yeah, i get it about not all baptists are SBC…that’s why i said the SBC “sect”…since they’re the ones so given to defining out other baptists even, especially within their own camp.

Man, you ought to know better than to lump all Baptists into one group! I know for a fact that you’ve been around at least a handful of us who are more than “soft” on the emerging church! I know, I know – provocative statements make for better reading but, really, don’t throw us under the bus just yet.

Peace, A.T.

One of the defining marks of “Baptists identity” (historically speaking & at least on paper) is concrete work for religious freedom. Religious freedom means that all people are free to practice religion as they choose (or no religion at all) – Baptists included. I’m not about to start throwing around the “Baptist in name only” kind of jargon, but I will say that the SBC folks certainly have a misshapen and a-historical understanding of this particular aspect of “baptist identity” (and a handful of others).

At any rate, there are lots of Baptists out there (Alliance of Baptists, CBF, and a bunch of European Baptists) for whom the discussions going on in the emerging / emergent worlds have been happening for decades. So don’t lose hope just yet – not all Baptists are SBC Baptists and, because we value religious diversity, we see this as one of the “goods” inherent in the Baptist way of being Christian. There are, of course, downsides to refusing a top-down hierarchy but this freedom of religious practice bit is not, I don’t think, one of them.

Peace, A.T.

As I understand Jesus, He was really quite unconcerned with what the modern orthodoxy thought of Him or His teachings. He just kind of said things and in some cases was intentionally provocative. But I don’t see any evidence that He was looking over His shoulder hoping the “mainstream” was going to follow Him to Calvary. In fact, He seemed to understand that they wouldn’t.

There’s a reason the Emergent movement exists – it’s because of the abject failure in leadership on the part of the modern “Christian” church. I don’t think that many in the mainstream are going to be interested in joining any conversation with us – especially when they understand that we are willing heretics who appreciate nuance more than tradition. Maybe this is a bit harsh on my part; but I am not the one demanding rigid intellectual ascent to orthodoxy.

Why not, right?
They have RINO’s as a moniker to describe any republican that doesn’t buy into tinfoil hat ACORN conspiracies or that birther ass-hattery.

(i mean, they have a “Baptist Identity” guy–Malcolm Yarnell– down at Southwestern, doing Baptist Identity scholarship for heaven’s sake. I guess only when “the gays” do such identity work it’s worthy of derision. but, I digress.)…

bottom line, don’t get your hopes up…

No apology necessary. But I do think that you got the correct drift of my perspective. Nevertheless, I can appreciate the attraction of the Emergent Church. Often times, we become too doctrinally assertive and tend to alienate others. At other times, we push them as a certainty, when they really aren’t. However, even with these problems and dangers, it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t pursue understanding and a higher degree of certainty, even if this means re-inventing the wheel.

In fact, I’d argue that communication and relationship are unnecessarily truncated without them. If we just examine our own communications, we find that they are laced with statements of absolute certainty, even when we dogmatically and absolutely declare that there is no certainty.

While I appreciate many of the emergent critiques of the ways we have done church and theology, I think that we have to be careful about going too far and disdain systematic thinking. Ironically, it is this tool that enables us to deliver some important critiques on target.

You certainly have your foundation correct. You wrote, “The only theology we need is a real, concrete, continuing relationship with our living Lord and Savior. Everything else flows from having his love flow through us and into a world.” It all starts with Christ!

Although this is so true, Christ would ALSO have us love him “with all our mind” (Matthew 22:37) – wholistically with all our God-given faculties. Consequently, we can’t just approach Scripture with our heart and intuitions, but also with our minds, perhaps this might also include borrowing from the scholarship of others, as you are doing by consulting NT Wright.

When we approach the passage you have referenced, we find that Martha’s complaint didn’t stem from the fact that Mary was sitting where only men should sit, but instead, that she had left all the cooking to Martha in order to sit under Jesus’ teaching (Luke 10:40). Jesus’ response to Martha is very informative: “But only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better” [sitting under My teaching] (Luke 10:42).

Consequently, learning from Jesus must take priority even over acts of loving devotion. After all, how do we know how to love and to have friendships and edifying conversations without having first been enlightened regarding these things! If goes even further! If we aren’t properly Gospel-oriented, our good works will go to our heads, convincing us of our own superiority.

I should have read the linked article before I posted. The jigsaw puzzle analogy was not Daniel’s, it was the generic modernist in the article.

My sincere apologies, Daniel.

Did you just compare the gospel to a jigsaw puzzle??? So in a jigsaw puzzle each piece only fits in a certain way to create one exact picture. I think that’s kind of thinking is what drove me to the emergent church. Where do we get the notion that the gospel is not some sort of puzzle to be solved? And is it possible that the picture we have in our heads of how the blocks/pieces are assembled is just one of several ways they could be assembled? Yes, let’s look at our big pictures, but let’s not get so tied to thinking our picture is the only valid way to assemble the pieces.