Are Emergent Nazarenes linked to Al Qaeda?

I am absolutely amazed at the absurdity of the latest accusations concerning the emergent church. It looks like the criticism has reached an all time low by trying to link the emergent church with Al Qaeda. Frank Pastore wrote,

“If the world is to be saved from Muslim conquest, it will be America who does it. And if America is to be saved, only conservatism can do it. And if conservatism is to be saved, it will be those Bible-believing patriots who do it–those conservative, evangelical Christians who are the bedrock of the American way of life.

Why? Because only Christianity has the intellectual and spiritual horsepower to defeat radical Islam and prevent the world from returning to the darkness of the 7th century. After all, the story of the birth and growth of Western Civilization is pretty much the story of the birth and growth of Christianity. The divide between East and West today, fundamentally, is the divide between Islam and Christianity. Christians and Muslims know this, it’s the secularists who don’t get it–or at least won’t admit it.

That’s why anything that helps to further separate the West from its Biblical roots ultimately weakens the resolve of the West to fight. Anything that helps the ACLU to further de-Christianize America, to further silence the Christian voice like the current hate-crimes legislation or the fairness doctrine, and to further weaken the Church and devalue the Bible as the religious left has done for decades, are things that empower our enemies and weaken our allies.

A post-Christian, post-modern, secular-socialist America will be no match for a radical Islam fueled by petro-dollars and threatening the use of nuclear weapons. But an America where the church is strong, resolute, and courageous? That’s a different thing altogether. Which is why al Qaeda supports the emergent church.” Read more of the ridiculous claims here.

You know the irony is that the problem with Nationalistic Islamic Fundamentalism of the east is the same problem with Nationalistic Christian Fundamentalism in America. Frank Pastore and other American evangelicals that confuse their patriotism with their faith, and their fundamentalism with truth, need to only look in the mirror to find some of the same dangerous paradigms prevalent in Islamic radicals. Rants such as Frank Pastore's only serve to prove that this is true.

Living Upside Down

A couple of weeks ago I led a mission trip up to New England. Part of the trip was spent in Jackman, ME which is pretty far north, about 8 miles from Quebec. There was this beautiful lake there in Jackman and I took this picture there. The lake was so clear and calm that day so I took the picture upside down, just to see how it would work. Since then, this picture has haunted me. At first glance you can't quite tell anything is wrong with it, it looks normal.

You can distinctly make out the cloud shapes, see the outline of the mountains and even catch the blue of the sky. But, the reflection isn’t quite the same. The reflection lacks the overwhelming expanse of the sky. You can see the bottom of the lake as you look closely, covered with smooth stones weathered over time be the natural rhythms of the water. The blue, the light, the clouds, they aren’t really there either, just poor reflections of the real thing. Sometimes life is like that, an upside down reflection. Everything seems to be right, or almost right, but in reality it is just a reflection. The water that day was pretty calm, but if a wind picked up, the reflection would really be hard to see. All those images would be lost.

I fear that many of us are living in an upside down reality. Our images of God, our understanding of the Gospel and righteousness are all upside down. They appear to be right, but if you dig below the surface, or if you look at them when a storm hits, the truth becomes very clear. Some of our churches really feel this way. You come in and everyone seems friendly, the worship is pretty good, and the church may even be growing. But, the DNA of the church is all wrong. There is brokenness and bitterness lingering there below the surface. The pastors and the leaders of the church are disconnected from the people and the Spirit of God seems to followed Elvis and left the building. These are the churches with nice buildings, plenty of staff, a long history of success and whole groups of congregants threatening to leave and start their own church if they don't get their way and a string of pastors who have burnt out or been chewed up and tossed away.

So the question becomes, how do we make sure we are living right side up? We begin by making sure that we dig well below the surface of our own lives and our lives as communities. We can't accept that everything is at it appears to be. That is why we have intentional times of confession, we pray for reconciliation, and we listen to the Spirit of God so that we can understand God's desires for us as his people. It requires genuine searching and as Paul says 'sober judgment' of ourselves and our communities. But, the pay off is that we are reminded that when we exist as a the people of God focused on serving him and one another, there is no ceiling or limit to how God can use us.

M7 Podcasts

Panel Discussion: - What is Emergent?
(Tim Keel, Tim Conder, Mike King, Jon Middendorf, Jim Wicks, Sean Heston)

Jon Middendorf - Emerging Theology
Brian Postlewait - Re-Ordering St. Stephen
Tim Keel and Mike King - Emerging Spirituality
Tim Keel - Reckoning with Intuition
Tim Conder - Missional Approaches to Community
Tim Conder, Mike King, Sean Heston - The Church in Transition

Other podcasts from M7 workshops can be found here.