The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier

by Tony Jones Narrated by Tony Jones

Overview

For readers whose spiritual imaginations were expanded and inspired, stretched, and challenged by A New Kind of Christian, Tony Jones has written a new book that points the way to a new kind of Christianity. This is a "third way" of faith, between religious conservatism and almost-secular religious liberalism. Jones offers an in-depth view of the life of Emergent faith--from core theological beliefs to the individual and community practices that mark this new and revitalized incarnation of Christianity. Many who are already involved in the Emergent movement are aware of some aspects of this emerging kind of Christianity, but others who are curious, intrigued, or attracted to this way of faith have not had a clear, complete, and articulate resource for understanding its practices and beliefs. With depth of theological expertise and broad perspective gained as a leader of the Emergent movement, Tony is positioned to lead readers more fully into the emergent conversation and help them engage their deepest spiritual hungers as they craft their life of faith.*With journalistic narrative as well as authoritative reflection, he draws upon on-site research to provide fascinating examples and stories of who is doing what, where, and whyoften in their own voices.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Jones (The Sacred Way) provides the single best introduction to the Emergent Church movement, of which he is a prominent leader. The mainline denominations are dying, and the hyperindividualism of evangelicalism is unsatisfying, so many young evangelicals, Jones explains, have decided to recreate church for postmodern times. Jones credits Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christianwith raising important questions about sounding the Gospel in an era beset by questions about foundationalism, epistemology and how to read Scripture. He passionately defends the emergent movement from criticism. In particular, critics are wrong to claim that emergents don't really believe in the Bible; emergents passionately love the Bible, says Jones, but also know that finite human beings cannot definitively articulate truth. The strongest sections put flesh on these theoretical bones by taking readers into actual emergent churches, like Jacob's Well in Kansas City, Mo., where the pastor draws on Catholic practice, engages the visual arts and sees the church's job as assisting people on their "pilgrimage" of faith. Jones's writing is brisk and conversational, but the book gets poor marks for design. Call-out boxes, pull quotes and frequent font changes, which might be thought to appeal to a younger audience, in fact make for distracting and disjointed reading. (Mar.)

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Library Journal

A doctoral and research fellow at Princeton Theological Seminary, Jones currently serves as the national coordinator of Emergent Village, a nonprofit organization of the Emergent movement, an ecumenical and postmodern form of American Christianity. The Emergent movement values inclusion; rejects the secular/sacred dichotomy, finding God active in all of life; believes friendship and reconciliation to be more important than doctrinal agreement; and gives greater weight to the biblical call to community than to the democratic assertion of individual rights. It values orthopraxis (doing the Gospel) over orthodoxy (believing the Gospel) and often engages in social and/or political activism without attaching to a particular political party. Here, Jones analyzes the movement in 21-sentence dispatches that describe its chief characteristics and follows each dispatch with narrative illustration and discussion that successfully help clarify and amplify the movement's features. Highly recommended for public and seminary libraries.
—Carolyn M. Craft

From the Publisher

"This intelligent and informative book is the only insider story from one of the leading lights of the more progressive wing of the emerging movement, the former national coordinator of Emergent Village." -Christianity Today (October 2009)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940176020656
Publisher:	EChristian, Inc.
Publication date:	07/20/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged

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