The Emergent Church: RIP

Over at Mere Orthodoxy, Matthew Anderson has a good post on the death of the emergent church. He provides a link to this obituary, which is hilarious. The best bits are:

"She is survived by her parents, the Seeker Church, and Sojourners; her paternal grandmother, the former Deconstructionism, now Postmodernity; her maternal grandmother, French Nihilism and her paternal great-grandparents, the Social Gospel and Fundamentalism. . . . Her father, the child of California’s Jesus Movement lived primarily in the Chicago suburbs, while her mother lived in Washington, DC with boyfriend the Democratic Party. Her parents have since reconciled."

That last line especially just nails it! That is how the world is different because of the Emergent Church.

Mike Wittmer has a blog series going on Brian McLaren's new book A New Kind of Christianity here.

As Matthew points out, Jeremy Bouma has a good post on why he left emergent here.

Bill Kinnon has an initial reaction to Brian McLaren's new book here.

Brian McLaren, on his blog, suggests that anyone who does not like his new book is a fundamentalist. (Calling your opponents names is a whole lot easier than taking their critiques seriously.)

I'll be posting more on Brian McLaren's book. I figure I may as well order it; I don't see any way around having to read it. From the hints given by those who have already read it, however, it seems that we may finally have McLaren saying what he really believes instead of ducking and weaving so as to keep everyone off balance thus making a fair and clear critique difficult.