Maybe I'm late in coming to this party or something, but it seems like there's been a but more talk in the blogosphere about theological stands in the emerging church scene. Mind you, there's not a lot of actual theology being discussed out there - mostly just references to theological positions that various folks are taking. When I first got into this conversation five years ago, it was mainly just the people that wanted to do regular church differently, and the people who wanted to do simple/organic/house church. Now we still have the simple church folks doing their thing (but doing it quietly as we simple church people ought to!), but the other category has developed several sub-categories. The sub-categories are actually mainly similar to the sub-categories of the rest of the mainstream church of North America - the emerging types just have various configurations of facial hair, tattoos, and they swear a lot. Some of the diversity represented is an expression of the postmodern ethos, where nobody wants to get pinned down to a specific set of standard beliefs/values.

I will say this about the emerging version of things, though - for the most part, we are taking more intentional ownership of the theologies we have come to embrace. We deconstructed the heck out of our former spiritual homeland, and in an effort to settle in a better place, made very serious efforts to define where we landed (obviously, there's some fluidity to this, but even that says something about who we've become). For the most part, I think it's very healthy - it shows that our protests of the old models were based on more than appearances and marketing.

However, I will say that there's a certain segment of the emerging church that leaves me scratching my head, and that would be the Reformed Theology segment. They, like the rest of us, have done an admirable job of examining their faith, and landing in a place that seems good to them. That's awesome, really. I have friends in this camp - some really super cool people. I'll even say that much of what they hold dear makes theological sense to me. It's just that an uncomfortably large percentage of folks in this camp are, well, a little too confident in the places they've landed for my comfort. It seems that they have become so convinced about their positions that there's not really much wiggle room to consider other points of view. The problem with this, in my mind, is that it can limit conversation - I mean, why should they enter a dialogue with me about any given issue when they already know the answer and aren't really interested in being persuaded otherwise? It comes across as arrogant, and little bit scary. The last time I encountered such absolute confidence was about the time I started rethinking everything.

I don't mean to broadbrush the Reformed folks out there, really - like I said, I've met many that don't fit the category I've just described. But I've observed this conversation/movement/Kingdom party long enough to see that this sort of attitude doesn't pop up anywhere else with such regularity.

Am I wrong? I'm open to being enlightened. I just don't have much of an interest in this emerging whatevertheheck we're doing here becoming a younger, brasher, hairier version of what I supposedly left behind.