preaching/ books, the latest being "Love Wins" you'll find the shiny red part, i.e. God is love, in great shape and quite attractive. However, everything else--theology, church history, exegesis, eschatology, Christology, and Jesus is . . . well, brown and tasteless, with a slight whiff of mold--going back to at least 19th century universalism, and maybe to various heresies over 2,000 years.
If you are in an emergent church, head for the nearest exit, regardless of how friendly the congregation or engaging the pastor. They are playground Christians, and it's the historic meaning of words they are playing with.
See Kevin DeYoung's review of this book--it's excellent and thorough written with tough love. Also, be sure to read the nearly thousand comments: an engaging, popular preacher [Bell] also wins--people don't want the truth of Scripture. But as DeYoung notes, "The emerging church is not an evangelistic strategy. It is the last rung for evangelicals falling off the ladder into liberalism or unbelief."
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Donna, thanks for your perspective. Would you consider N.T. Wright to be a good theologian? Many would consider him to be on the "Mount Rushmore" of those that are alive and Bell is presenting views in Love Wins that N.T. has taught on.
Also, while I don't necessarily agree with Bell on everything, I believe we need to be honest and not call something what it's not. The book is not universalism. He never says everyone gets saved. In fact, he says that he doesn't know if everyone gets saved or not.
Also, while I certainly don't agree with the emergent church on everything, one thing they are certainly doing well is not falling into Satan's trap of "being right." A brilliant strategy of his is to get people to argue about what's right and wrong and whoever you don't agree with, smear their name and reputation across the Internet.
Our unity is Christ, not what you believe about heaven and hell.
Again, Bell begins with heaven and hell, but ends up with doubting the words, mission and salvation offered in Christ. You can waffle all you want and be pious about about people who believe something is right, but it sounds a bit like you think you are right and aren't going to budge.
There seems to be a lot of alarm about the emergent church--dispensationalists say it denies clear prophecy, traditionalists say it's trying to drag us back into Roman Catholicism, evangelicals are alarmed by the mystical new agey stuff and humanism in creating a perfect world. Sort of like the lst century squabbles as the church sorted things out.
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