So I followed the links recently to Michael Kruse’s Why did the Emergent Chicken Cross the Road. I read it, it was cute, I smirked. Yet as I thought about it later, I realized how odd posts like that are. Think about it. How often is it commonly accepted to simple state the beliefs and practices of a religious group as the punchline of a joke? If those statements had been about evangelical “chickens” instead of emergent, would the response have been the same? Would such outright mocking be accepted if it was directed at anyone else? It’s not that I find the list (or others like it) offensive, it’s just that I’ve noticed that Emergents are expected to take such mocking in stride. In fact if we are offended by things like that we are mocked even further and told to get over ourselves. At the same time if any of us criticize the beliefs of another group (not even in a mocking way) we are derided as unfair and accused of thinking of ourselves as better than others. I’m all for taking criticism and being willing to laugh at oneself, I just find the double standard curious.