emergent & the way of Christ

O the beauty of the dialogue sparked by LaRon Shults’ Emergent/C post (for more comments, links and conversation visit emergent blog and generous orthodoxy think tank).

The action/belief dance has been a difficult one for modern Westerners. The tune keeps changing, the dance hall is morphing, thus dance is forever becoming. Yet this “forever becoming” is in fact the magic of the dance of life. Those who gravitate toward a greater emphasis on a life of action have a tendency to diminish belief/confession to pragmatic apologetics providing a defense for whatever the current action, while those who gravitate toward a greater emphasis on belief have a tendency to lean in the direction of a comparatively static view of being in the world, a hermeneutic which often leads to a reactionary presence, whether beliefs (usually propositional universal truth claims) must be defended.

The conversation involving Shults, Smith, and others has been gloriously generative, and clarifying. I look forward to the day when ethicists and activists feel immediate ownership for such conversations . . . for it is not just theologians who we can learn from in this regard.

Born in part from the idea that Christianity is not a belief system, but the Way of Christ, Emergent’s commitment to provide an Order & Rule for those seeking to understand and do life with emergent, while resisting the pressure to provide Doctrinal Statement underscores emergent’s conviction that action is the mother of belief. Understanding action as the mother of belief it can be helpful to remember that action and belief interpenetrate and interanimate one another . . . action shapes belief, belief shapes action, repeat.

Peace, dwight