Tall Skinny Kiwi (Andrew Jones): Anabaptism and the Emerging Church
Anabaptists and the emerging church. Horse and carriage? Chicken and egg? Chalk and cheese? It has been suggested by some (Don Carson, Scot McKnight) that the emerging church in USA gravitates towards and resembles the early Anabaptist movement. I have mentioned this before. I generally agree with this and my own spiritual history contains strong Brethren (NZ) and Baptist leanings so it works out in practice for me.
Anabapist connections around the globe take different forms. ...
I think there is a lot of truth in this. Having grown up in a pietistic quasi-Anabaptist holiness environment, I see strong evidence of it. I think it is also interesting that the emerging church is all the rage at the Church of the Nazarene seminary here in Kansas City. While I value a number of things from my upbringing, the "come ye apart and be separate from the world" stuff is something that has never connected with me and was a primary reason I moved out of that stream as a young guy. It is part of the same ambivalence I have toward large swaths of the American emerging church scene.
