I've read two new books in the last week on the emergent church, one as a pro and one as a con to the movement and its philosophy and theology.
The first is called Why We're Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be). Ed Stetzer recommended this book when he was giving a talk on the emergent church a couple of weeks ago on campus, and I noticed that it sold out at the campus bookstore that afternoon. I'm not going to review it now, but I will say that while I don't think it's a great critique in any sense, it is more helpful than some of the other strawman books that have come out on the subject (coughjohnmcarthur).
The other book I read is The New Christians by Tony Jones. As a full disclosure, the only other Tony Jones book I own (The Sacred Way) literally sits under my book shelf to help prop it up. Now, having said that, I will say that I LOVED this book. It offers a background for the group, a look into theology, and a look at some of the churches in practice. I would encourage everyone I know to read it. The emergent idea of a humble hermeneutic is opened up throughout. I don't agree with how far he takes that idea, but it really made me think about my own views of hermeneutic and gave an understanding to where they are coming from.
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4 comments:
How come every visit to your blog involves a side visit to dictionary.com? ; )
Look forward to hearing more about these books - Perhaps I'll pick that last one up. It will have to go on the back burner as I just received:
The End of Reason: A Response to the New Atheists by Ravi Zacharias
and
Church Distributed by Joel Hunter
In the mail yesterday.
I haven't gotten a copy of "Why we are not Emergent" yet, just because i was scared to waste the money on a book throwing rocks. I still may yet get it.
Tony Jones book looks very good; I read 20 or so pages the other day at barns & noble. He totally paints Driscoll out to be a bad guy, but in return Driscoll does the same, but i expected that. I should buy it; I have always enjoyed Emergent/Emerging literature. Dan Kimball is still one of my favorite authors.
Matt, i really like what i've heard from ravi zacharias. Tell me what you think about that book.
Jimmy, if you have 30 extra minutes in a bookstore then you should just sit down and flip through Why We're Not... because I think you can get there gist doing that (and that's not a slam on those guys).
Tony does have a critical tone of Driscoll that I don't think is helpful, and I say that as one who isn't a fan at all of Mark Driscoll. He does have an interesting story in the book about meeting John Piper at a restaurant (Piper being an unnamed pastor in the story), where I think that the differences in approaches becomes extremely apparent.
So far the book is good - he is just laying the ground work for his argument. I'll keep you posted.
I saw him speak 12 years ago at UF and he was great. Some of the debates he had with students were classic and filled with humor from Ravi.
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