I’ve long been curi­ous about whether any­one in the Evan­gel­i­cal branch of Friends has been fol­low­ing the “emer­gent church” move­ment. Now I find that Bruce Bish­op , for­mer Youth Super­in­ten­dent of North­west Year­ly Meet­ings, has writ­ten a primer called Post­mod­ernism: Taste and See that the Lord Is Good
bq. “Post­mod­ernism” – we see that label bandied about quite a bit these days. And like the once-frequent phrase “Gen­er­a­tion X,” post­mod­ernism is often seen as anti-Christian and some­thing that the church needs to fight. I would beg to differ.
I don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly like the term “post­mod­ern,” as the philo­soph­i­cal and pop-culture def­i­n­i­tions almost com­plete­ly con­tra­dict one anoth­er, but he’s talk­ing phi­los­o­phy, so MTV watch­ers should lis­ten past the words. (Bish­op is in good com­pa­ny in his con­tin­ued use in the term: “Here’s Jor­dan Cooper”:http://www.jordoncooper.com/2004_03_01_archives.html#107896665936703076 and “Bri­an McLaren”:http://www.emergentvillage.com/index.cfm?PAGE_ID=797 talk­ing about the prob­lems with the term and their expla­na­tions of why they’re still using it).
I real­ly _really_ hope Bruce Bish­op writes a follow-up address­ing how Friends might relate to this move­ment (“see my thoughts here”:http://www.nonviolence.org/Quaker/emerging_church.php).