic link to Brian McLaren[2]. I believe that an endorsement of McLaren is the litmus test which it is reasonable to use to define some degree of emergent penetration of a British Church or parachurch organisation.

My full database on the Emerging Church extends to almost 100,000 words. The information contained in the next pages is a small portion of that and a longer version is reproduced in Appendix Two. Appendix Two still represents only about 10% of the material in my database on the Emerging Church.

At least one conclusion can be drawn from the information contained in the following  pages: If the infiltration of the British church by the emergent liberalism of McLaren and others is a matter of concern, it is too late to prevent it from arriving. It is deeply entrenched already.

David Watson once remarked that the problem with British Christianity was not that the church was ‘in Babylon’ but that Babylon was in the church. Perhaps that is even truer today than it was when he wrote those words.

AN OVERVIEW OF EMERGENT INFLUENCE IN THE UK

1.   The Influence of Brian McLaren

Conferences:

Brian McLaren has spoken at, or has been booked to speak at, British conferences organised by

• CWR (Crusade for World Revival)
• The Lambeth Conference (2008)
• Spring Harvest
• The Evangelical Alliance
• Oasis Trust/Faithworks
• Fresh Expressions (the Anglican church planting initiative)
• Greenbelt
• Reaching the Unchurched Network (RUN) (Evangelical Alliance)
• Summer Madness (the leading Irish Christian summer event)

Other Organisations:

In addition to these organisations McLaren has been endorsed by parts of

• Church Army
• CMS (Church Mission Society)
• The UK Vineyard
• Youth for Christ
• Slipstream (the Evangelical Alliance young leadership initiative)

Among Church Leaders:

British Christian leaders who have clearly endorsed Brian McLaren, many with great enthusiasm, include

• Rowan Williams (Archbishop of Canterbury),
• Steve Chalke (founder/leader of Oasis, Stop the Taffik, Freshworks)
• Mark Russell (CEO Church Army)
• Jonny Baker (CMS National Youth Coordinator and coordinator of worship for Greenbelt)
• Krish Kandiah,  (Executive Director of Churches in Mission, Evangelical Alliance)
• Wes Sutton (leader Oasis church network and former Vineyard pastor)
• Dave Tomlinson (former House Church leader, vicar of St Luke’s West Holloway and founder member of the pro-gay pressure group Accepting Evangelicals)
• Jason Clark  (pastor of the Sutton Vineyard, co-ordinator of Emergent UK, and the Deep Church blog/sites)

In America the latest book by Todd Hunter the former CEO of, now consultant to, Alpha USA, is endorsed by Brian McLaren (who calls Todd ‘my friend’). Hunter was a national leader of Vineyard, is now an Episcopalian Bishop and has spoken at an emergent conference alongside McLaren.

2.   Rob Bell

Rob Bell is, like McLaren, a well-known pastor, author and leading emergent. He is very popular with Christians in their teens and twenties. Bell’s teaching is equally heterodox, as the selection of quotations from his writings in Appendix One shows, but, partly because he is such an accomplished speaker, it is also initially hard to spot this.

• Bell has spoken at Steve Chalke’s Oasis Church
• The Tearfund website carries a podcast of an interview with him.
• He is quoted positively on the Evangelical Alliance website

In spite of the fact that it was published over three years ago, his book Velvet Elvis remains high on the Christian bestseller lists and Bell was a guest of honour at the Christian Booksellers awards dinner 2007.

• Velvet Elvis is number 10 on the New Wine bestseller list
• His books are 8 and 9 on the HTB bestseller list

His materials are used widely in youth work – for example in the

• Worcester Chaplaincy
• The Stewards Trust
• University of Exeter Nooma Group
• Diocese of At Albans Youth ministry
• Ivybridge Youth For Christ (Devon)
• Soul Survivor Watford use his DVDs.
• Key Stage Two Schools RE
• Blackburn Diocese youth work
• Liverpool, Durham, Cambridge & Warwick Universities

… and many others.

***

IN DETAIL

(For the sake of clarity and easy reading, footnotes are not included in this next section, but every quotation that is included is also to be found in full in Appendix Two with its source reference)

Brian McLaren has been well received in many parts of the British Church, nowhere  more so than in Steve Chalke’s Oasis network. Chalke is described as one of the best known faces in British Christianity. He is an accomplished speaker and his charitable organisations such as Stop the Traffik have made a major impact in the field of human rights and social justice, earning him an MBE and a position as a UN Special Advisor of human trafficking. Chalke contributed a foreword to McLaren’s 2007 A Search for What is Real and to McLaren’s latest book  A New Kind of Christianity. In the latter Chalke writes:  ‘Brian’s writing is brave and honest, vulnerable and courageous, disturbing and unsettling, reassuring and hopeful. Every now and then you come across a book you’ve been waiting for. A New Kind of Christianity is that book.’

In 2004 book Chalke’s own The Lost Message of Jesus provoked outcry from mainline British Evangelicals after several pages questioned the idea that God put our punishment on Jesus on the cross  – otherwise known as ‘penal substitution’ – in language that was almost identical to McLaren, who had described it as ‘divine child abuse’ the year before. He wrote:

The fact is that the cross isn’t a form of cosmic child abuse—a vengeful father, punishing his son for an offence he has not even committed. Understandably, both people inside and outside of the church have found this twisted version of events morally dubious and a huge barrier to faith.
The Evangelical Alliance rejected Chalke’s position and called a symposium on Penal Substitution at which Chalke defended his comments. Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, who had endorsed the book, said that Chalke had been misunderstood but fallout from the book and subsequent events at Spring Harvest, where Chalke is on the leadership team, and at Chalke’s Oasis Church network, appear to indicate that Wright’s assurance of Chalke’s orthodoxy was premature.

Spring Harvest and Bible Alive, which had run a bible stream in conjunction with Spring Harvest for many years, split soon afterwards. Amidst contradictory and recriminatory statements from Bishop Pete Broadbent, on behalf of the Spring Harvest team, and UCCF and Keswick, on behalf of Bible Alive, it seems clear that Chalke’s abandonment of penal substitution was the cause because Bible Alive had refused to invite him to speak at their meetings – a refusal which led to the split.

Given that Brian McLaren has described the doctrine of penal substitution in the same terms and with the UCCF/Keswick contingent now absent from Spring Harvest, it is perhaps not surprising that McLaren was not only invited to be a keynote speaker at Spring Harvest in 2009 but enthusiastically announced by the Spring Harvest press release as follows:

“We are so excited to have Brian McLaren with us at Spring Harvest in 2009” comments Wendy Beech-Ward, Director of Events. “Brian is a leading thinker on the issues of faith, politics and culture. I’m sure our Guests will be inspired by his experience, insight and vision for Church mission”.

Chalke’s association with McLaren continues: McLaren will be a main speaker at Chalke’s Faithworks 2010 conference in February 2010, where McLaren will also launch his new book. Meanwhile,  in a September 2009 article on the Oasis Church website, echoing McLaren’s own sentiments and reflecting mainstream liberal emergent thinking, Steve Chalke redefined conversion as ‘seeing the world differently’ and adopting a new agenda.  He wrote that being ‘born again’

has become the basis for one of the most confusing, misused and abused, misunderstood and despised ideas in the history of the Church. (For unbelievers) it sums up a type of Christianity that is not only judgemental, bigoted, arrogant and narrow-minded… The truth is that when Jesus spoke to Nicodemus (a sincere, questioning and spiritually-seeking Pharisee), he was not using the term ‘born-again’ in the same sense we have come to do. Jesus was simply saying that entering into God’s Kingdom or Shalom is about seeing the world differently and adopting his new agenda

Back at the Evangelical Alliance it is unlikely that anyone would now pick a fight with Chalke over this redefinition of the evangelical doctrine of salvation because by 2008 the Evangelical Alliance had clearly lost its previous determination to stand against emergent liberalism. Even though Brian McLaren was widely known to hold the same views as Chalke and to be a universalist he was invited to the Evangelical Alliance’s Scottish conference in December 2008. The EA website advertised his appearance at ‘numerous events’ across Scotland in December and its website still carries (Jan 2010) a lengthy interview with him. The Evangelical Alliance also posted the McLaren interview on its You Tube channel and the clip is still there (Jan 2010), so their endorsement of him is current.

***

The EA’s invitation to McLaren to speak at its Dec 2008 conference was no one-off. It seems that they too have ‘gone over’ to McLaren, or are in the process of doing so.  Slipstream, the Evangelical Alliance young leadership initiative, organised a Reaching the Unchurched Network (RUN) national conference in June 2008. Brian McLaren was a guest speaker.

Krish Kandiah, Evangelical Alliance’s Executive Director of Churches, one of the hosts of RUN 2008, is an enthusiastic McLaren fan. Kandiah is a senior figure within the EA. He was formerly Director of the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics and Tutor in Mission and Evangelism at Wycliffe Hall. He is a regular speaker at Spring Harvest and is also an associate research fellow at London School of Theology and an external examiner for Oak Hill Theological College. On his website Krish recommends Generous Orthodoxy by Brian McLaren, The Church in Emerging Culture edited by Leonard Sweet, which has a contribution by McLaren, Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell, and Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne. All four are classic liberal emergent texts. Kandiah does include Becoming Conversant With The Emerging Church by Don Carson, the most detailed critique of the Emerging Church (and of McLaren in particular) but he dismisses the book as ‘polemical, angry and unsympathetic’ and accuses Carson of demonstrating ‘a naive proof-texting approach to his epistemology’ – quite a sweeping judgement on a Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Illinois!

In September 2008, the Evangelical Alliance convened a conference to discuss the ‘crisis of leadership in the British church,  the problem of an aging church leadership and a lack of younger leaders to replace those who are leaving or retiring’. In his speech, Krish Kandiah recommended the teaching and example of Brian McLaren and Shane Claiborne, both by name,  as part of the solution to the British churches’ crisis.

Mark Russell, the Chief Executive of Church Army, sits on the Council of the Evangelical Alliance but is unlikely to raise any objection to its endorsement of Brian McLaren. By his own admission, he also greatly admires McLaren, as he writes on his blog:

Many of you will know I am a huge fan of Brian McLaren. He is a prophet, teacher and really radical voice for our world today.

Meeting a hero:  I had the privilege this week of speaking at a Fresh Expressions Conference in Canberra Australia alongside Brian McLaren. I have been a fan of Brian’s for many years and his books have inspired, challenged and just spoken with such sense into the jumbled mess of the church. It was a privilege to meet this amazing man, and to find that up close, he oozes integrity and reality.

In Russell’s role in Church Army he leads a society of over 300 full time evangelists and is an advocate for evangelism in the wider church.  He has been an HTB Home Focus speaker and is a regular at New Wine, Soul Survivor and other national conferences as well as on national television.

Like Krish Kandiah, Mark Russell holds and influential position within British Christianity. He is a member of Archbishops’ Council and General Synod of the Church of England, chair of the Youth Panel of the Board of Education, and a member of the Archbishops’ College of Evangelists. The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu has commended him for his ‘infectious love for Jesus Christ and the refreshing commitment to evangelism that the Church needs right now”. He has been a visiting speaker at HTB.

What both Russell and Kandiah endorse (in this case McLaren’s dubious theology) will be adopted widely in the organisations which they represent.

***

Brian McLaren has established considerable rapport with the Anglican Church, which he has identified as being open to new ideas from the emerging church because it is a church of ‘compromise’ –  in his terms, is a laudable quality.

Mark Russell and Bishop Pete Broadbent of Spring Harvest are not the most senior Anglican figures to have welcomed Brian McLaren. McLaren was invited by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams to the 2008 Lambeth Conference, where Williams introduced him to the 800 bishops in glowing terms:

Three or four years ago, I spied a book with an interesting title in a bookstore. It had the longest subtitle I’ve ever seen. After I finished his book, I knew he was someone I wanted to speak to us here tonight.

McLaren gave two talks. The notes introducing one of them , titled ‘New/Emergent approaches to mission’, tellingly state: ‘Many Christians want to be and promote a church more relevant to and respectful of secular culture and real lives. One movement that has grown out of this is the ‘emergent church’ network. Dr McLaren is a key player in the ‘emerging’ conversation.’

The Archbishop’s endorsement has only furthered McLaren’s popularity within Anglican and British church circles. Fresh Expressions is a case in point. Fresh Expressions is an exciting Church of England and Methodist Church initiative encouraging people who hope to ‘establish new or different forms of church for a changing culture.’ It was launched in 2005 by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York with the Methodist Council, but now also involves a number of other partners, including the United Reformed Church, the Congregational Federation, Church Army, CMS, and Anglican Church Planting Initiatives. It is led by Bishop Graham Cray. With endorsement from the highest levels of mainline British denominations, and its influence has been huge. It states that it has resulted in hundreds of new congregations being formed alongside more traditional churches.

But Fresh Expressions is also seeding liberal Emergent Church teaching into the foundations of many of the next generation of cutting edge churches in the UK. Its own website carries a number of supportive statements about, and recommendations of, Brian McLaren, describing him as ‘one of the very best names in the field’ of innovative alternative church growth, as an ‘American missiologist’. The websites and links of quite a number of its trainers and missioners also carry links or supportive references to Brian McLaren and other emergent websites.

Two typical examples are Rev Ian Mobsby, and Rev Dr Maggi Dawn. Mobsby is Research Section Editor for the EmergingChurch.info portal, and co-editor of the Anglimergent.com global network,  which contains numerous sympathetic posts and references to Brian McLaren, and cites himself as an associate lecturer at St Pauls Theological College. Maggi Dawn, a co-author with Jane Williams of  Reflections for Daily Prayer and chaplain of Robinson College Cambridge, has written the cover blurb for Brian McLaren’s next book, to be launched in the UK at Faithworks 2010 (‘I can tell you that McLaren fans are in for a good read. Brian is like a writing machine… those books just keep on coming.’).

Phyllis Tickle is said to be ‘one of the most highly respected authorities and popular speakers on religion in America today’.  A ‘lector and lay eucharistic minister’ in the Episcopal Church, and a senior fellow of the Cathedral College of Washington National Cathedral, she is also leading emergent thinker and regular on their conference circuit. So it becomes particularly revealing when she states in her book The Great Emergence that the Emerging Church movement believes it is a ‘once in 500 year phenomenon’, that it will become as significant to the future church as the Reformation in the 16^th Century, and that it began in Britain:

Emerging Christianity found its first fullest expression in the British experience… In the UK, the Emergent or Emerging sensibility is very often referred to as ‘Fresh Expressions’ churches.

When I suggest that Fresh Expressions is seeding emergent teaching into dozens of new original churches, this is not hysteria if emergents claim it themselves.

Emergent influence is spreading not only through Fresh Expressions training on the ground but also through the training of ordinands, especially those going the route of Ordained Pioneer Ministry. Cranmer Hall, the leading Anglican training college attached to St John’s College Durham,  has just appointed Michael Volland (who Cranmer call ‘one of the country’s leading pioneers in mission’) as Director of Mission and Pioneer Ministry at Cranmer Hall:

He brings with him a wealth of experience in Fresh Expressions of church and contemporary mission….and looks forward to developing training for both Ordained Pioneer Ministers and those who expect their future ministries to include active engagement with emerging and Fresh Expressions of church.

Unfortunately, Volland thinks Phyllis Tickle’s book is good enough to recommend on his blog, where he adds links to five other emergent individuals mentioned here, and to a number of emergent communities and churches, two of which are mentioned by Phyllis Tickle as good examples of the new emergent churches she is talking about.

Whether or not ECM teaching is heterodox, what is indisputable is that new CofE ordinands in Durham and elsewhere[3] are being trained for ministry by people who are fully on board with the Emerging Church movement.

***

Two streams that clearly coming out of some British ‘Fresh Expressions’ are ‘alternative worship’ and a connected rediscovery of catholic/orthodox/ancient ritual and liturgy. Both can be healthy expressions of spirituality but it seems to me there are worrying nuances in many of these, particularly when so many link to websites and organisations which are

• supportive of ‘faithful’ sexually active homosexual relationships among Christians
• critical or dismissive of charismatic worship
• directly associated with heterodox key emergents like McLaren,  and
• say they take their inspiration from the Nine O’clock Service, where  the ‘rediscovery’ of ancient worship practices combined with modern multi-media techniques was one of the church’s routes into heretical chaos.

I am emphatically not saying that those things are wrong in themselves (heresy hunters would, I don’t) but when they replace authentic worship, they are questionable; we need to remind ourselves that the pioneers of the Reformation rejected such practices just because they felt they could become a replacement for authentic spirituality, not an aid to it. That is a balance we must maintain. I am worried by it.

A direct link between Alternative Worship and the Emerging Church and acceptance of homosexual practice seems evident. The key website alternativeworship.org is run by Rev Dr Paul Roberts, an Anglican priest who holds a PhD in liturgy and is a former lecturer in worship and doctrine at Trinity College Bristol. He is also a member of General Synod and the Liturgical Commission and Dean of Non Residential Training at St Michael’s College Llandaff.  Roberts is a founder member of acceptingevangelicals.org which promotes acceptance of active/physical homosexual relationships among Christians.  On alternativeworship.org Roberts says the terms  ‘Emerging church’ and the ‘alternative worship movement’ ‘are used side by side and often interchangeably to describe the same general area of church expression.’

Many readers of this paper will not have heard of alternativeworship.org but a survey of other organisations and websites that recommends it or links to it on their own websites shows how far the penetration of emergent theology into the mainstream church has gone. Here is a list of some:

Reading University Chaplaincy; Diocese of Newcastle youth resources; Diocese of Leeds youth resources; Diocese of Liverpool youth resources; Emerging Methodists (emergingmethodists.org); Anglimergent ; Christchurch Youth ministry (Billericay & Little Burstead Team Ministry); Café Spirit (joint church initiative) Chorlton cum Hardy, South Manchester; Bearwood Baptist Church, Smethwick; Richmond Team Ministry, Richmond, Surrey; Grace’s monthly service, St Mary’s Church, South Ealing; Slipstream (Evangelical Alliance); Student Christian Movement; Accepting Evangelicals; Morph Community, Ipswich; Visions, York (at York Minster) ; EK Third Day, Claremont Parish Church, East Kilbride, Glasgow; St Paul’s Church, Maidstone; Anglican Diocese of Gloucester (Gloucestershire Churches Together); Thinking Anglicans ; Small Ritual; Radiate-UK, The King’s Community Church, Aberdeen; Emergingchurch.info; Urban Expression; Momentum UK (Nazarene Church, British Isles); Church Without Walls (Church of Scotland); Squarefish (Anglican Devon youth ministry); youthwork.co.uk; Ikon Belfast.

A significant contribution to the move to depose the primacy of modern charismatic worship and establish emergent ‘alternative worship’ in its stead  has been made by CMS’s Jonny Baker, author of a book on alternative worship. Working with Fresh Expressions missioner Ben Edson, and Cranmer ordinand trainer Michael Volland (see above), Baker is coordinator of worship for Greenbelt, the Christian summer event which has long been a cause of concern to evangelicals because of the liberal stance it takes on issues like homosexuality and Christian orthodoxy. Brian McLaren was a main speaker at Greenbelt 2008.  Jonny Baker dismisses modern charismatic worship as ‘dull’ ‘predictable’ and ‘dislocated from contemporary culture’ and ‘stuck in the 70s’. In his view ‘it lacks depth and has ended up being very predictable… The range of themes and language in the songs and prayers simply doesn’t address all the issues of life. After a few years people want something more.’

Baker’s opinion counts and will have influence because he is also (or was until recently) National Youth Coordinator for CMS, the Anglican Church Mission Society and a regular speaker on the conference circuit and a leading youth trainer. He also has written an enthusiastic endorsement of the UK edition of Brian McLaren’s 2010 book A New Kind of Christianity for Harper Collins. Given that he is so convinced by McLaren’s theology it becomes alarming when he writes that what is important about worship is ‘not the style but that the church and worship and theology was being done in imaginative ways and forms that people could relate to in their lives.’  It is even more unsettling because Jonny Baker’s new role at CMS is to train people for (Anglican) Ordained Pioneer Ministry.

CMS clearly approve of McLaren: their website contains a number of uncritical reports of Brian McLaren (he is cited as ‘Evangelist Brian McLaren’). Together with the Church Army and Youth For Christ, they  financially co sponsor another website, emergingchurch.info, (editor Ian Mobsby – see Fresh Expressions above).  Among its resources emergingchurch.info offer for British visitors to the site is a paper criticising the traditional doctrine of hell and judgement (a common feature of emergent theology) with references to Brian McLaren to support for such criticism.  The site contains at least a dozen references to McLaren as well as a number of referrals to other leading liberal emergents Rob Bell and Doug Pagitt.

***

The spread of the influence of McLaren and the emerging church movement goes into organisations, churches and denominations which were at the forefront of revival in times past. A Fresh Expressions plant out of St Michael Le Belfry (David Watson’s former church, but perhaps significantly also the former church of FE leader Bishop Graham Cray)  runs “Transcendence, An Ancient Future Mass” in York Minster, ‘a Eucharist in the High Anglican tradition, with robes, processions, candles, incense, sacred chant, trip-hop beats, colourful projected images, video loops, and creative prayer stations… part of a movement rather loosely termed Alternative Worship’, which links to Greenbelt, alternativeworship.org and emergingchurch.info.

In May 2006 the Crusade for World Revival (CWR) held a one day workshop at their HQ in Surrey to ‘explore the role of the church in contemporary culture and how we reach people today without assimilating the culture.’ The guest speaker was Brian McLaren,  introduced as ‘a leading writer in the field of emerging church’. He is that, but the late Selwyn Hughes would probably have been dismayed by the thought of inviting him.

The Vineyard has its share of McLaren enthusiasts, too, though it does appear that the mainstream UK Vineyard is more circumspect. The pastor of the Sutton Vineyard is Jason Clark, the national co-ordinator of Emergent UK and of the Deep Church blog/site.  Clark was a leading speaker at the Emergent Convention San Diego 2003 alongside Brian McLaren, Todd Hunter, Chris Seay, Doug Pagitt, and Dave Tomlinson (UK). He credits Todd Hunter (former Alpha US Director, now an Alpha US consultant, and, newly, an Anglican Bishop) with introducing him to Brian McLaren and the emerging church at a Vineyard young leaders’ conference 10 years ago. Clark is unabashed about his debt to his ‘friend’ McLaren, who ‘amongst others laid hands on my mind, with thinking and theology that was life giving.’ Wes Sutton, another long term Vineyard pastor, has now moved over to Oasis with Steve Chalke and writes one of two theology articles on the Oasis website. In the other Chalke disparages the term ‘born again’.

A fellow Brit speaking at the 2004 San Diego Emerging Church conference was Dave Tomlinson, who was well known as a British House Church leader in the 1980s. He left the movement at the end of the decade and in 1995 published The Post-Evangelical, recognised as one of the trail blazing British books of the new emerging church, after which he joined the Anglican Church as a priest. Tomlinson’s emergent and New Age interests have already been mentioned in an earlier section of this paper but, for completeness, are also added here.

Tomlinson is now Vicar of St Luke’s, Holloway, originally  home of the Greenbelt Christian Arts Festival. With Paul Roberts (above) he is also founder member of Accepting Evangelicals – ‘an open network of Evangelical Christians who believe the time has come to move towards the acceptance of faithful, loving same-sex partnerships at every level of church life, and the development of a positive Christian ethic for gay and lesbian people… St Luke’s presents itself as a ‘community of people who aim to be inclusive and accepting – regardless of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, background or belief’.

Tomlinson’s church, although it is an Anglican parish church, stands at the junction of the emergent church and New Age spirituality. The church has its own spiritual centre called Breathing Space which runs (rather than rents out space for) fortnightly Astanga Yoga classes , and holds courses in Sufi spirituality offering “a taste of the fundamental perspectives and approaches for relating to life, to self and others, and to God/Goddess/Source, which are at the heart of the Western variety of Universalist Sufism”. The teacher of this course Muiz Brinkerhoff is ‘certified as a Leader of the Dances of Universal Peace in the Sufi Islamia Ruhaniat Society…(and himself says he is)  the first openly gay/queer man to be confirmed as a Sheikh in any formal Sufi Order’. Tomlinson describes the doctrine of original sin as ‘biblically questionable, extreme, and profoundly unhelpful’.

St Luke’s Holloway reflects a wider interest some part of the Emerging Church movement in mysticism and Eastern spiritual techniques which is already reflected in some alternative worship events and is probably likely to become more evident in the coming years.

Both Rob Bell and Brian McLaren have given some indication of this – for example

[In Yoga] it’s not how flexible you are, it’s not whether you can do the poses, it’s not how much you can bend yourself, it’s can you keep your breath [breathes in and out] consistent [breathes out] through whatever you are doing. And the Yoga Masters say this is how it is when you follow Jesus and surrender to God. Is it’s your breath being consistent. It’s your connection with God regardless of the pose you find yourself in. That’s integrating the divine into the daily.
–Rob Bell (script from his Nooma DVD Breathe)

Western Christianity has (for the last few centuries anyway) said relatively little about mindfulness and meditative practices, about which Zen Buddhism has said much. To talk about different things is not to contradict one another; it is, rather, to have much to offer one another, on occasion at least.
—Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, p. 225

OUR RESPONSE?

How should we respond? Apathy or action? Rob Bell believes that this is a moment in history which the emergents must seize; they are to redefine and reshape of the church for the future:

These first Christians passed on the faith to the next generation who passed it on to the next generation who passed it on to the next generation until it got to us. Here. Today. Those who follow Jesus and belong to his church. And now it is our turn. It is our turn to step up and take responsibility for who the church is going to be for a new generation. It is our turn to redefine and reshape and dream it all up again[4]

To which some might say, ‘Not on my watch’.

Sam Storm’s warning has already been mentioned but is worth repeating after this overview of Brian McLaren’s and the ECM’s  influence in the British church:

My fear is that some, perhaps many, who are enamoured with the Emergent conversation simply haven’t wrestled with the far-reaching implications of (McLaren’s) theological convictions. Biblical inerrancy, substitutionary atonement, the existence of a personal devil, and the reality of eternal conscious punishment all come under criticism (if not outright denial) in his published works. He appears to embrace an evolutionary framework to account for the natural order, declines to identify homosexuality as sin or non-Christian religions as idolatry, and speaks approvingly of an inclusivist view on whether or not one must consciously believe in Jesus Christ in order to be saved.[5]

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS

While I do not deny our call to live a lifestyle of radical compassion for the poor and oppressed and to take a stand for justice, I do not accept that this should be done in the context of the teaching and church practice proposed by the Emerging Church movement. There are other more admirable models: Bethel School of Ministry have kitchens set up to feed the needy of their city and they sent their own team to Haiti in Jan 2010; Heidi and Rolland Baker’s ministry in Mozambique has planted thousands of churches[6], raised many dead, and daily feeds thousands of orphans.  In both cases they not only practically minister to the poorest people on earth but pray for (and see) divine miracles. All would be appalled by the liberalism of the Emerging Church movement.

On that subject, nothing in any of the emergent books I have read makes any reference to the miraculous healing of the sick or deliverance of the demonised and yet this is one of the most exciting areas of ministry breakthrough currently taking place in the worldwide church. I personally doubt that the churches run by liberal emergent leaders are seeing significant numbers of healings or deliverance, if any. Given that many do not believe in the existence of demons, that is perhaps not surprising. But this raises serious questions about their claim to be God’s new authentic model of church for the 21^st Century. Is the God of their emerging new age one who does not heal?

At the risk of being repetitive, it is perhaps worth concluding with the following suggestions about the Emerging Church, which are made in the light of the information contained in this paper:

• The liberal majority of the Emerging Church movement is pursuing a theology that is unscriptural and denies the central tenets of orthodox evangelical Christianity
• It has penetrated  numerous parts of the body of Christ especially in Britain and represents a serious threat to the church now and  in the next decade
• It presents a false gospel that denies the central tenets of evangelical Christianity, including eternal judgment of the unrepentant through separation from God in hell, the inerrancy of scripture, and penal substitutionary atonement. It portrays Christian conversion as joining a movement of good works, not as being born again from above by the Holy Spirit, and either will not speak out against, or approves of homosexual practice, even among confessing Christians.
• That its errors are far more serious than those which give rise to denominational differences. They contradict the gospel and are counter-Christian, rather than a variation of it
• It has been unwittingly endorsed by many church leaders and accepted widely within their congregations as and expression of radical, authentic Christianity
• Presents a significant threat to the spiritual integrity of many churches, to the spiritual wellbeing their members, and the impact of those churches’ wider ministry to millions of people around the world
• Unopposed, this teaching will lure people away from embracing an authentic Christian faith and leave them convinced that they are born again believers, though they may not be

As a counterfeit Christianity, it should be identified as such and a strategy has to be adopted to prevent the future infiltration of liberal emergent teaching in our own churches, one which will include training church members on how to discern cults and false teaching

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[1] D.A. Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church: Understanding a Movement and Its Implications (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005) p.186-187

[2] except one or two who enthusiastically endorse Rob Bell alone. E.g. Greg Boyd

[3] E.g. Paul Roberts, Dean of Non Residential Training at St Michael’s College, Llandaff, and Jonny Baker  at CMS (see next two pages for more on them)

[4] Velvet Elvis, p. 164

[5] http://www.enjoyinggodministries.com/article/d-a-carson-critiques-the-emerging-church-part-i/

[6] Heidi Baker, sermon at Bethel Church, Redding Ca., Jan 3^rd 2010.