themattscott are you listening yet

Edit: I miss-spelled separation and didn’t catch it before I posted, but now there are two trackbacks to this post so I don’t want to change the links, thus it will stay as is.

So many have seen the chart which evidently shows which members of e(E)mergent are outside of orthodoxy. The chart was created by C Michael Patton for his series “Would the Real Emerger Please Stand Up.” One caveat… I’ve never heard the term Emerger thrown around, emergent/emerging but never emerger…

Anyways, I just finished reading thought it and here are my (brief) thoughts:

Disclaimer: I understand that I am not doing full justice to the breadth of the essays, but I wanted to post my reactions none the less.

I think Patton does a decent job here. He makes mention of the fact that emergen-t/ing is not just confined to the authors/personalities that McArthur attacks in “Truth War.” He does defend his placement of D.A. Carson in the middle of orthodoxy by stating “D.A. Carson represents the best of traditional Evangelical scholarship,” this however has been questioned because lets face it, Evangelicalism has only been around for 150 years or so, and thus brought change to orthodoxy as it was known.

I severely dislike charts, graphs, circles, and lines. I think they tend to do more harm then good, but Patton uses them nonetheless so I’ll talk about them. What Patton shows here is probably one of the most fair and balanced overviews of Emergent that I have read from someone who isn’t fully part of emergent. There is no condemnation, which is a thing of beauty.

Patton claims to feel like part of emerging while still leaning towards evangelicalism, while someone on his final essay commented that he shouldn’t be considered emerging because he uses graphs and such. I would like to refute this statement with my whole being, I feel like Patton does a great job of adding a voice to the conversation. He offers no accusation nor attacks, just an overview.

He plainly states out his biases (evangelicalism) towards the end of the essays, which offers some insight as to why he views evangelicalism as the center of orthodoxy.

I’ve read several attacks of his posts, but I must say: We encourage conversation, we desire to hear from all voices on all issues (not just the ones we agree with) as long as those voices are spoken “softy” (as in without attack or condemnation).

Thus my encouragement to all who read is to take lightly his message, and respect it.

Thoughts?