It is very difficult to take religious people seriously; and I say that as a religious person. Fundamentalists, for example, tell me they are serious. Can you believe that? After reading their books and listening to their music? Surely evidence of seriousness could be detected in their art and literature. Can you take their claims as truthful?

I can't.

Now we hear from an evangelical who "hasn't completely resolved in his own thinking" the existence of a historical Adam. A guy by the name of Tremper Longman III is posing as a professor of literature and Old Testament and, much like another academic charlatan I know here in Dallas, is suggesting that he knows better than the Apostles and Fathers.

I think he's a twerp. He looks like a twerp for sure, he talks like a twerp with no lunch money, and just between us, he honestly reflects badly on masculinity everywhere. He regularly casts his argument in the most dishonest way and he invites us to indulge his skepticism. Well, I don't; and I think he's a twerp, as I say.

If you listen to this clown—and I use the word clown in a way that might be seen to reflect unfavorably on a lot of very good people who wear big shoes and a squirting boutonniere; and I do regret that—he posits his ideas by beginning with "a lot of people stumble with the creation account" or "a lot of people believe that Genesis 1 and 2 sort of insists..." or "many people have a picture of..."

I think if Tremper Longman III has any friends, they should schedule an intervention.

"A lot of people" believe a lot of unbelievable things. A lot of people believe believable things. The number of believers does not reflect at all on the truth (or the plausibility) of the belief. What a lot of people believe is not the basis for any argument worth considering.

A lot of people have seen Elvis Presley at their 7-11; a lot of people think that they can better sell their house if they bury a statue of St. Joseph in the back yard; a lot of people believe they will get rich by playing the lottery, a lot of people believe everything came from something over a long period of time and that that something came from nothing a short while before that; a lot of people believe space aliens abduct humans.... I personally believe that if aliens abducted Tremper Longman III, they would conclude from their extensive medical inquiries that he ought to be listed at the top of the column marked "TWERP".

Those of us who think Adam was a real man came to that conclusion by reading and by thinking. Some of us who believe Adam was a historical man can give twelve (or more) reasons for thinking Scripture justifies that belief. Tremper Longman III tells us we come to our conclusions by being programmed.

This is what passes for scholarship these days. These marginal intellects cannot distinguish an argument from an academic fad, and they cannot even detect a simple argumentum ad hominem when they use one.

A lot of people reading this post no doubt took offense at my calling Tremper Longman III a twerp. That's just not the proper way to dialog, is it? How can you fairly consider another man's ideas if you start by calling him a twerp and by suggesting he lacks masculine traits to a conspicuous degree?

Well, my answer is simple enough for Tremper Longman III to understand: I can consider the ideas of twerps just as fairly as he can consider the ideas of programmed believers. If Tremper Longman III wants to be thought an academic he should start talking like one.

I mention all this for a reason. I don't much care what uses Tremper Longman III puts his understanding of ancient near eastern literary forms to. There is something nefarious going on here, so it is worth our consideration. I'm not dismissing those who take Tremper Longman III to task for his shabby thinking.

But what interests me right now is this religious environment, the culture of our religion. As I was reminded again in Sunday School class yesterday: when we behave like Tremper Longman III or when we blame Finney for our deplorable worship, or when we misrepresent the motivations others have for adopting a certain form of worship, we are not thinking. We are not being academic or scholarly or erudite or learned or even intelligent. We are putting lipstick on a pig.

Ours really is a culture of disbelief. We love to think we are drawing rational conclusions when in fact we are just attaching facile rationalizations to our prejudices. We are not committed to truth, we are devoted to pretense.

Just about a month ago Adam Walker Cleaveland needed help with a sermon (something I suspect is a recurring problem). I truly regret that our readers weren't notified of his needs sooner. I'm sure you all could have been a big help to Adam. It's my fault entirely for not bringing this to your attention in a timely way.

AWC already had his sermon; all he needed was a text! And the text of his sermon was to be the collaborative part of it.

One reader of his blog, a real pearl among lunatics, suggested one of the Evangelists, saying:

Take a new look at Mark 7, particularly the Syrophoenecian woman. She's helping Jesus "rethink church"-and it is not just the man whose ears are healed whose ears are opened. She changes Jesus. What kind of church would we have if we truly acknowledged that God can learn, and change, and grow?

Between the idea and the reality falls the Shadow.

Some time ago I mentioned my delightful day at the anti-CIA demonstration on the campus of Colorado University in Boulder. I spent a long day strolling from one place to another listening to tepid speeches about the evils of American foreign policy by desperate people trying to appear revolutionary. The farce had two main characters: one hadn't washed his hair in about a week and wore a long army coat, and one cute girl, an unpersuasive feminist, went around telling the few amused but unimpressed listeners to "keep their energy up". Obviously the frenzy was not adequate to their outrage.

Representatives of the CIA were in the Coors Event Center interviewing aspiring spooks. The hippie wannabes believed that by dumping their posters and pamphlets next to the main entrance and by shouting into their 5W megaphone they would inspire virtue and disrupt business. It eventually occurred to the pot-heads that promising spies were being secreted into the building through tunnels. Recruitment was going along smoothly inside while outside the dimwits exhausted their double-A batteries and our patience.

In a contest between a hippie and a spy, bet on the spy.

At about 3:30 a handful of campus conservatives drove up in one car, engaged the local press and gave them the only usable footage of the day. I still remember that unpersuasive feminist whining at the cameramen that this was their demonstration. She ordered them to swing their cameras around and shoot what she thought was the important story. It was the perfect picture of irrelevance, naïveté and miscalculation.

It is amusing that when an idea is getting no traction, conspicuous efforts must be made to control the image, not at all unlike 21^st Century religion.

Here was Jim Wallis speaking of another idea which is getting no traction.

The New Christians shows how the influence of Jesus of Nazareth is moving among a new generation hungry for something real and desperate to move beyond simplistic polarities inherited from the past. Tony Jones stands at the crossroads of theology, philosophy, and culture, tackling the issues facing this ‘emergent' generation with the depth, humility, and grace, only a sojourner intimately familiar with the journey could provide.

It has been ten years now—by their reckoning—since Jesus of Nazareth moved among this new generation hungry for something real. This was a generation desperate to move beyond inherited simplistic polarities blah blah blah.... Since the days of this move of Jesus of Nazareth, Tony Jones—nobody's theologian, philosopher or culture guru—shuffled off to more promising career possibilities. The change was spun as a "decentralization of power", but as one disappointed follower put it: the movement a) was unable to define itself, b) misled us into believing that everything would change, c) promised "revolution and movement" but only became "less potent".

As for the "simplistic polarities", you should give a listen to McLaren's Dummkopf Lied here. No simplistic polarities in this enchanting campfire song!

Now we are being told about an explosion of energy and intentionality and we are promised picnics and "barbeques of people" and theology-on-the-lawn and unfolding discussions and even more generative friendships. Apparently this "conversation" couldn't survive on its blogging, twittering, blog-talk radio, Ooze-TV, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Skype and, greatest of all, its map! It needed a picnic, some barbecue sauce and more people from different backgrounds and traditions.

Wouldn't it be helpful if we could distinguish between real ideas, things that really matter, and momentary infatuations and political theater?

If the emergents don't soon find a way to actually emerge, Remonstrans may be forced to start a fund to help Brian, Tony, Doug, Dan and Phyllis retire their act to Branson, Missouri.

Please don't let that happen!

Word has been leaked to anyone who will listen that the emergents are thinking about planning to sometime possibly come out of their hibernation. We should like to help these emergents by providing a list of suggestions for conducting their Woodstock/picnic/frisbee smackdown/theological conference.

Things To Take To An Emergent Picnic:

Backpacking Lanterns
Bong
Bottle Opener
Corkscrews
Flashlights
Folding Chairs
Hemostats
Insect Repellents
Kool Aid
Paper Cups
Paper Plates
Picnic Basket
Picnic Blankets
Picnic Lunches
Smelling Salts
Sunscreen
Trash Bags
Votive Candles

How To Plan An Emergent Picnic:

• Choose an appropriate venue for your outdoor meal. Nearby parks, rooftops, back alleys, loading docks or crack houses are just a few ideas. You can have an emergent picnic almost anywhere except a police station.
  
  
• Invite someone of a different color to join you. Won't he be astonished? Won't you be astonished if he shows up?
  
  
• Plan a menu based on the number of people anticipated.
  
  
• Deputize some officious person to serve as National Coordinatrix.
  
  
• Collect the necessary equipment. A picnic basket filled with plates, utensils, and cups is recommended, as well as a digital camera so you can Facebook everything about the occasion for your social network.
  
  
• Pack the necessary equipment. Place heavier items on the bottom, lighter items in the middle, and your theological perceptions on the very top.
  
  
• Bring along a picnic blanket and/or folding chairs for your sitting and dining comfort. Also pack flashlights or lanterns for nighttime picnics, or in the event that your designated driver is busy explaining to the police that packet found under his dashboard.

Fun Things To Do At An Emergent Picnic:

Compare tattoos and nose studs.
Sponsor a swearing contest for the children.
While tossing a Frisbee, find a clever way to suggest you've read Jürgen Moltmann.
Have jello-wrestling matches for all the pastorettes.
Compare porn videos.
Inform everyone that you don't have all the answers.
Discuss, as though you knew what you were talking about, HIV suffering in Kenya, human trafficking in Thailand and genocide in Rwanda.
Hug all the trees in the park or highway rest area.
Discuss how U2's new album oozes redemption.
Debate "missional".

Theological Questions To Be Discussed At An Emergent Picnic:

1. Did Adam have a bellybutton?
2. Will we be able to burp in Heaven?
3. Will there be knit caps in the Kingdom?
4. Would the Apostle Paul have driven a Prius?
5. What was King David's carbon footprint?
6. What sort of pet (or animal companion, rather) would Isaiah have had?
7. Does Doug Pagitt have like a black belt in yoga?
8. What is a fair price for a pair of factory-distressed Pilgrim Sandals?
9. What exactly is the connection between resurrection and digestion?
10. Whatever happened to Trucker Frank?

On March 21, 2008, Tony Jones was talking to Krys Boyd about the "changing face of Christianity". Krys is a local PBS infobabe; she's short on thought and long on those stage affectations which are intended to convey thoughtfulness to witless audiences. And by witless audiences I mean the unthinking consumers who have actually believed that PBS represents quality television. Krys tells non-readers here in Dallas what they might find in recently published books—if they read books.

It helps greatly if these books are pointless because studies show that lengthy pointlessness on camera tends to come across to PBS viewers as erudition, and lengthy pointlessness is something Tony Jones brings to the table.

I hold Texans accountable for a lot of wicked things (like J. Frank Norris, Clyde Barrow, Lyndon Johnson, and Dan Rather), but I don't hold it against Texans for not reading Tony Jones's book: Tony Jones's book ain't fit readin' even in Texas. I'm guessing Tony would not even have been in the KERA studio if the producer had been fortunate enough to schedule an interview with a local potato.

Jones was telling Boyd all he knew about postmodernism and emergence. He said emergence was not so much about doctrine as it was about the church leaving the era of big, about a vibe and an ethos, and about the church becoming more egalitarian and participatory (like Wikipedia). He also suggested that the church of Jesus Christ might be called upon to deal with the looming problem of whether to allow human clones to attend their churches. Although if emergence has a problem with getting the participation of real people, what are the chances it will be inundated by the clones of real people?

You think I just made that up, but I didn't. It was one of those ideas Tony would think is far-sighted, Krys would think is relevant, and both would be prepared to discuss intelligently on a program called Think!

But it is worth remembering Tony's words about emergence being egalitarian and participatory because as of 8 September, 2009, participation has not been a conspicuous problem for emergence.

The EmergentVillage's Tim Hartman took a break from inhaling helium to tell us what he thinks is going to happen—eventually—to EmergentVillage.

First he offered a brief report on the inactivity of the last six months: Tony Jones became noticeably less participatory as the National Coordinator of Emergent Village, and while many emergents got on YouTube to declare themselves the new National Coordinator, apparently none of them showed up for work on Monday morning. In the last year or so, Hartman reports, the Emergentvillage has been "asleep or possibly even worse".

Anyway, Brother Tim expects more participation in the future, in the next "iteration" of EmergentVillage. A lot has been happening behind the scenes and the village now prepares to emerge from its "hibernation". It has not emerged yet, but it is preparing to emerge. More precisely, discussions as to the possibility of its emerging from hibernation are being had. The bear has not come out of its den, but it dreams of the day when it will.

The same EV link includes a contribution from Danielle Shroyer, the aforementioned pastorette of Journey Church of Dallas, wherein she expresses her excitement with the unfolding discussions, discussions on the impending possibility of emergents coming out of hibernation. "Energy and intentionality" have emerged since April, and she's encouraged about the "events we hope to plan over the next two years".

No events were actually announced, you must understand. The events are not even yet planned. But there is the hope for the planning of events, and this could possibly occur in the next two years, or hibernation periods, as I like to think of them.

Sister Danielle looks forward to a more "communal place of connection", to more impromptu Frisbee games, to "good conversations of theology done while sitting on a blanket in the grass".  She can imagine picnics and "barbeques of people" [a concept I hope is run by some lawyers and chefs], and she anticipates eating and laughing together at a common table. She hopes for great things from people "from a variety of different traditions and backgrounds".

Emergents will be gone in a thick cloud of buzzwords and shallow sentiments; and if things go according to their highest hopes, amid the fragrance of "barbeques of people".

Do plan to attend.

Mistah Kurtz -- he dead.


     A penny for the Old Guy

     I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

     II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

     III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

     IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

     V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

     For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

     Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

     For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

--- T. S. Eliot

James Moore, 46 year old theologian and prose stylist, delivers himself of some tacky thoughts on a simpleton's faith.

I am intrigued by emergence for many reasons. I haven't yet ranked all the reasons for my interest—my wife wants me to get started on that—but high on the list has to be its daft theology: things like Moore's thoughts on Mister Rogers, McLaren's daffy commentary on Resurrection & Digestion and Scandrette's pathetic beat poetry.

But I have noticed not just its discontinuity with orthodoxy, which leaps out at anyone who's read the Bible, but its continuities with American evangelicalism. Like the fundamentalists and the neo-evangelicals before them, emergents have nursed this provincial attitude toward "community". Take a look at any of the three movements and you are struck by the insularity of them all, and each successive eccentricity has been touted as a remnant's reach back to some pristine Evangel. Yet what survives is conspicuously unattractive, unsuccessful, and isolated from the whole. Fundamentalism didn't preserve orthodoxy, neo-evangelicalism didn't preserve orthopraxy, and emergence can't even preserve meaning.

Emergence is Storytime-Over-at-the-Asylum. It is a demand that the testimony of the Evangelists be overpowered by the telling of a unique personal narrative we'll dignify with the word journey. So now we can all pretend that James Moore has something relevant to tell us about what is "right and correct with the world".

In the fog of the culture war we have overlooked one of the most important gifts of culture.

In a democratic culture people are inclined to believe that it is presumptuous to claim to have better taste than your neighbor. By doing so you are implicitly denying his right to be the thing that he is. You like Bach, she likes U2; you like Leonardo, he likes Mucha; she likes Jane Austen, you like Danielle Steele. Each of you exists in his own enclosed aesthetic world, and so long as neither harms the other, each says good morning over the fence, there is nothing further to be said.

But things are not so simple, as the democratic argument already implies. If it is so offensive to look down on another's taste, it is, as the democrat recognizes, because taste is intimately bound up with our personal life and moral identity. It is part of our rational nature to strive for a community of judgment, a shared conception of value, since that is what reason and the moral life require.

Of all that might be said about the inadequate aesthetics of contemporary liturgy, probably the most immediately recognizable fault is its austere parochialism. It would not be at all unfair to observe that for the last century the Christian religion has lacked any community of judgment. Not in the pulpit and not at the altar.

Whatever new remedy comes down the pike, examine it to see if it gives a fig about preserving a community of judgment worth handing down to our children.

Put your hands in the ay-uh,
Wave 'em like I just don't kay-uh.

I know some of you have been reading through Roger Scruton's Beauty; I hope you are getting a broad sense of what has been thought on the subject. I suspect the discussion will leave you struck with the disparity between what thoughtful people have said and what religious cranks have said. It turns out that we have been betrayed by our bumpkin clergy, and that old platitude that "the music should match the words" was an excuse to smuggle in some dubious prejudices at the cost of real understanding.

I hope you have learned something about the depth of thought involved in discussing "form and content". We now learn that these matters are a little more nuanced than we've been led to believe. Perhaps orthodoxy and 19^th Century stage and parlor entertainments were not a match made in Heaven after all.

I believe some of you might even be a tad disillusioned with the state of affairs wherein we are being encouraged to abandon "special music", look condescendingly on aesthetics, and blame Charles Grandison Finney for the last six score and fourteen years of dim-witted distractions now sold as worship. It may begin to look like we are being advised by the least informed and most addled teachers ever to scratch a blackboard.

Now what do we do? What can be done if in fact a contemplation of art does order our feelings and frame our enjoyments? Where does that leave us as we look across the living room at our collections of Elvis Presley, Bev Shea, Bill Gaither, Ron Hamilton, and Amy Grant "Christ-honoring" music? Can there be some benefit in pretending our feelings have been ordered and our enjoyments really were framed by kitsch?

Seems unlikely, does it not?

As most of you know, I think the chances of our reforming worship are exactly equal to the chances of a rich man getting into Heaven. Youthful optimism and naïve activism are only salving our discontent and prolonging the scandal.

__________

I spoke briefly with a crackpot pastor who at last came to realize that he has not enjoyed the success he anticipated. Being a post-Christian moralizer he of course interprets this failure not as a repudiation of his insights but as a confirmation of them. His failure is a success of a different sort, he has now learned. It's true his church is not attractive to outsiders, it cannot sustain itself, and it does not draw in the unredeemed. In fact, whatever imaginary virtues he imputes to this clutch of novelty-whores he himself concedes have also been learned in a prison camp. Surely that is the mark of a successful church!

I expect that a larger number of American religious dabblers will come to a similar conclusion. Whether through persecution or sheer fatigue or by the inevitable exasperation with mountebanks, I expect we will be forced to examine first things.

Culture is all about the care of the soul, and it is time that we begin to show an interest. Complaints about "the culture around us" must stop serving as a prelude to the infliction of personal opinions and the sale of inferior products.

Should God grant us a reprieve, will we in a position to recognize it? and will we have the determination to pursue what is good?