For those of you who haven't been following the fortunes of the emergent church, you might want to give this a listen. But do pay attention, there's a lot of english on the ball. (You know the emergent church has already given up when its spokesblokes tell you it "is not giving up." I believe this is the moment the coroner hangs the toe tag on the corpse.)

More opinions can be found thither and yon. Most are amusing, but all are instructive. It's become the story of the incredible imploding deconstruction crew. It would be funny on its own merits, but on its own merits the part is not as informative as the whole. It was like watching a bunch of hippies trying to set up NASA. Nothing's been properly deconstructed yet, and what sprouted as an emergence has turned into a departure.

What began as a vibe, an ethos, a website, and a few cheesy YouTube videos has become a comical collection of knit caps and soul patches pretending to understand biblical narrative. Incidentally, if you want to sample their exegetical skills, read this.

I think for many of us we read the scriptures and pass over verses and sometimes whole chapters and not realize the explicit graphic sexual and violent content that is found within them. With the help of Queer Theory and a bit of Poststructrualist pizzazz, I seek to disrupt a normal reading of Revelation 17 as an attempt to bring about more dialogue and to help others to see the divinely inspired horror that lies within some of our sacred biblical passages.

Particularly entertaining is the complaint—I think it was from Tony—that, having refused to define themselves they can now complain that their opponents misrepresented their positions. Gotta tellya, that's about as poignant as a rubber crutch.

And we hear again the claim that it is not about the movement, it is about the idea.

Here we had a media fad, a collection of couches, some very stale philosophical pretentions, some wobbly insights into the doing of "deep church", and an open source theology...until differences of opinion began cropping up; then it started looking like a bunch of Baptist women arguing over whose Tupperware^TM it is.

But we should not be amused for long. Something new is coming and I'm sure everyone will again focus on the silly novelties and overlook the significant continuities in American evangelicalism. From fundamentalism's Billy Sunday side-show heyday, through evangelicalism's crazyquilt of agendas and programs to emergents' open-source apostasy, there is one line that haunts them all:

Despite all we can do, the desire to know and the love of beauty cannot be entirely stifled, and we cannot permanently regard these desires as evil.

There is a relationship between knowledge and piety that bears a second look.

Somebody really should get started on that, y'know.