Deadly coffee shops

Chuck Colson, the former Watergate criminal who found God, spoke to a group of Southern Baptists the other day and exposed the three greatest threats to Christianity in the modern world. They are:

• Islam. It's "evil incarnate." No surprise here.
  
• Atheism. It's on the march and they actually write books.
  
• Coffee shops.

Um, what was that again?

Colson also dismissed a burgeoning movement known as "the emergent church"--popular among younger Baptists and other evangelicals--as "abandoning the search for truth" in favor of "conversations in coffee shops." He instead pointed to the success of booming Third World Churches, which Colson said adhere to "pure orthodox truth."

The emergent church is apparently a new movement of younger evangelicals who actually go out and talk to people outside their church and evangelize them. They are more doctrinally flexible, less culturally conservative, and less tied to the hierarchy of the mainstream fundamental churches. Moderate, disobedient kids leaving the ghetto; you can see how that would annoy rightwing culture warriors like Colson.