Yoga and Emergent Church as the new liberalism
If you haven’t seen the CNN exchange between John MacArthur and Doug Pagitt, do yourself a favor and check it out. It has been all over the place, but the most helpful spot to see it is at the Pyromaniac’s blog here: http://teampyro.blogspot.com/2007/09/biblical-propositions-yoga-positions.html
What is great about their posting is that they have an MP3 recording that Pagitt posted on his own blog where he discusses the CNN exchange with a CNN employee after the fact. It is very revealing about where he is coming from in terms of his own view of Scripture.
As a member of gen-x, I watched the emergent church come into the spotlight with much curiosity. But while many seemed to be taken by their sensitivity to the culture around them, I sensed something else. I remember talking to another minister some time ago about emergent and I said something to the effect that “the more I listen to them, the more it sounds like all they are are whiny, Mainline denomination church members disillusioned by their own church upbringing.” I think I am being proved correct. Most of them are coming out of the liberal Mainline, frustrated with its bankrupt spirituality and ineffectiveness and yet still in bondage to its liberalism. They long so badly to be useful to the culture around them but the low view of Scripture they have inherited leaves them offering little more than yoga classes.
Chris Sea demonstrates this low view of Scripture in his latest book “Faith of My Fathers” (see the book review in Touchstone Magazine) and Rob Bell, while captivating in some ways with his approach, doesn’t hardly ever seem to connect the dots and bring us to Christ. In fact, his book “Velvet Elvis” was a travesty in my opinion despite all the 20-something’s rave reviews about it. Pagitt seems to be of this mold- “go to the Word of God when you are stressed?” he asks in disbelief…..
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