Saturday, June 18, 2011

An Emergent Woodstock?

The Emergent movement is desperately trying to stay alive and relevant. Of course, in one sense they will always be with us for error and heresy have always been with the church. Next week a plethora of emergent leaders and former evangelicals will gather for a festival in North Carolina. The gathering is called The Wild Goose Festival.

Here is how the organizers describe the event:
“The Wild Goose is a Celtic metaphor for the Holy Spirit. We are followers of Jesus creating a festival of justice, spirituality, music and the arts. The festival is rooted in the Christian tradition and therefore open to all regardless of belief, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, denomination or religious affiliation.”


What a strange revision of both history and Christianity to say that it is part of the Christian tradition to embrace all religious beliefs and sexual practices.

The line-up of speakers will feature: Brian McLaren, Jim Wallis, Tony Jones, Tony Campolo, Phyllis Tickle, Shane Claiborne, Frank Schaeffer, Lynn Hybels, and many more. Clearly, the message coming from the Wild Goose Festival will be confusing at best, heretical at worst. Among the errors of the emergent movement is the denial of the substitutionary atonement, the uniqueness of Christ, the necessity of faith, the doctrine of hell, etc. It is now characteristic of emergents to reject biblical sexual ethics as well. This is an important connection because sexual perversion tends to grow in the garden of theological liberalism.



Wild Goose Festival - June 23 - 26, 2011 - Shakori Hills Farm, NC from Wild Goose on Vimeo.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

What makes you so confident that the movement is in danger? (For the record, I hope you are right; I am just not so confident myself).

Todd Pruitt said...

Well, as I say in the post, theological liberalism and error will always be with us. But the tag "emergent" is fading.

Ulriche said...

Second Thessolians 2:1-6 comes to mind about the falling away. It's not hard to see the convergence of people like Rick Warren, Rob Bell, Deepok Chopra, etc. They can all kiss my buns. Dying in Christ might become more literal than we had once thought, because I think the Rapture is a misinterpretation but thats just me. I hope I'm wrong but if not I'm suiting up in my armor plating. If you can't make the connection between the article and the funneling of all of the events and wicked minds all around us then I don't have the time. I see the writing on the wall.

Todd Pruitt said...

It proves the point once again that without carefully and courageously guarding doctrinal boundaries the church will always drift into greater and greater error and sin. There are speakers appearing at this gathering who, five years ago, would never have appeared at an event celebrating religious syncretism and homosexuality. But theological liberalism never remains static.

Mark W. said...

I love the name - wow, the jokes just write themselves don't they?