What Is the Emerging Church Movement? Part 3.4

Lastly, from the definition on Wikipedia.

Comparison to other movements
It is useful to compare the Emerging Church with other Christian movements which emphasize foundational Christianity and inner experience.

(1) The Taizé Community in France also offers a neo-traditional experience of Christianity in which traditional symbols such as candles and crosses have intensified importance. Taizé, however, places relatively less emphasis on Scripture and a greater emphasis on meditation and the experiences derived from the monastic life. The Emerging Church, in turn, places a greater value on multimedia-based creative expression (and would consider religious orders an anachronism, if they considered them at all). An important difference is that the Emerging Church seeks to be relevant and accessible within the larger society, while the Taizé Community offers an alternative to the surrounding culture.

(2) The Religious Society of Friends, although not born out of the conflicts of modernism, has nonetheless influenced the Emerging Church through thinkers such as Dallas Willard.

(3) The Quakers also reject church hierarchy while valuing the sacred as a personal experience. However the Quakers have developed a formal theology of the Inner Light, whereas the Emerging Church does not wish to establish novel theologies of any kind.

All three of these groups are ecumenical in their outlook, value tradition and inward trans-rational experience, and seek to revitalize the faith. The Emerging Church stands out by its close association with post-modernism and by its emphasis on accessibility, as well as its ideal of interacting with the surrounding culture rather than escaping it.