is the relationship between president obama & emergent church up in smoke?

President Obama’s Clove Cigarette Ban Creates Crisis in Emerging Church

by Rick Bennett (
“I just ordered some from Indonesia,” declares Shawn Hopkins of Tampa, Emerging churcher, hoping to stock up for the weekend. Beyond that he is not sure of his plans.

Shawn is among thousands of young, “Emerging” Christians shocked by the FDA’s ban on flavored cigarettes which went into effect on Tuesday, September 22. “I was fine with the ban until I went to the store today and found out cloves actually contain tobacco and have been pulled from the shelves along with those goofy vanilla and tropical fruit flavors,” Atlanta’s Troy Bronsink tells us, “but, then I find out they included my precious cloves. I took a deep breath and almost decided to buy a pack of menthols out of spite before storming out of the store.”

Dr. Tony Jones, former National Coordinator for Emergent, pipe aficionado and a non-clove smoker, tells us that this is a dark day for Emergent and the Emerging church. He hopes it can survive this latest tragedy. “This is much worse than the day Mark Driscoll questioned the sexuality of Doug Pagitt and challenged Brian McLaren to a cage match. In fact, it ranks up there with the day I had to move to New Jersey to work on my PhD at Princeton or that week in July, 2008 when it looked like Obama might not become president.”

According to many sources, young emerging Christians need some safe way to rebel. They are not interested in experimenting with drugs, promiscuous sex or even real cigarettes, so they have chosen microbrew beer, R-rated movies, Coldplay and cloves. It makes them feel rebellious as they question their parents’ belief system, but they don’t have to go too far down the road of dangerous behavior or real rock-n-roll music.

“Our questioning of atonement theories and the inspiration of Scripture are enough. We don’t want to be branded as practitioners of dangerous theology and dangerous activity. We just want something to do while we are standing around outside, something that doesn’t smell as bad as cigars,” says Tripp Fuller, a regular clove smoker until Tuesday’s ban. This is confirmed by Danielle Shroyer, an Emergent Village board member from Dallas, “many young women felt the emerging church was a ‘boy’s club’ when they just smoked cigars. In fact, cloves were brought in by the earliest group of Emergent leaders, known as the group of 20, as a way to be more egalitarian and inclusive. Without cloves, we would not be here today and conversation would have only been about coffee and candles.”

Dr. Len Sweet, one of the earliest proponents of what is now the emerging church conversation tells us that the importance of clove cigarettes to movement cannot be overestimated. According to Dr. Sweet, “Cloves are an integral part of the Emerging Church conversation. They are expensive, which lowers the chance of their usage becoming habit forming. They smell nice and niceness is important to everyone in Emergent. Also, there has been no proof that children are enslaved in the production of cloves and they are smoked by the cool nonChristian kids in town, so they can be used for evangelism, or so they tell their parents. This is of EPIC importance to a new generation of Jesus followers.”

However, not all Christians think the popularity of clove cigarettes has been good for Christianity. Dr. Ted Stetzler of the Southern Baptist Convention says that the utilization of clove cigarettes are a marker of the more Liberal strains of the emerging church conversation. He is hopeful that their ban will be one step towards the reintegration of Emergent Village and its followers into the mainstream of Evangelical Christianity. “While the use of tobacco products is not as important to the SBC as our bans on homosexuality, alcohol, speaking in tongues or friendship with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, we see that it can be a gateway towards apostasy, except in tobacco producing states. Of course, cloves are not from those states, so we consider them on our list of things you can’t do, which is pretty extensive and growing daily.”

No one is sure where the conversation is headed. Some are angry at the Obama administration, but they will not go on record and risk excommunication. Most are unsure that it can continue without a smoke-able product that is acceptable across the board. Some futurists believe that the advent of clove flavored cigars will be the savior of the movement. While others think people should just quit complaining and take up smoking cigarettes. Says Jeff Gentry of Boston, “stop whining and grab a carton of Marlboro Lights along with some Big Red and chew it while smoking…it’ll give you the same effect.”

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