Village Idiots

by Phil Johnson

"With the meltdown of the visible movement, Emergent thinking is being dispersed like so many dandelion seeds into the broad evangelical movement, which was overrun with religious weeds in the first place. The demise of Emergent Village is by no means the end of Emergent thinking." —Phil Johnson, 11 January 2010

mergent Village is collapsing on itself. The EV Weblog, once a busy and heavily-trafficked stream of Emergent semi-consciousness (replete with a near-manic discussion forum) is barely functioning these days. The current average wait-time between posts over there is at least two weeks. In fact, the eight posts currently residing on the EV blog's front page constitute everything that has been posted on that blog since September 9. One of the posts is a desperate-sounding "Call for Voices," and another begs readers to "Save the House of Mercy Podcast," which, evidently, has been gasping for life over the past year.

It's already too late, I gather, to save the official Emergent Village Podcast. Their last release was in mid-August.

Meanwhile, Emergent Village's best-known celebrity voices have likewise fallen silent—mostly. Andrew Jones and Tony Jones, both living icons of "emergence," had a little back-and-forth exchange last week, which culminated in Andrew's public, formal separation from the organization. I'll give a link to that exchange in a moment.

First, take a look at this. It's a document that was drafted in 2005 (shortly after I began blogging) to defend "the work of emergent" from critics who were raising serious questions and sounding alarms about the dangerous trajectory the movement was following. The document was co-signed by seven de facto leaders in the movement: Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt, Spencer Burke, Brian McLaren, Dan Kimball, Andrew Jones, and Chris Seay. Five years after that document's publication, portions of it are almost humorous and its blithe tone of dismissal is more infuriating than ever. After re-reading it yesterday, I had a brief daydream about making copies with a big We told you so! xeroxed diagonally across the front. It would be nice to distribute them like tracts to the still-Emergent remnant at their next convention—if there are actually enough Emergents left to convene such a gathering. Are there any early, vocal critics of "emergence" who feel no such temptation? If so, they are to be commended for their restraint. I'm not that sanctified yet.

Anyway, the sink-hole that was once Emergent Village will continue to fade into irrelevance. The remnant who are still there will experiment with more and more heretical ideas. They will also be even more drawn to the spiritual idiocy that has plagued the place from day one. After all, virtually everyone associated with EV who ever had any inclination to whisper an occasional word of spiritual sanity has already left the building. It's been more than a year since Dan Kimball began to keep his distance. He said he was going to link up with Scot McKnight (and others) and start a network using the Lausanne Covenant as their common ground. So far that new network has been even more silent than the new Emergent Village, but the point is that Kimball, McKnight, and others have been backing away from their early alliance with Emergent. They aren't even speaking the language of emergence these days. (Hopefully, they are still discussing fresh ways to imagine and explore postmodern spiritualities in a Lausanne context. If so, I can hardly wait till they break silence about it.)

So here's that link to Andrew Jones's announcement: "Goodbyes to Emergent Village." I'll throw in this other link that will get you started tracing the brief exchange between the Joneses that culminated in Andrew's withdrawal.

You wonder why I've hardly posted anything about Emergent/ing Christianity for the past year? The movement has been self-destructing nicely without any help from me.

Does this mean we can all relax and drop our guard against the postmodern mentality, neo-liberal doctrines, and quasi-Socinian tendencies that originally provoked our concerns about the Emergent/ing Church Movement more than five years ago? Not on your life. With the meltdown of the visible movement, Emergent thinking is being dispersed like so many dandelion seeds into the broad evangelical movement, which was overrun with religious weeds in the first place.

The demise of Emergent Village is by no means the end of Emergent thinking. If you doubt that, read the comments under the "Tall Skinny Kiwi" posts linked above. And pay close attention to what Andrew himself says—and doesn't say—about the reasons for his departure.

As a matter of fact, the comments at Andrew's blog last week were both informative and troubling on several levels. It's clear that the real catalyst hastening Emergent Village's meltdown is something more than a few key leaders' sudden doctrinal scruples. It seems a moral scandal of televangelist proportions is about to "emerge." Serious accusations from credible sources have been floating around for months and popped up last week in a couple of comment-threads. (They were subsequently deleted by blog administrators.) I'm not going to describe those accusations here or host a discussion about the brewing scandal. (I'm fairly confident the facts will eventually come to light.) My point here is merely that we shouldn't assume that the collapse of the Emergent/ing movement ends the threat of Emergent/ing ideology.

What it more likely means is that the fight for clarity, conviction, and the authority of Scripture is going to become more difficult than ever in the mainstream of the evangelical movement. Buckle up. This is probably not going to be an easy ride.

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