Friends:
I’m experimenting with some really basic cartooning. Here’s my first offering. I’m working on getting a stick figure that kind of represents me. But here’s something I’ve recently put together.
Emergent Cartoon!
08
Feb
Dr. Larry Dixon
larrydixon
Tom Fillinger
February 8, 2013 at 9:18 am
Missing the mustache!!!
John
February 8, 2013 at 11:09 am
Never mind the mustache,…. it is the Halo that is missing !
Jacob
February 21, 2013 at 7:25 pm
The emergent movement is a response to the many failings of the evangelical church in America. We have our dogma and our doctrine all in a row (at least we think we do), but it seems that we have suppressed a lot of questions and conversations that need to be had by each generation. The emergent movement is a postmodern response to the emergency created by modern-minded conservative evangelicals.
John
February 22, 2013 at 11:48 am
Are there really some “modern-minded conservative evangelicals” ? I am still looking forward to meet one.
John
Jacob
February 22, 2013 at 2:05 pm
I mean “modern” in the sense of the philosophical era of modernism, which stresses certainty of knowledge and often leads to a very dogmatic approach to life. Postmodernism, in turn, emphasizes authenticity and sincerity, which are much more attainable than certain knowledge. The Emergent church falls more into a postmodern mindset rather than the modernistic certainty of many evangelicals. The problem is that we cannot attain the sort of certainty of knowledge that many “modern-minded conservative evangelicals” say we can. The solution: let’s go for the next best thing, let’s try to be as authentic and sincere as we can in following Jesus. That’s how I see the emergent church. The modern era of the church established dogma that can be known certainly and cannot be questioned, and people of a more postmodern persuasion became disillusioned with it. That being said, there are weaknesses in the emergent church, but I don’t think you have any more of an emergency than you did in the modern/conservative church.
John
February 22, 2013 at 9:02 pm
I wonder what Larry had in mind when he started this thread on “emergent and emergency”.
I cannot see him to be very open minded on the trend of emergent movements in churches. He is too committed to the old-fashioned fundamentalist adherence to the literal acceptance of the Bible
John
Jacob
February 22, 2013 at 10:33 pm
I would speculate that Larry holds that the emergent church has a loose grasp on essential doctrine at best, and that this constitutes an emergency.
In my opinion, I think we are seeing the clash of two different, extra-biblical systems. Neither is good nor bad. Modernism and postmodernism have their virtues and shortcomings. It is a problem, though, when people in each camp think that salvation is found in their system alone. For example, I’ve been told that one who abandons certainty of knowledge abandons the gospel. This is equating the gospel with the modern project, and making an extra-biblical philosophy into something that is essential for salvation. I am not suggesting that Dixon is culpable of this necessarily, but in the grander scheme of the “fundamentalist vs. emergent” war you see a lot of anathematizing of the other side.