This short work examines the core of the emerging church movement, concluding that the movement's primary, identifying characteristic is its epistemology which inevitably leads emergents to various kinds of skepticism, relativism, heresy, and antinomianism. It answers various arguments emergents have offered in their own defense and it has an abundance of references in the endnotes which will help the reader continue in further study of the issues involved. Written originally for a scholarly journal, it is still accessible to non-scholars.