Imagine that you and a Christian friend you’ve not seen in a while are taking a theology class. The teacher hands out copies of the Apostle’s Creed and asks the students to sign their papers if the creed accurately represents their beliefs. Happy to codify your Christian convictions, you sign your copy. However, you notice that your friend is busy making marks on his paper. You watch as he places an asterisk beside each statement of the creed. He places one final asterisk at the bottom of the page and writes next to it: “These beliefs are subject to change.”

He signs the paper and, with a smile, asks you about the concerned look on your face. Recognizing that you lack words to express your worry, he says kindly: “Relax! I signed the paper! I still believe those things, but I’m just not as dogmatic as I used to be. I know what you’re thinking. Without those basic beliefs, we don’t have real Christianity. But honestly, I think I’m more of a real Christian now than I’ve ever been.”

This fictitious conversation represents a very real dialogue I’m having with a friend who identifies himself as “Emergent,” part of the Emerging Church Movement¹. The Emerging Church Movement is a worldwide phenomenon, composed of tens of thousands of people.²Many Emergents are skeptics who increasingly doubt their unbelief and want to investigate Jesus. Many others, like my friend, are believers increasingly skeptical about their dogmatic Christian upbringing. They are united in their disillusionment with the established church and in their desire to practice a faith that ministers to and grows out of our postmodern world. Brian McLaren, a prominent voice in ECM, writes: “I have become convinced that a generous orthodoxy appropriate for our postmodern world will have to grow out of the experience of the post-Christian, post-secular people of the cities of the twenty-first century.”³

To clarify, McLaren means not only that we need a theology that speaks to our postmodern era, but that our era needs a self-consciously postmodern theology. The subtitle to his book is telling: “Why I am a missional, evangelical, post/protestant, liberal/conservative, mystical/poetic, charismatic/contemplative, fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, catholic, green, incarnational, depressed-yet-hopeful, emergent, unfinished Christian.” McLaren wants to be a jack of all theological trades, certain of none! His work articulates the ECM’s desire to maintain an essentially Christian identity while infusing the faith with the postmodern disdain for dogmatic certainty.

So what would an emerging, postmodern Christianity look like? Rob Bell, another ECM headliner, gives some illustrative imagery. He likes to think of biblical doctrines as springs on a trampoline as opposed to bricks in a wall. Springs are sturdy but flexible. They can be adjusted as necessary, and they allow whoever uses them to jump and feel the joy of flight which, according to Bell, is analogous to a growing relationship to God. Such joyful growth is hindered by the dead weight of inflexible, brick-like doctrine. Practitioners of “brickianity,” i.e., historic, confessional churches, are doomed to a frustrating, increasingly irrelevant and ultimately vulnerable faith. Their inflexible doctrines are stacked upon one another such that if one brick falls, the whole wall comes crashing down.

Bell writes: “What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry…and archaeologists prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was really just a bit of mythologizing? What if that spring was seriously questioned?…Could a person still love God? Could you still be a Christian? Is the way of Jesus still the best possible way to live? Or, does the whole thing fall apart?” He goes on to write: “I affirm the historic Christian faith, which includes the virgin birth and the Trinity and the inspiration of the Bible and much more… But if the whole faith falls apart when we reexamine and rethink one spring, then it wasn’t that strong in the first place, was it?”⁴

Bell claims to affirm essential components of the Christian faith, but he is quite willing to give up the historic understandings of those essentials should a convincing case be made against them. He does not see the elimination or alteration of any of these essential doctrines as altering the essence of the faith. It’s the Apostle’s Creed with asterisks—not an overt denial of what the Bible teaches but rather a denial of the certainty with which we may know what the Bible teaches.

According to Emergents, philosophical certainty is a product of the modern era, an idol which needs to be cast down if the faith is to survive, even thrive, in a postmodern era. Having shed that philosophical shackle, the church will be free to be what Jesus always intended: a body of believers, no longer torn by doctrinal division, but bent on changing the world with the love of Christ. Thus, the ECM sees the doubters as the faithful, and lack of certainty as the faith’s saving grace.⁵

We’ll explore this topic more in the next two articles. For now, it’s easy to see why ECM “Christianity” appeals to skeptics. Why, though, have so many professing believers, like my friend, flocked to the ECM fold?

It may be tempting to dismiss the ECM as just another byproduct of sinful man’s perennial itching-ear syndrome. But while the ECM is wrongly skeptical about the essentials of the Christian faith, it is also rightly skeptical of the way the faith has been understood in our day. The most dangerous false beliefs contain elements of truth, bits of bait hiding a deadly hook. The ECM’s insightful critiques of popular and historic Christianity have lured believers jaded by their experiences in the established church.

The ECM is popular among people disillusioned by the consumerism they perceive in contemporary churches and the coldness they feel from historic churches. Emergents spy an unchristian self-centeredness in both.

In the last century, perdition-preaching fundamentalists and doctrine-despising evangelicals have called people to Christ based primarily on what Christ could do for them. McLaren writes: “Can’t seeking my personal salvation as the ultimate end become the ultimate consumerism or narcissism? In a self-centered and hell-centered salvation, doesn’t Jesus—like every company and political party—appeal to me on the basis of self-interest so that I can have it all eternally and can do so cheaply, conveniently, easily, and quickly? Doesn’t this sound a bit shabby?”⁶ Emergents desire a faith whose fundamental purpose is to provide blessings for others, not one seeking to sanctify self-interest.

Within historic churches, Emergents have found that, for all the dogmatizing, these churches do not really take their doctrine seriously. That hypocrisy is evident in their treatment of people who question the dogma. Consider, for example, the doctrine of hell. Clearly de-emphasized in popular evangelicalism, the maintenance of this biblical teaching has fallen, it seems, to Reformed churches. But how much of our boldness in preaching on hell is really just bravado—brought on by the relative ease of instructing familiar, receptive faces in the pew? Have we truly reckoned with the substance of our sermonizing?

Brian McLaren thinks not. “I think anybody who would sit for five minutes and ponder the reality of hell as it’s commonly understood…any person who faced it, really opened themselves up to it and the horror of it for five minutes would come out mentally damaged. And the result of that would either be that they…would hate God…or become an atheist.”⁷

Is it not possible that a sincerely committed Christian, when truly contemplating what he learns week by week in worship, may entertain doubts about core issues of Christianity, let alone the distinctives of the various Christian denominations? What is our response to be to such Christians, Christians like my friend?

Sadly, many who now identify themselves as Emergent do so because of how they and their questions were treated by pastors eager to preach but unwilling to listen. Their questions treated as threats, and their doubts deemed destructive, these hurting souls naturally looked to those willing to hear them out regarding the most pressing issues on their hearts. A large part of the reason why people are listening to the Emerging Church is that the Emerging Church is listening to them. ⁸

The ECM exposes the public weaknesses and preys upon the private doubts of the church. It has been so successful because it has called the church’s bluff, revealing self-interest across the spectrum of established Christianity and claiming the allegiance of souls mistreated at the hands of both popular and historic churches. Thousands of doubters and disillusioned disciples of Christ have been lured by the ECM into an agnosticism in the name of biblical Christianity. As such, the ECM provides an alarming wake-up call to Christ’s church.

The Reformed Presbyterian Church is by no means immune to this emerging threat. While we have historically preached the whole counsel of God to His people, we also continue to see some of these people leaving the church. Some have abandoned not only the RPCNA but the Christian faith itself. Others have simply sought greener evangelical pastures elsewhere, having found no compelling reason to remain under the blue banner. Whether regarding the gospel itself or the doctrines that have become our denominational calling card, we must ask: Have we truly taken our profession of faith to heart? And are we truly caring for people outside the church and within who question the content of that profession?

In the next two articles, we’ll examine more closely the driving principles of the ECM and why historic Reformed theology is the best answer to its destructive teaching as well as its legitimate concerns. We’ll also see how the Reformed Presbyterian Church is in a unique position to minister to people already within or looking favorably toward this new threat to the faith “once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3).

—Rutledge Etheridge

Rut Etheridge is pastor of Providence (Pittsburgh, Pa.) RPC and is adjunct professor of systematic theology for the RP Seminary. He was the speaker for a Reformation Society conference on the Emerging Church entitled, “The Church’s Identity Crisis.”

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