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So a message to pastors and priests this Sunday: You share in the ethical responsibility of every decision made by your parishioners. If you inspire them to deepen their sense of ethical responsibility; if you give them courage to stand up for what’s right even if it means losing their job; if you sharpen their moral vision to see something beyond the morally bankrupt single bottom line of profit — you are doing God’s work. But if you don’t, no matter how big the attendance and offering numbers are, you are selling out. You are part of the same dirty economy as BP and Massey, thinking of your organization’s well-being and not of your responsibility to the community. You are part of a religious extraction industry, making a living by extracting time, energy, and money for the benefit of your enterprise rather than mobilizing and deploying agents of ethical responsibility and goodwill in the community and for the common good. And a message to engineers — and politicians, news managers, journalists, executives, managers, accountants, and others: If you are a person of faith, make sure you live it out in your profession. Singing, kneeling, tithing, praying, and listening to sermons on Sunday (or whenever) aren’t worth much if they don’t affect the way you do your work on Monday. Think of BP and Massey, Enron and Bear Stearns … and realize that your work reflects your values, your ethical character, and your vision of God and God’s character. Brian McLaren ☀

Oddly, when Evangelicals say I’m not orthodox, they have to realize that Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox might say the same about them, since apostolic succession and the primacy of the bishops aren’t small matters in those traditions. Calvinists tend to think of Arminians as missing the boat, and Pentecostals are similarly excluded by others - while doing some excluding of their own. And the strictest fundamentalists say that Catholics aren’t orthodox! So I’m sorry that people feel this way about me; I think they’re wrong, but they’re entitled to their opinion. Brian McLaren ☀

To say God loves the world, but not to show that love in practical ways, that would seem to me to undermine the proclamation. And to show God’s love in material ways but not to put it into words, that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me either. Because I see the gospel as Jesus’ message that the kingdom of God is at hand, and because I see the kingdom of God as good news for all creation — not just the souls of the elect — I don’t put social and spiritual into separate categories. But I understand how, for many good evangelicals, the world is divided into those categories, so they’ll express things in this way. Brian McLaren ☀

…multitudes of Christians find themselves in a real-life Milgram experiment these days. Their consciences are in conflict with their beloved religious authority figures on several key issues — ten of which I raise in my book — but they continue to press the punishment button when instructed to do so. Brian D. McLaren ☀

Sometimes I wonder if evangelicals simply use the word “liberal” as a way to say, “Let’s stop listening to this person. He’s too different from us, and so is not worth our time and attention.” I hope that’s not the case, but sometimes, this is what I feel like when evangelicals use “the L word.” For me, liberal isn’t automatically a bad word. If liberal means free from tyranny, I’m for it. If liberal means generous, I’m for it. If liberal means believing that our best days are ahead of us, I’m for it. If liberal means welcoming honest questions and giving honest scholarship a fair hearing, I’m for it. If, on the other hand, liberal means without restraint, or careless about tradition, or dismissive of scripture, or institutional and lukewarm regarding commitment to Christ, and so on, then I wouldn’t want to be associated with that. And we could say parallel things about the word “conservative. Brian McLaren ☀

But let me say it very bluntly: if by liberal, someone means naturalistic, rejecting the possibility of the mystical or miraculous, denying the authority of the Scriptures, denying the resurrection, blah, blah, blah - I’m not a liberal. If by liberal, someone means free to think, free to ask questions, free to seek truth and God, then I would hope all of us could be liberals. If by conservative, someone means unwilling to think or ask questions because one already has the truth nailed down in a pristine form, then I’m not a conservative. But if a conservative is someone who wants to learn from the past, someone who loves the Scriptures and respects the creeds and most importantly loves Jesus, then I would hope everyone could be conservative. But this is where I think “a new kind of Christianity” comes into play, because a lot of us don’t want to have to stay in the old dualism. Brian McLaren ☀

It’s interesting that the Bible itself doesn’t give us creeds. It gives us stories and poetry and letters and other forms of literature, from which people constructed creeds for various reasons at various times. Perhaps there are postmodern creeds to be written; I’m not sure. In some ways, the very idea seems oxymoronic. At any rate, my focus in this book is on raising worthwhile questions that will promote constructive conversations that will in turn foster friendships as we move forward on the quest or journey of faith. That may be a quest that never ends. After all, what limit could there be to God’s unfolding creativity and goodness? Will we ever be able to say we have fully explored it? Brian McLaren ☀

…before the Enlightenment, authority resided not in books, but in divinely ordained people. Authority figures taught with a kind of divine right parallel to the divine right by which kings were thought to rule. My hunch is that as we dispensed with the divine right of kings, we moved toward the divine right of individuals, enshrined in a statement like “all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” We articulated and defended those human rights through constitutions. I think we did something similar in the ecclesial realm: Protestants, at least, dispensed with the divine right of popes and cardinals, and we shifted our authority to constitutions — doctrinal statements and systematic theologies — which we claimed were derived from and legitimized by the Bible. Brian McLaren ☀

There is a level of cognitive dissonance in a writer who offers his book as the answer to all that ails Christianity and then also wants to frame how we engage with that book. And the dissonance is deeper in that said writer chooses to label those who disagree with him as close-minded Fundamentalists. Perhaps it’s time to read the 99 Theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto, Mr. [Brian] McLaren. You sound like the companies they attempt to educate. I’m sure it’s rather unfortunate for you, but you don’t get to decide how the rest of us engage with your book. Let me be blunt, your approach is reminiscent of the divisive politics perfected in the nation you call home. Where people who disagree with your president are labeled as racists - or those who agree are socialists. Of course, you showed some of that tendency yourself here, so perhaps I should not really be surprised. kinnon.tv ☀

We’ve gotten ourselves into a mess with the Bible. First, we are in a scientific mess. Fundamentalism again and again paints itself into a corner by requiring that the Bible be treated as a divinely dictated science textbook providing us true information in all areas of life, including when and how the earth was created, what the shape of the earth is, what revolves around what in space, and so on. Brian McLaren ☀

The wild, passionate, creative, liberating, hope-inspiring God whose image emerges in these three sacred narratives is not the dread cosmic dictator of the six-line Greco-Roman framework. No, that deity, we must conclude, is an idol, a damnable idol. Yes, that idol is popular, perhaps even predominant, and defended by many a well-meaning but misguided scholar and fire-breathing preacher. But in the end, you cannot serve two masters, Theos and Elohim, the god of the Greco-Roman philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the violent god of profit proclaimed by empire and the compassionate God of justice proclaimed by the prophets. Brian McLaren ☀

But imagine what it would be like to live in this deep 3-D universe while thinking you were still living in the flat 6-line universe. That, I believe, is the condition many of us find ourselves in, and it explains why many of us find our religion limiting, cramped, and unlivable. We feel our religion asks us to live a flat life in a deep world. Many of us think we’re constrained by the Bible, when we’re actually constrained by the Greco-Roman framing of the Bible. Why would people keep living in a flat, determined world? Primarily, I think, because their authority figures, especially in their religious communities, have taught them to. Why would their authority figures keep them in a flat, determined world? First and consciously, because they themselves believe that this is the universe that the Bible mandates for believers to inhabit through faith; they’ve bought into the Greco-Roman fusion as a pre-critical assumption. But I think there is a second reason, more subconscious: when you’re an authority figure seeking to keep people “in line,” it helps to keep them in lines. Brian McLaren ☀

Revelation [19:11-16] is not portraying Jesus returning to earth in the future, having repented of his naive gospel ways and having converted to Caesar’s “realistic” Greco-Roman methods instead. He hasn’t gotten discouraged about Caesar seeming to get the upper hand after his resurrection and on that basis concluded it’s best to live by the sword after all. Jesus hasn’t abandoned the way of peace and concluded the way of Pilate is better, mandating that his disciples should fight after all. He hasn’t had second thoughts about all that talk about forgiveness and concluded that on the 78th offense, you should pull out your sword and hack off your offender’s head rather than turn the other cheek… He hasn’t sold the humble donkey on eBay and purchased chariots, warhorses, tanks, landmines, and B-1s instead. Brian McLaren ☀