QUOTE: “To the many Americans cynical about religion, news of the emerging church might come as a stereotype-busting surprise. Christians fired up not about wedge-driving culture-war issues, but about spreading nonjudgmental love and compassion? What's to resent about this public face of religion? … As is so often the case with religious movements in this country, the emerging church is both old and new: Old, in that Christianity in America has seemingly always been in a state of re-invention in response to the ever-changing culture; and new, in that we see in the emerging church a group of Jesus followers who reject the social conservatism modeled by [Jerry] Falwell and many other leading evangelicals this past quarter-century. Is the emerging church compromising biblical truth for the sake of being hip? That debate won't be resolved here. Whatever the case, there is something hopeful about the appearance of a youthful, idealistic form of faith focused more on healing broken neighborhoods than accumulating members and political power.” —USA Today columnist Tom Krattenmaker [usatoday.com, 11/12/07]