Guest Opinion/Commentary*
Praxis, Post-evangelical and Politics in the Emerging Church Movement
By David J. Jonsson (11/13/07)
From the Church (Mosque) to the Schoolhouse to the White House (Part IV of IV) - In Part 1, we addressed Al-Qaeda and the Emerging Church Movement, In Part 2 we discussed the role of Arianism in the 2008 Presidential Campaign, In Part 3 we discussed how Post Modernism in the Emerging Church Movement supports the goals of the Leftist/Marxist – Islamist Alliance. Here we discuss the role of Praxis, Post-evangelical and Politics in the Emerging Church Movement.(A)
An inability to understand the ideology behind the Emerging Church Movement, cultural Marxism and political Islam could spell disaster for the West.
There are four rivers flowing into Lake Emerging
An inability to understand the ideology behind the Emerging Church Movement, cultural Marxism and political Islam could spell disaster for the West.
Each of these rivers flows with its own integrity into Lake Emerging according to Scot McKnight. The rivers may be named the Four Ps.
· Postmodern,
· Praxis,
· Post-evangelical, and
· Politics
Each river has as its basis is some way relationship to the early development of the Leftist/Marxist agenda for world domination. Following in the path of the Emerging Church Movement as a postmodern, praxis, postevangelical and political activist movement opens up the opportunity for Islamist takeover.
I reference in the next sections the presentation: What is the Emerging Church? by Scot McKnight given at the Fall Contemporary Issues Conference Westminster Theological Seminary Oct 26-27, 2006. Scot McKnight is a widely-recognized authority on the New Testament, early Christianity, and the historical Jesus. He is the Karl A. Olsson Professor in Religious Studies at North Park University (Chicago, Illinois). A popular and witty speaker, Dr. McKnight has given interviews on radios across the nation, has appeared on television, and is regularly asked to speak in local churches and educational events. Dr. McKnight obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Nottingham (1986). McKnight’s award-winning blog, Jesus Creed http://www.jesuscreed.org/ He writes widely on the Emerging Church.
Praxis River Flowing into the Lake Emerging
It is interesting that Scot McKnight chose Praxis to define the second river flowing into the Emerging Church River. Praxis is the heart of the emerging movement. Gibbs-Bolger did: “Emerging churches are communities that practice the way of Jesus within postmodern cultures.”
Praxis is the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted or practiced. In Ancient Greek the word praxis referred to activity engaged in by free men. Aristotle held that there were three basic activities of man: theoria, poiesis and praxis. There corresponded to these kinds of activity three types of knowledge: theoretical, to which the end goal was truth; poietical, to which the end goal was production; and practical, to which the end goal was action. Aristotle further divided practical knowledge into ethics, economics and politics. He also distinguished between eupraxia (good praxis) and dyspraxia (bad praxis, misfortune)
What is the Hegelian Dialectic – Praxis?
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was a 19th century German philosopher and theologist who wrote the Science of Logic in 1812. For many historians, Hegel is "perhaps the greatest of the German idealist philosophers."
In 1847 the London Communist League--Marx and Engels, used Hegel's theory of the dialectic to back up their economic theory of communism. Now, in the 21st century, Hegelian-Marxist thinking affects our entire social and political structure.
The Hegelian dialectic is the framework for guiding our thoughts and actions into conflicts that lead us to a predetermined solution. If we do not understand how the Hegelian dialectic shapes our perceptions of the world, then we do not know how we are helping to implement the vision for the future. Hegel's dialectic is the tool which manipulates us into a frenzied circular pattern of thought and action. Every time we fight for or defend against an ideology we are playing a necessary role in Marx and Engels' grand design to advance humanity into a dictatorship of the proletariat. Both Marx and Hitler have their philosophical roots in Hegel.
Above all, the Hegelian doctrine is the divine right of States rather than the divine right of kings. The State for Hegel and Hegelians is God on earth.
The concept of praxis is important in Marxist thought. In fact, philosophy of praxis was the name given to Marxism by 19th century socialist Antonio Labriola. Marx himself stated in his Theses on Feuerbach that “philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” Simply put, Marx felt that philosophy’s validity was in how it informed action.
Praxis is also key in meditation and spirituality, where emphasis is placed on gaining first-hand experience of concepts and certain areas, such as union with the Divine, which can only be explored through praxis due to the inability of the finite mind (and its tool, language) to comprehend or express the infinite. In an interview for YES! Magazine, Matthew Fox explained it this way:
Wisdom is always taste—in both Latin and Hebrew, the word for wisdom comes from the word for taste—so it’s something to taste, not something to theorize about. “Taste and see that God is good,” the psalm says; and that’s wisdom: tasting life. No one can do it for us. The mystical tradition is very much a Sophia tradition. It is about tasting and trusting experience, before institution or dogma.
In fact, the Hebrew word for reason (“ta’am”), not wisdom (“chochmah”), is the same as the Hebrew word for taste (“ta’am”).
The First River Worship
Scot McKnight believes praxis involves worship. These things matter, and the emerging movement believes that praxis shapes theology and theology shapes praxis Doug Pagitt, for instance, in his Body Prayer is big on letting our bodies express our heart’s prayers; Dan Kimball is as creative as anyone when it comes to the physical expression of worship; we could go on. Some fluff incense around the room, some light candles, and some have a service where there is multi-tasking.
The Second River Orthopraxy
Scot McKnight believes praxis involves Orthopraxy a term derived from Greek (ὀρθοπραξις) meaning “correct practice” (as orthodoxy means “correct teaching”), referring to emphasis on religious ritual as opposed to faith or grace etc.
Typically, traditional or ethnic religions (paganism, animism) are more concerned with orthopraxis than orthodoxy, and some argue that equating the term “faith“ with “religion“ presents a
Christian-biased notion of what the primary characteristic of religion is.
The emerging movement thinks how a person lives is more important than what they believe, that orthopraxy is the most important thing. And that the power of a life forms the best apologetic for the way of Jesus.
To quote Scot McKnight: “Which leads us precisely to the emerging issue with theology: we are left alone in what we think is right theologically and being alone isn’t enough when it comes to theology.”
“So, they don’t try to compose theological statements; they rely on the great creeds and confess them as part of their heritage. And instead of worrying about getting everything just right— and they point to the fact that no two scholars agree — not even Michael Horton and Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield agree — leads them to concentrate on living the way of Jesus. We may not get it right when it comes to theology, so what we are called to do is live right — which most of them have either enough theological integrity to admit they don’t get it right in practice or they have enough postmodernist irony to say the same. Either way, they get humbled both by theology and by praxis.”
The Third River Social Justice
To quote Scot McKnight: a third element of the praxis river is social justice. The emerging movement believes — nearly uniformly — that Christians are summoned by God to work for justice in this world. Scot McKnight said that this emerging emphasis on justice is not the same as the Religious Right’s focus on the family (that’s a clever little combination) nor is it the Religious Right’s advocacy for either anti-abortion or military support. [Hence the support of Leftist/Marxist – Islamist Alliance in the Anti-War movement and all the related NGOs] Justice, for this group, is exactly what Walther Rauschenbusch and Jane Addams said it was.
Why would Communists who are known as atheistic materialists be interested in religion? The answer is simple. Socialist "theologian" and associates of the British Fabian Society, Dr. Walther Rauschenbusch, wrote in 1893: "The only power that can make socialism succeed, if it is established, is religion. It cannot work in an irreligious country."
The time was 1914; the Federal Council of Churches had become one of the major outlets in America for Marxist propaganda. On February tenth of that year a group of conspirators met in the home of millionaire industrialist Andrew Carnegie and laid plans for something called the Church Peace Union. In Pioneers For Peach Through Religion, Charles S. Macfarland (at the time General Secretary of the F.C.C.) reveals that this group included only those religious leaders who were in some way connected with the Federal Council of Churches. This newly formed organization was the brainchild of top conspirator Andrew Carnegie, who used it to capture for the Insiders the controlling clique of the Federal Council by subsidizing the Church Peace Union to the tune of $2 million.
Shortly after the meeting with Carnegie, two international church conferences were promoted by the F.C.C.'s Church Peace Union — one for Roman Catholics, to be held at Liegé, Belgium, and the other for Protestants at Constance, Germany. Both were scheduled to convene on August 1, 1914. Which, by an odd "coincidence," was the very day that war was declared between Germany and Russia.
Several months later, at Cambridge in England, the Fabian Socialists set up an International Fellowship of Reconciliation to protest the War while propagandizing for Socialism. This was followed a year later on November 11, 1915, by the formation of an American Branch of F.O.R., organized by such stalwarts of the Federal Council of Churches as Harry F. Ward and Walther Rauschenbush. They were aided in this project by leading Socialists Norman Thomas, Oswald Garrison Viliard, and Jane Addams (at whose home in Chicago the Webbs stayed during their visit to America). In April 1917, one month after the Czar had been forced to surrender control of his government to Socialist Alexander Kerensky, The United States was finally maneuvered into World War I, thus ending 141 years of neutrality. That fall, a relative handful of Bolsheviks led by Nikolai Lenin captured the Government of Russia, thereby establishing a base for the Marxists' continuing world revolution. In Red China between 1949 and 1976, 40 million died by outright killings, manmade famine and Gulag; and 10 million died in the Soviet Block: late Stalinism, 1950-53; post-Stalinism, to 1987 (mostly Gulag).
To quote Scot McKnight: “That’s the heart of the emerging movement’s concern with social justice. Many have spoken to this concern, but none as has Brian McLaren in his The Secret Message of Jesus, which defines kingdom as the “interactive relationship of humans with God and others.”
Jim Wallis’ organization, Sojourners, is a Washington, D.C.-based Christian evangelical ministry that combines activist fervor with leftwing notions of “social justice.”
The signature of modern leftist rhetoric is the deployment of terminology that simply cannot fail to command assent. As Orwell himself recognized, even slavery could be sold if labeled “freedom.” In this vein, who could ever conscientiously oppose the pursuit of “social justice,”—i.e., a just society?
This culmination of centuries of ideas and struggles became known as liberalism. And it was precisely in opposition to this liberalism—not feudalism or theocracy or the ancien régime, much less 20th century fascism—that Karl Marx formed and detailed the popular concept of “social justice,” (which has become a kind of “new and improved” substitute for a store full of other terms—Marxism, socialism, collectivism—that, in the wake of Communism’s history and collapse, are now unsellable).
The Fourth River Missional
To quote Scot McKnight: “This praxis river is first and foremost about being missional. We need to get this straight: the emerging movement would probably run and hide if you got too direct them and asked them if they believe in “evangelism.” Their response might be along this line: “Well, in fact, we do, but we don’t call it that. We call it missional and we see missional as bigger than evangelism.” So, let me define what I see going on in the emerging movement when it comes to this term “missional.””
“The central element of this missional praxis is that the emerging movement is not attractional in its model of the church but is instead missional: that is, it does not invite people to church but instead wanders into the world as the church. It asks its community “How can we help you?” instead of knocking on doors to increase membership. In other words, it becomes a community with open windows and open doors and sees Sunday morning as the opportunity to prepare for a week of service to the community, asking not how many are attending the services but what redemptive traits are we seeing in our community. It wants to embody a life that is other-oriented rather than self-oriented, that is community-directed rather than church-oriented.”
To finish this praxis river off, Scot McKnight now returns to his opening principle of defining a movement by listening to what the movement is saying. Let me go to the narrower element, but in which may well speak for a broad range of emerging Christians — to Emergent Village’s website on its “Values and Practices.” These statements embody what is meant by the praxis impulse of the emerging movement:
First, a commitment to God in the way of Jesus.
Second, a commitment to the Church in all its forms (universal church). [The Emerging Global Church – Rick Warren’s P.E.A.C.E. Plan & UN Goals]
Third, a commitment to God’s world.
Fourth, a commitment to one another.
To each of these are attached, in educate-like fashion, practices. Like:
Spiritual disciplines
Dialogue and fellowship with other Christians.
To be involved in at least one issue of peace and justice. [Consider United for Peace and Justice]
To participate in emerging events.
Post-Evangelical River Flowing Into The Lake Emerging
To quote Scot McKnight: “A third river flowing into Lake Emerging is post-evangelical. DA Carson got this right: the emerging movement is a protest against evangelicalism, and to make the lines clear the emerging movement often defines evangelicalism in simple, un-nuanced terms.”
“Having said this, however, let me make an observation I hope sticks with you: I would say that the vast majority of emerging Christians are evangelical theologically or evangelical conversionally, but they are post-evangelical when it comes to describing the Christian life and theology.”
“How so? To be an emerging post-evangelical is to be post-Bible study piety, to be post-systematic theology, and to be post “in/out” in perception.”
Again to quote Scot McKnight: “This means, catch this, all theology is always a conversation about the Truth who is God in Christ through the Spirit. It is never final; it is never fixed. It is always in flux. This flux-like nature of theology can be anchored in postmodernity’s skepticism about metanarratives, but more likely it is anchored in a proper confidence and a chastened epistemology. We ought, to rub it in a hit, to admit that the poetic impact of the Fall has an impact as well on our theology. In this sense, and I hope you see the wisdom here, the emerging movement is radically reformed. It turns its theology against itself.”
Scot McKnight offers here a warning to you and to the emerging movement: “any movement that is not evangelistic is failing the Lord. We may be humble about what we believe and we may be careful to make the gospel and its commitment clear, but we better have a goal in mind — the goal of summoning everyone to follow Jesus Christ and to discover the redemptive work of God in Christ through the Spirit of God.”
Political River Flowing into the Lake Emerging
“Lake Emerging also receives a river called political, and here I’m talking now only about the USA. Tony Jones is regularly told that the emerging movement is a latte-drinking, backpack-lugging, Birkenstock-wearing, group of 21st Century left-wing hippie wannabes. Put directly, they are Democrats. And that spells “doomed” for conservative evangelicals.”
Scot McKnight leans left in politics. He doesn’t think the Democrat party is worth a hoot, but its historic commitment to the poor and to centralizing the government for social justice is what I think the government should do. He says he doesn’t support abortion — in fact, he thinks it is disgusting; he believes in civil rights, but he doesn’t believe homosexuality is Christian. But, he is a pacifist. And, with the emerging movement, he thinks the Religious Right doesn’t see what it is doing — and that means, yes, he does think Randy Ballmer’s new book, Thy Kingdom Come, is a good book — not always right, but right (or should I say “left” or “Christian”?) in its direction.
What McKnight sees (sometimes) in emergent in the USA is Walther Rauschenbusch, the architect of the social gospel. Brian McLaren has become good friends with Jim Wallis — and he has read almost everything Jim Wallis has written in book form. Wallis’ hero, so far as I can see, is Rauschenbusch. He loves Mother Theresa and the like, but what he sees in Wallis is Rauschenbusch one hundred years later. Now, unlike perhaps some of you, he doesn’t think everything Rauschenbusch said was cock-eyed or bull-roar. Most evangelical critics of Rauschenbusch have read as much of him as they have of Pelagius. But it hasn’t stopped them from thinking they know them — and it is more likely that they know more about Pelagius than Rauschenbusch.
“Rauschenbusch, as you know, faced the challenge of a spiritual vs. a social gospel, and without trying to deny the former, led his followers into the latter. The results were devastating for mainline Christianity when it comes to the summons to personal conversion. The results were also devastating for evangelical Christianity for, apart from very few, it has struggled to maintain a balance itself. Jim Wallis, beginning with his justifiably well-known Call to Conversion, and now in his scrapbook of ruminations, God’s Politics, has had one thing to say to the evangelical church since the rise of his own social conscience: justice in the world matters to God.”
He’s right, but — to use the title of McIntyre’s book — “whose justice?”
McKnight comments: “And what is justice? How will we define justice? In my estimation, justice is being right with God, with the self, with others, and with the world — but what is “right” is what God says is right, not what the US Constitution says. So, when I read many in the emerging movement talk about justice, I’ve got the suspicion of the skeptical Viennese fella named Freud — who thought there was more going on at the table than met the fork — I think I’m hearing the Democratic platform. I could be wrong. But that is what I see.”
“The emerging movement, at least the impulse in the emergent movement in the USA, will have to decide — and it will be done at the individual level — what the word “right” means before it can work for `justice.” Deciding what is right, in fact, shapes everything about the emerging movement and, for that matter, the Reformed movement.
David J. Jonsson
David J. Jonsson is the author of Clash of Ideologies –The Making of the Christian and Islamic Worlds, Xulon Press 2005. His new book: Islamic Economics and the Final Jihad: The Muslim Brotherhood to the Leftist/Marxist - Islamist Alliance (Salem Communications (May 30, 2006). He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees in physics. He worked for major corporations in the United States and Japan and with multilateral agencies that brought him to more that fifteen countries with significant or majority populations who are Muslim. These exposures provided insight into the basic tenants of Islam as a political, economic and religious system. He became proficient in Islamic law (Shariah) through contract negotiation and personal encounter.
1. Unholy Alliances - The Secret Plan and the Secret People Who are Working to Destroy America
by Dr. James W. Wardner, D.M.D., 1996 Pg 153
2. APOSTASY-The National Council Of Churches, http://reformed-theology.org/html/issue07/apostasy.htm Accessed: November 6, 2007
3. Ibid
4. Ibid
5. Social Justice: Code for Communism, Barry Loberfeld, FrontPageMagazine.com | February 27, 2004
A) Postmodernism in the Emerging Church Movement
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*Ed: Views are those of individual authors and not necessarily those of American Daily.
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