The Radical Resurgence

The following excerpt comes from David Fitch’s blog. You can read the entire post at the link at the bottom.

Recently (in private e-mails) I have been getting some heat from some Neo-Reformed friends who feel I have either not been fair or too critical of Neo-Reformed theology on this blog. On other hand, some members of the committed Neo-Reformed have engaged me (again via private e-mail)  letting me know they appreciate my insights and dialogue. They have been encouraging. All this to say, I think dialogue between Neo-Reformed folks and Neo-Anabaptist Evangelical Missional people like me would be a very good thing. And I have been convicted of not doing enough to move us in this direction.

This is why I was so glad (even freaked out a bit) when my Canadian bro Darryl Dash (otherwise know as “Triple D” by another Canadian bro because he as a recent Doctor of Ministry degree) put this list of questions before me and asked me to respond for his blog. I sense a good impulse here. Dialogue together for the Kingdom. So at the risk of losing my reputation as a grumpy Neo-Anabaptist (evangelical), I answered these questions and I post them here. Darryl will be posting them on his blog as well here! I have hopes this will lead to further discussions of this kind. Way to go Darryl!!

1. There seems to have been a resurgence of the Neo-Reformed and Anabaptists at the same time. It’s almost like they’re parallel movements. What’s behind that?

If you ask me, this has to do with the cultural turning point facing the North American church. There’s a unhinging of sorts happening in N. American culture where the larger culture is becoming unhinged from the Christian moorings of its past. One can easily see this happening in Canada, Europe and the northern United States. And so now we, here in N. America, find ourselves in a “mission field.” We are forced to ask the question, how do we engage this newly secularized, even antagonistic-to-the-gospel culture? How can we be faithful to God’s Mission in Jesus Christ? In my opinion, the rise of Neo-Reformed and Neo-Anabaptists comes from responding to this cultural shift.  They can be interpreted as two parallel movements responding to this shift.