In World’s Largest Inter-Religious Gathering to Descend Upon Australia at Christian Research Net we read:

“The Parliament event is a place where people come together to encounter ‘the other,’” organizers state in the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions (CPWR) website. “This encounter can lead to a deepening of one’s own sense of religious and spiritual identity and an appreciation for the challenges or difference within one’s own tradition, as well as between and among traditions.”

This idea of encountering “the other” is quite significant as we watch the already inclusive neo-liberal cult of the Emergent Church drift more toward a universalism. In his debate with Bob DeWaay, the man Leadership Network approached to assemble the Terranova Project that spawned the emerging church movement, Doug Pagitt says:

We’re [the Emerging Church] not trying to slide anything by someone; we’re tyring to work very deeply, and connected to the story of God, and with God, in this world to try to express “what are the hopes and dreams of God for our world.”

Eightly–there’s an openness to the “other” (point 8 on his Powerpoint display). To the other thinker, to the foreigner, to the outsider; it’s this call to love, not only God and neighbor–but to love enemy and to not be “freaked out,” and not to be so concerned about when “the other” is in our midst.

And I think that’s about the very understanding about the character of God; the acceptance of ‘the other,” and these [Emergent] communities tend to look [at it] this way. (Disc 1, Ch. 6, 15:13-15:51)

Dr. Samir Selmanovic who serves on the Coordinating Group for Emergent Village contributes a chapter called “The Sweet Problem of Inclusiveness: Finding Our God in the Other” in An Emergent Manifesto of Hope a recent book edited by Doug Pagitt and his friend Emergent anti-theologian Tony Jones. Selmanovic gives further indication where we are headed with this inclusivism when he tells us:

Can it be that the teachings of the gospel are embedded and can be found in reality itself rather than being exclusively isolated in sacred texts and our interpretations of those texts? If the answer is yes, can it be that they are embedded in other stories, other peoples’ histories, and even other religions?…

God’s table is welcoming all who seek, and if any religion is to win, may it be the one that produces people who are the most loving, the most humble, the most Christlike. Whatever the meaning of “salvation” and “judgement,” we Christians are going to be saved by grace, like everyone else, and judged by our works, like everyone else…

For most critics of such open Christianity, the problem with inclusiveness is that it allows for truth to be found in other religions. To emerging Christians, that problem is sweet… Moreover, if non-Christians can know our God, then we want to benefit from their contribution to our faith. (192, 195,196, emphasis mine)

EMERGENT CHURCH: SAY GOODBYE TO BAKER PUBLISHING GROUP WITH “AN EMERGENT MANIFESTO OF HOPE”