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!