Thinking about the emerging church

The emerging church is often characterized solely on its rethinking of Christian story (which is taken as an affront to orthodox Christan belief, to the Bible as God's word, etc.) and on its hesitance to state its beliefs definitively. From those speaking within the church existing, all doubts, fears, concerns and attacks toward the church emerging focus around "belief-issues." Common accusations are:

• They want to "redefine" Christianity
• They redefine certain elements as being "non-literal
• They question scripture
• They question absolute/propositional truth
• They value emotion over logic

Every avenue of attack centers around belief, and especially around the difficulty of naming what exactly 'emerging belief' is.

I think that this is categorically unfair, insofar as the emerging church itself is not chiefly concerned with these theological statements (or lack of statements). What the church existing seems unwilling to do is look beyond these red flags into the real issues that the emerging churches are addressing.

Where Evangelical churches can look at emerging churches and protest, "You don't take the Bible seriously," and mean that they don't support a doctrine of inerrancy, emerging churches can look at Evangelical churches and protest, "You don't take the Bible seriously," and mean that they support a never-ending war in Iraq, that they ignore the 2,000 or so verses concerning the poor, that they equate Christianity with the NRA.

These are, if not the central issues of the emerging churches, at least more central than supposed statement of heresy - or the nonexistence of heresy.

And, no, Mark Driscoll isn't helping.

Ideas? Comments? Critiques? Thank you.