Over the last week I have been a part of a rather interesting series of exchanges that spanned four different weblogs (unos, dos, tres, catorce... Turn it up loud, captain!). A joke: An Orthodox and an emergent drag a Baptist into a bar. Ba-da-boom!

The engagement started over the strong position that the Baptists took against the use of contemplative prayer at a church camp. The prayer as practiced apparently followed the book, Soul Shaper, by Emergent-U.S. National Coordinator, Tony Jones. Jared Moore, Jeff Wright, and others voiced an intense disapproval of contemplative prayer for a variety of reasons—the alleged association with transcendental meditation and/or the adoption of, as one writer put it, "pagan Catholic prayers" among others—and I started out by chiming in with a defense of contemplative prayer as practiced by the Catholics and Orthodox.