The Emerging Apostasy Among Some Kids Who Should Know Better

By Brannon S. Howse

This article has been written after much prayer and I trust it is received in the love and respect that it is intended. I pray that Titus 1:9 is our standard:

"Holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, that he may be able, by sound doctrine, both to exhort and convict those who contradict."

I am thankful for the powerful and effect ministry of many of our pro-family and evangelical leaders. I am also aware that many of these leaders are not responsible for what their grown children now support. However, I am calling on these leaders to use their influence to expose one the most dangerous and liberal movements to face the American church; even if their grown children are supportive of the Emerging Church.

Many now-prominent adult children of long-prominent evangelical leaders are enmeshed in an oppressive affair with the Emerging Church. EC authors and pastors are extremely popular with these children, and it's recently dawned on me that this just may explain why so many of the aforesaid leaders remain strangely silent on the bizarre and unbiblical spirituality of the Emerging Church movement.

Many Christian leaders have had no compunction about going after Bill and Hillary, Nancy Pelosi, the NEA, ACLU, and liberal judges. But the EC has largely received a huge pass despite the fact that some of its authors and leaders see no problem with abortion, homosexuality, big government, socialism, and radical environmentalism.

There is an EC name you should know about that-if for no other reason than to guard against the influence of his rising popularity. Rob Bell is a favorite of several adult-children-of-evangelical-leaders. He's the author of an extremely popular book, Velvet Elvis, and has produced Nooma, an avant-garde DVD series viewed in thousands of churches across the country. Promise Keepers has also played Bell's Nooma DVDs at several events.

In "Emergent Mystique," a recent article in Christianity Today, Bell admits to a new view of Scripture (hint: it's not so divine any more) and credits his changed views on the Bible and Christianity to a book by EC guru Brian McLaren. As the title of McLaren's book suggests, Bell is apparently now A New Kind of Christian. To give you a flavor of this "newness," I've included below an extended excerpt from the CT article. This is as emergent as it gets:

…these Wheaton College sweethearts [Bell and his wife, Kristen] have more on their minds than just cultural adaptation. "This is not just the same old message with new methods," Rob says. "We're rediscovering Christianity as an Eastern religion, as a way of life. Legal metaphors for faith don't deliver a way of life. We grew up in churches where people knew the nine verses why we don't speak in tongues, but had never experienced the overwhelming presence of God."

In fact, as the Bells describe it, after launching Mars Hill in 1999, they found themselves increasingly uncomfortable with church. "Life in the church had become so small," Kristen says. "It had worked for me for a long time. Then it stopped working." The Bells started questioning their assumptions about the Bible itself-"discovering the Bible as a human product," as Rob puts it, rather than the product of divine fiat. "The Bible is still in the center for us," Rob says, "but it's a different kind of center. We want to embrace mystery, rather than conquer it."

"I grew up thinking that we've figured out the Bible," Kristen says, "that we knew what it means. Now I have no idea what most of it means. And yet I feel like life is big again-like life used to be black and white, and now it's in color."

The more I talk with the Bells, the more aware I am that they are telling me a conversion narrative-not a story of salvation in the strict sense, but of having been delivered from a small life into a big life. The Bells, who flourished at evangelical institutions from Wheaton to Fuller Theological Seminary to Grand Rapids' Calvary Church before starting Mars Hill, were by their own account happy and successful young evangelicals. Yet that very world, as the Bells tell it, became constricting-in Kristen's phrase, "black and white."

An earlier generation of evangelicals, forged in battles with 20th-century liberalism, prided themselves on avoiding theological shades of gray, but their children see black, white, and gray as all equally unlifelike. They are looking for a faith that is colorful enough for their culturally savvy friends, deep enough for mystery, big enough for their own doubts. To get there, they are willing to abandon some long-defended battle lines.

"Weak is the new strong," it turns out, is not just Rob Bell's knowing reference to the world of fashion, nor just his clever reframing of Paul's message of Christlike life. It's a roadmap for a new way of doing church, even a big church.

And how did the Bells find their way out of the black-and-white world where they had been so successful and so dissatisfied? "Our lifeboat," Kristen says, "was A New Kind of Christian."

…To this day McLaren continues to receive grateful e-mails from readers. The book also confirmed the intuitions of many who sensed that major changes were under way in the culture. By offering a fundamentally hopeful, rather than despairing or defensive, reading of those changes, McLaren staked out an attractive position for young people like Rob and Kristen Bell.

Many evangelical and pro-family leaders have still never heard about the Emerging Church and thus don't understand the threat the EC poses to the American church. However, some Christians may be deliberately hiding in tall grass because calling EC people on the carpet would hit too close to home. I pray our nation's pro-family and evangelical leaders will speak up on the EC or ignore the secular left as well.

Today's Christian and evangelical leaders need to boldly defend the true Gospel, the inerrancy of Scripture, and essential Christian doctrines. I know for some it will cost them as it has cost Worldview Weekend. We can not sacrifice truth for unity-our goal can not be to maintain big organizations, popular radio programs and profitable book sales-at the expense of truth. I will join these pro-family and evangelical leaders in their efforts to prevent a particular lady from becoming president but even that is secondary.

Fighting the liberal left outside the church has become big business and big money for Christians as well and non-Christians. Fighting the liberal left inside the church requires the courage of Luther, nailing right doctrine on the door, and risking the fallout.  Jesus asked the question, "When I return will I find true faith? Will Jesus find us defending the true faith and exposing false teaching?

[Here's a link to the Rob Bell article that originally appeared in Christianity Today: http://culture-makers.com/articles/the_emergent_mystique]