Emerging politics/economics

Something that's quite striking about the emerging conversation (or whatever you want to call it) is the fairly overtly political (or economic; the two being very closely linked) stance often involved. That seems entirely reasonable: the gospel is about transforming ourselves and our community according to kingdom principles, surely.

And yet, that too is a reason why it's silly to try and say "emerging church people believe X", because the context in which politics is being done varies so much from place to place. I'm very struck, for example, by the way in which both Democrat candidates for the US presidency are surely (on most analyses) somewhere to the right of the British Conservative Party (not that "left" and "right" work so well as political categories these days). Emerging church as a protest against the alignment of evangelicals with the American Right has no obvious counterpart in Britain.

Which is why Josh Brown's Indian Taxi Fund is intriguing: it's a plan to raise money for Amit, a church planting guy in India. But it's constructed as a loan scheme, along the lines of Kiva, but more relational. So, folks from the blogosphere hand over cash to help get a business going for Amit (it was going to be a taxi; now it looks as if it will be a shop), and later the money will be paid back. Now, that sounds like a very right wing way of thinking about aid to me - but to Josh and others (I'm guessing here, but with some confidence) it probably seems radical and subversive.

Perhaps this blog is just a thinly-veiled way of suggesting that you, gentle reader, might want to participate in the fund. That would be a most excellent thing to do. Perhaps, too, it is a plea to anyone who wants to put the conversation (or whatever you want to call it) into a box and claim to understand the full extent of the motivation of all the participants. It's all a bit too complex for that.