The Emerging Church and its discontents

The so‐called ‘Emerging Church’ constitutes a growing, if ill‐defined, Christian movement that has surfaced in North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and other nations of the Western world. The movement constitutes a theological and organisational critique of the conventional Christian Church, while offering a new mode of evangelism. This paper commences by briefly exploring the major attributes of the Emerging Church. It argues that although the movement can be understood as a means by which a distinct Christianity constituency has attempted to forge a juxtaposition with contemporary culture, the arrival of the movement has spurred widespread debate and produced a complex discourse indicative of the arrival of post‐modernity. The paper considers the controversy, and even acrimony, evident in the broad world of evangelicalism, in particular conservative evangelicalism, that the Emerging Church has generated.