The Emergent movement in the United States has often been pressured, usually by its critics, to develop a "statement of faith." As I have argued elsewhere, caving in to the pressure to petrify the conversation in such a statement would indeed make the movement easier to control, but such a move would be unnecessary, inappropriate, and disastrous.17 The demand itself presupposes early-modern notions of language and hermeneutics, as well as an ontology that privileges stasis over movement. Such a state-ment would allow its critics to dissect it and then place it in a theological museum alongside other dead conceptual specimens the curators find opprobrious. But living, moving things do not belong in museums. Whatever else Emergent may be, it is a movement committed to encouraging the lively pursuit of God and to inviting others into a delightfully terrifying conversation along the way.