…they are full of things from the East and of fortune-tellers like the Philistines, and they strike hands with the children of foreigners. (Isaiah 2:6, ESV)

Spreading The New EC Ideology

Apprising Ministries has been telling you in recent posts such as The Emerging Church, Philip Clayton, And New Progressive Theology and Brian McLaren And His New Emerging Progressive Theology that, right within mainstream evangelicalism, the Emerging Church continues developing into a full-blown cult of a new version of Progressive Christianity.

I’ve been warning you that they’re busy “doing theology,” which is their term for bantering ideas back and forth—that may or may not have anything to do with the Bible—to try and come up with the way their “big tent” Christianity is to be shaped. The term big tent itself really concerns the universalism which forms the rotten core of this pseudo-Christian neo-liberalism that they’ve taken to calling Emergence Christianity.

I’ve also told you that Emergent Church guru Brian McLaren has now begun laying it out systematically, through the answers to the “10 questions that are transforming the faith,” in his new book A New Kind of Christianity (ANKoC). What needs to be understood here is that with the EC you’re essentially dealing with people who’ll just continue on pushing the envelope much the same way as a “know-it-all” teenager often does.

My point is, left unchecked, the EC will try and drag into the visible Christian church whatever it feels that it can get away with. A case in point is a tweet last night by EC leader Samir Selmanovic:

Strategic Consulting Firm @KedgeForward explores “Spirituality and Faith in 21st Century” http://is.gd/b5XX7 (Online source)

This leads to KTLS: Spirituality and Faith in the 21st Century (Volume 3, Number 5), a post so far out there we’re having trouble even getting a radar fix upon it. We get the mystical speculations of United Church of Canada minister Bruce Sanguin, who tells us he’s passionate about:

Evolutionary Christian Spirituality. The framework for it is Integral Spirituality (Ken Wilber). Dr. Don Beck’s Spiral Dynamics provides a very helpful model for evolutionary development. I regard Andrew Cohen as the world’s leading teacher in evolutionary spirituality. (Online source)

In Spiritality and Faith Sanguin shares:

The vision of the congregation that I am currently serving is to “teach and practice evolutionary Christian spirituality”. Following in the footsteps of Jesuit priest and paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, we are carrying out a grand spiritual experiment that is an inquiry into what Christian community, mission, and spiritual practice looks like when it emerges out of an explicit belief in evolution as a sacred or divine impulse…

Evolution is perhaps the fundamental characteristic or dynamic of reality. Either “God” or “Spirit” is involved with reality as we now know it to be, or It/She/He is largely irrelevant… (Online source)

So now this foolishness of an “Evolutionary Christian Spirituality,” which suppoesedly serves the God/Spirit/ it/she/he, is a part of this new big tent Christianity; and then, so are the speculations below of Samir Selmanovic, who’s bio tells us he was among those who formed the Emergent Church movement:

There is a mystery, a pearl, in the midst of every religion around which life forms. We do have virtually the same ethical ideals, but our mysteries differ. This is not to be bemoaned, but celebrated. Our mysteries need one another. Our complementing and competing religions make humanity better. They illumine and challenge one another. (Online source)

Now I already showed you before that McLaren’s good friend Roman Catholic mystic Richard Rohr, and fellow Red Letter Christian, has said of McLaren and the new progressive Christian theology found in ANKoC:

Now and then gifted people emerge who see the situation from a higher and more helpful level. Brian McLaren is one of those seers. [2]

Slowly but surely we’re noticing that more and more progressive Christians, as well as their organizations, are also taking notice as well of the new big tent progressive Christian theology that McLaren’s such a seer of. Take for example something called The Beatitudes Society: Strengthening the Progression Christian Network for justice, compassion, and peace (TBS) of a “Rev.” Anne Sutherland Howard, which gives us the typical progressive/liberal party line:

Today in America, the widespread perception of Christianity — one centered in nationalism, materialism and intolerance — bears little resemblance to the life and teachings of Jesus, particularly as they concern justice, compassion, and peacemaking. (Online source)

Tossing Everything Concerning Religion Into A Spiritual Blender And Hitting Puree

Resisting the urge to wrestle with the serpent, let me simply say that I’m not at all surprised to find progressive Christian historian Diana Butler Bass, yet another Red Letter Christian, on The Beatitudes Society Advisory Board; peas in a corrupt spiritual pod. For now though, let me point you to EMERGING CHRISTIANITY: HOW we get there determines WHERE we arrive: Albuquerque, NM where TBS promotes an upcoming EC conference to be put on by Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) featuring Bass, Brian McLaren, as well as their fellow Red Letter Christian Shane Claiborne.

A week from this Friday, April 9, we’re going to get a further glimpse into what the heretical McLaren, whom Rohr has called a seer, sees; i.e. just what it is that EC prophet McLaren is setting forth in ANKoC. Here’s what the CAC website tell us Emerging Christianity: HOW we get there determines WHERE we arrive is really all about:

Continuing on with the exploration begun at last year’s Emerging Church conference, the CAC is thrilled to invite you to another large gathering of Roman Catholic, Mainline Protestant, Evangelical, and other Christians seeking to explore this emergence and convergence together. We hope to inspire and challenge you with the lens of non-dual thinking, a new politics and a new theology rooted in the “third way.” (Online source, bold theirs)

This “third way” refers to a way in between capitalism and socialism, as well as, to the Hegelian dialectic. Below Christian apologist Mike Oppenheimer offers a concise definition as he explains:

Traditionally, this dimension of Hegel’s thought has been analyzed in terms of the categories of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Although Hegel tended to avoid these terms, they are helpful in understanding his concept of the dialectic. The thesis, then, might be an idea or a historical movement.

Such an idea or movement contains within itself incompleteness that gives rise to opposition, or an antithesis, a conflicting idea or movement. As a result of the conflict a third point of view arises, a synthesis, which overcomes the conflict by reconciling at a higher level the truth contained in both the thesis and antithesis. (Online source)

I’ve told you before that those touting this Emergence Christianity see it as the sythesis now being birthed through its purer form of progressive Christianity currently being cobbled together e.g. by progressive theologians like Harvey Cox along with progressive/process theologian Dr. Philip Clayton through his Transforming Theology (TT) project. Another EC notable assisting would be the heretical Tony Jones, progressive theologian in residence at the church of universalist Emerging Church pastor Doug Pagitt, who contributes the foreword to Clayton’s latest book is Transforming Christian Theology.

Now here’s what EC guru McLaren himself has said of his friend Philip Clayton’s work:

“How can an important book of theology be so delightful to read? How can a top-drawer theologian have such a high level of respect for “normal” Christians that they are seen as partners in the work of transforming theology? How can Philip Clayton make the idea of big-tent, progressive Christianity so believable and attractive that one can imagine Evangelicals, Charismatics, Mainliners, and Roman Catholics having a meal and joyfully discussing it together? There’s only one way to find out – open up Transforming Christian Theology and start reading now.”

Author details:

Brian D. McLaren
author/speaker/activist
(brianmclaren.net) (Online source)

Did you catch that; a broad road of religion wide enough that “Evangelicals, Charismatics, Mainliners, and Roman Catholics” can enjoy it together. Well, McLaren actually left out another group whom Clayton, who just put on the Theology After Google heresy-fest, also invited to give his TT project input as well: The non-Christian cult of Unitarian Universalistism. Lately I’ve begun showing you some of the beliefs now emerging from this new progressive EC ooze of “big tent” Christianity, which Rohr and McLaren et al are advancing as their “new theology rooted in the ‘third way’” of a neo-Gnostic mysticism.

In closing this out, for now, the last conference put on by Rohr’s CAC was Following The Mystics Through The Narrow Gates. I told you we’re deep into the world of Humpty Dumpty language with this big tent progressive Christianity; that’s right, this new universalism has just been referred to as “The Narrow Gates.” It was basically going over material from Rohr’s latest book The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics, or the great enlightened ones of each religious tradition, as Rob Bell the rock star icon of the Emerging Church said of them in his 2009 sermon I will say it again, and again, and again.

We’re told the aforementioned conference was designed to help us:

follow the mystics through the mysterious process in which we realize God is the very reality of ourselves, others and all things.  Seeing God in all things and all things in God, we experience the peace that surpasses understanding… The mystics who will be singled out as our guides will be:

• Meister Eckhart
• The anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing
• John of the Cross
• Theresa of Avila
• John Ruusbroec
• Mechthild of Magdeberg
• Julian of Norwich
• Thomas Merton (Online source)

Prayerfully evangelical leaders will finally cease their amazingly accurate impressions of Rip Van Winkle and will begin to see that this new progressive theology of the Emerging Church is as a huge serpent swallowing up every philosophy of religion; then mixing it with the panentheistism of classic mysticism, meanwhile adding in some evolutionary scientific emergence theory with their twisted belief they are evolving upward into a higher consciousness, and then regurgitating it back  out upon the unsuspecting with their Humpty Dumpty doublespeak as somehow consistent with “historic” Christianity.

Now you may go ahead and laugh if you want to; it’s ok by me, but I told you five years ago that we were dealing with neo-liberalism in the Emerging Church. And right now I’m telling you that if Brian McLaren is an evangelical Christian then I am the next Dalai Lama.

See also:

JESUS, RECONSIDERED: BRIAN MCLAREN AND AL MOHLER ON NPR

LIBERALISM 2.0 THE NEW PROGRESSIVE CHRISTIAN

BRIAN MCLAREN ON DOUG PAGITT RADIO

DOUG PAGITT, JOHN PIPER, AND KARMA KICK-BACK

PHILIP CLAYTON AND HIS TRANSFORMING THEOLOGY

EMERGING CHURCH THEOLOGIAN LEONARD SWEET TO SPEAK AT PASTOR SKIP HEITZIG’S CALVARY CHAPEL CHURCH

EMERGING CHURCH LEADERS, EVANGELICALS SIGN ‘COVENANT FOR CIVILITY’