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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