Brian McLaren recently opened up a new site called Everything Must Change. It is described as, "a Web community to connect individuals, organizations, and networks who feel the call to pursue the common good, one act of kindness at a time." I am not sure. To me it looks like really creative advertising to sell books and increase attendance at his tour events – where you can sell a lot more books and other materials. Tony Jones' own blog has recently been so cluttered with self-promotion that it has very little other content. Kind of a simulacrum of sorts – a signifier that is a referent only unto itself – to sell more books and other stuff if possible. It seems to be just another angle in the ongoing problem with evangelicalism – it's confusion with Western capitalism.
My increasing distaste of Emergent is the relentless self-promotion which literally makes me a little ill. Actually, I think some of my breakfast just came up. What needs to change is the collapse of the boundary between capitalism and the Kingdom of God. I am not sure that this helps resolve this issue, but seems to perpetuate it. I was all on board the discussion initially, but now I am feeling queasy as a critical consumer of media.
Does anyone else have this same intuitive sense that Emergent is just marketing masking itself as something radical within the church; or is it just the cynic in me aching to come out and puke at something? Does anyone else have the feeling that if you go to the various promoted events and buy a book or two that you are cheating on your wife – as in cheating on the bride of Christ that is the church?
(HT: Emergent Village)
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Guilty as charged. I'm changing that.
Guilty as charged. I'm changing that.
"Does anyone else have this same intuitive sense that Emergent is just marketing masking itself as something radical within the church;"
Yes!! To be honest I am sympathetic to much of what they're saying and even to many of their practices and ways of being the church and carrying out the kingdom. But I can't stand all the marketing and conferences and panel discussions and new books and…
It makes it just seem gimmicky and about selling stuff and their most venomous critics in the fundamentalists circles are the ones that are feeding right into it helping them do this.
I don't believe they started with this intention but it seems like all they've been about lately is trying to promote themselves but there is nothing really solid to promote since it's a conversation and a re-evaluation so it's ambiguous enough to keep the machine going and keep coming out with more and more "resources".
So yes emergent does seem to be something that feeds off the marriage of Capitalism and Christianity which makes sense I guess when you take into account its postmodern roots and what Halden said recently about the link between postmodernism and capitalism.
Thanks for saying exactly what was on my mind and I hope emergent does take this into consideration with how they move forward from here (but it will be hard because it sells and publishers like books that sell).
Blessings,
Bryan L
Thanks Tony.
And Thanks Bryan for your thoughts. I do hope that emergent folk do take into account people like you and I on the margins of the discussion and not yet full participants.
The problem I see is not unlike many movements in evangelicalism – the economy of signs distorts the message after a while. I would find it disheartening if the discussion loses its legitimacy due to the economic issue of signs that I am sensing – although I cannot say with any certainty that I am right to any extent…it's just a "feeling" I have.
"Does anyone else have this same intuitive sense that Emergent is just marketing masking itself as something radical within the church;"
Yes!! To be honest I am sympathetic to much of what they're saying and even to many of their practices and ways of being the church and carrying out the kingdom. But I can't stand all the marketing and conferences and panel discussions and new books and…
It makes it just seem gimmicky and about selling stuff and their most venomous critics in the fundamentalists circles are the ones that are feeding right into it helping them do this.
I don't believe they started with this intention but it seems like all they've been about lately is trying to promote themselves but there is nothing really solid to promote since it's a conversation and a re-evaluation so it's ambiguous enough to keep the machine going and keep coming out with more and more "resources".
So yes emergent does seem to be something that feeds off the marriage of Capitalism and Christianity which makes sense I guess when you take into account its postmodern roots and what Halden said recently about the link between postmodernism and capitalism.
Thanks for saying exactly what was on my mind and I hope emergent does take this into consideration with how they move forward from here (but it will be hard because it sells and publishers like books that sell).
Blessings,
Bryan L
Thanks Tony.
And Thanks Bryan for your thoughts. I do hope that emergent folk do take into account people like you and I on the margins of the discussion and not yet full participants.
The problem I see is not unlike many movements in evangelicalism – the economy of signs distorts the message after a while. I would find it disheartening if the discussion loses its legitimacy due to the economic issue of signs that I am sensing – although I cannot say with any certainty that I am right to any extent…it's just a "feeling" I have.
I know it is tempting to equate shallow thinking and crass marketing as the same sin. Don't. They will be punished separately in purgatory!
I know it is tempting to equate shallow thinking and crass marketing as the same sin. Don't. They will be punished separately in purgatory!
Does anyone else have the feeling that if you go to the various promoted events and buy a book or two that you are cheating on your wife – as in cheating on the bride of Christ that is the church?
Yes. In fact, I did got to one of the events. Following the event, I posted something a little less self-restrained than your post here, and immediately I was berated personally by Mr. Jones. So much for conversation. Show up, shut up, and eat the food. Or get out. Emergent is, indeed, just another incarnation of the Beast of capitalistic evangelicalism at its worst. Or so I (and you?) fear.
Does anyone else have the feeling that if you go to the various promoted events and buy a book or two that you are cheating on your wife – as in cheating on the bride of Christ that is the church?
Yes. In fact, I did got to one of the events. Following the event, I posted something a little less self-restrained than your post here, and immediately I was berated personally by Mr. Jones. So much for conversation. Show up, shut up, and eat the food. Or get out. Emergent is, indeed, just another incarnation of the Beast of capitalistic evangelicalism at its worst. Or so I (and you?) fear.