Like samlcarr, I think it would help if you could give us a better idea of what you’re driving at. What do you mean when you say, ‘It would seem only rational that a Charismatic Theology for the Emerging Church would be borderline foundational in light of the last one hundred years of the Church’?

In the meantime I have some comments with regard to the apparent lack of interest in the charismatic theology in the emerging church, though I may be repeating myself from the previous thread.

i) The emerging church has hesitated to develop a charismatic or pneumatological self-awareness for the simple reason that many within it have either left the charismatic movement or never liked it in the first place. There is an understandable reluctance to revert to something that for all sorts of reasons has been experienced as, or judged to be, a defective form of Christianity. This is not necessarily a rejection of the belief that God works powerfully in his people through the Spirit - it is simply that people need to gain some distance from the particular religious culture through which the belief has been expressed in the last few decades.

ii) I personally think that, for all our failings, the Spirit is powerfully at work in the emerging church doing a work of renewal - not least of intellectual and theological renewal. It doesn’t look like old time revivalism or the Toronto blessing, but so what? God knows what his people needs.

iii) I think that the emerging church is - perhaps without always realizing it! - groping its way towards a broader understanding of the nature of the Spirit’s presence in the community. In Christian Associates we are having a forum in October on the following question:

If the Spirit of God is renewing the fulness of our humanity towards a new creation, what does this mean for the life of the imagination, and what part does the imagination play in the life of missional communities?

It is probably fair to say that the work of the Spirit in the ministry of the church has too often been restricted in our understanding to a rather narrow range of ‘religious’ activities, many of them associated with speaking, such as prophecy, tongues, preaching, prayer, etc. Increasingly, though, the church is seeking to express itself and engage with society in more imaginative and creative ways. What are we to make of these developments? In what ways can we celebrate the creativity of God in our communities?

This is not particularly approached from an emerging church perspective, but I think it does reflect current uncertainty about how we integrate a charismatic theology into the wider creational and creative agenda.