The online apologetics and discernment work Apprising Ministries has pointed out that thanks to evangelicalism embracing the sinfully ecumenical neo-liberal cult of the Emergent Church aka the Emerging Church—with its  its “big tent” Progressive Christianity aka Emergence Christianity—and by using warped and toxic teachings of EC leaders like Emerging Church rock star pastor Rob Bell, it has poisoned its own young.

Since squishy evanjellyfish has now followed the mortally wounded mainline denominations out of the closet, with its man-love of heart murmur spirituality at the expense the God-centered spirituality of sola Scriptura, I’ve been giving you peeks at its bleak future of division and compromise of God’s Word as it attempts to be “missional,” whatever that means.

With this in mind I point you to Carnality and Contextualization in Corinth: Why Fornication Is Peculiarly Evil by Phil Johnson over at Pyromaniacs. Johnson begins by explaining:

At the heart of all the problems in the church at Corinth was a tendency to let the values of that debauched culture seep into the church. That’s something for missional Christians to consider today: cultural assimilation as a strategy for church growth in a pagan culture is fraught with serious dangers. Especially in a city filled with both temples and brothels—where fornication was literally deemed a religious rite—the worst thing the church could do would be to take a lax attitude toward sexual sin.

The vast majority of the Jewish community in Corinth had rejected the gospel (Acts 18:6). So the church was made up of mostly Gentiles who, of course, came from a culture that was not inclined to see sexual sin as unspiritual. Just the opposite. Most of the “religion” in Corinth involved temple prostitution and debauched sexual behavior.

That may explain somewhat why the Corinthian church would receive into their membership a man who was fornicating with his father’s wife (1 Corinthians 5:1). Perhaps they thought they could connect with their culture better if they casually accepted the man’s sin without flinching. In fact, it seems clear that some of the people in the Corinthian church did indeed wear extreme tolerance like a badge of honor. First Corinthians 5:2 says people in the Corinthian assembly were puffed up. They actually took some sort of perverse pride in their liberality towards such a grossly immoral act.

Not only was this guy’s incest a supremely immoral and deeply shameful sin; it wasn’t really impressing even the most immoral people in the Corinthian culture. Incest was a sin that even shocked the grossest pagans of Corinth (v. 1).

Paul wasn’t gentle in his rebuke. He ordered the Corinthians to excommunicate the man (vv. 7, 13).

Notice: Paul wasn’t impressed with how sophisticated and missional the Corinthians were. In fact (this can hardly be stressed enough) Paul never encouraged the Corinthians to blend into their culture by adopting an easygoing familiarity with or an extra-tolerant attitude toward the distinctive sins of that culture. On the contrary, he stressed the importance of avoiding the sins associated with Corinthian paganism… (Online source)

You can read the rest of this piece by Phil Johnson right here.

See also:

BRIAN MCLAREN AND HIS NEW EMERGING PROGRESSIVE THEOLOGY

DOUG PAGITT AGREES WITH EVOLUTIONARY EVANGELIST MICHAEL DOWD

BIG TENT CIRCUS OF POSTMODERN LIBERALISM