Yes, many of us are rejecting theologies that seem to dress up secular conservative ideology in “Sunday best.” But that doesn’t mean we want to put secular liberal ideology in robes and collars instead. Of course not. We’re seeking — imperfectly at every turn, no doubt — an incarnational theology, a theology that brings radical good news of great joy for all the people, good news that God loves the world and didn’t send Jesus to condemn it but to save it, good news that God’s wrath is not merely punitive but restorative, good news that the fire of God’s holiness is not bent on eternal torment but always works to purify and refine, good news that where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. If some like Dr. Mohler want to reserve the terms Evangelical, orthodox, and even Christian for those who hold fast to the traditional view of hell, they seem to have the power and moxy to do so. Those of us who can’t in good conscience defend that view any longer are certainly not condemning people who can’t in good conscience stop defending it. But we are hoping at least to be given the courtesy of a fair hearing. To impugn our motives (that we are selling out the Bible for the pottage of popularity), to reduce our concerns about love and justice to sentimentality, to dismiss us with the “L” word and a questionable narrative surrounding it, and to demean as “secularized” our attempt to articulate a fresh vision of the gospel probably won’t pass muster as a fair hearing. Brian McLaren ☀
I am against all violence because I am a follower of Jesus. I believe Jesus was right when he said that those who live by the sword die by it - which means, in part, that violence leads to more violence. Dr. King echoed Jesus when he said you can murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder. The act of violence as a response to violence breeds more violence and creates systems of violence. The way of Jesus is a way out of this temptation; he came to deliver us from this evil. This is, I believe, in large part what those lines of the Lord’s prayer mean: Do not lead us into the time of trial/temptation; liberate us from the evil. If we ever hope to see swords beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, we must realize that Jesus was right, beginning with his call to love our enemies instead of hating them and wiping them out. Truth, justice, and reconciliation lead to peace - not half-truths, injustice, and cycles of domination/revolution. Brian McLaren (via miketodd07) ☀
Interview: Brian McLaren ☀
- Christian: Concerning the authority of Scripture, what one piece of advice would you offer younger generations of Christians?
- Brian: Four things come to mind.
- First, one of the biggest challenges in my life has been to distinguish between what Scripture says and what people say Scripture says. I’ve learned to have more confidence in Scripture itself, rather than in conventional interpretations of Scripture.
- Second, I’ve become suspicious – not disdainful, and not against, but suspicious – about non-biblical words that are imposed on Scripture – words like “the Fall,” for example, that may carry unacknowledged conceptual freight and may cause us to see things that aren’t there in the text and miss things that are there.
- Third, I’ve learned to ask what very familiar terms meant to their original hearers, which may differ significantly from what we assume they mean – words like salvation, Christ, baptize, Savior, etc.
- Fourth, I’d encourage people to read the Bible not as a constitution, but rather as a library containing the diverse and vibrant literature of the people of God.
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 ☀
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 ☀
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 ☀
This is the time, I believe, for Christians and non-Christians in both parties to become truly progressive — to move on from old and tired fights and litmus tests that polarize, paralyze, and never lead anywhere productive. We need to realize this inconvenient but urgently needed truth: it’s not the 1980s anymore. If we keep asking the same old poorly framed or unproductive questions — What is your position on abortion? What’s your position on gay marriage? Are you religious or secular? Are you for or against big government?– whatever our answers are, we remain stuck in a past moment and can’t get out of it. We don’t just need new answers to the same old questions; we need to raise new questions entirely, and in that way, change the conversation in both parties in a truly progressive way. Brian McLaren ☀
Where does this bizarre behavior come from? True, there’s a strain of extremism that runs through American politics on the left and right, and the Internet, late-night radio, and cable TV help keep it alive. But there’s more to this, I think. I’m convinced that there is some degree of white fear and resentment behind at least some of this reaction: fear and resentment of an African-American president, mingled with xenophobia regarding brown-skinned immigrants, undergirded by fear of a future where there is no more racial majority status for white people. There is also, I suspect, a good amount of modernist fear of postmodernity mixed in. And where Christianity becomes a tribal religion rather than a reconciling faith — the exclusive and combative religion of rural non-coastal folks, for example, or Southern folks, or socially conservative folks, or folks who hold a certain economic ideology — there is probably some old-fashioned religious supremacy at play too: the “Our God is better than your god, so we should be in power” syndrome. I keep wondering — don’t more Republicans themselves see the danger of an increasingly reactionary Republican party becoming in the 21st century what anti-civil-rights/pro-segregationists and McCarthyites were in the 20th, or what the pro-slavery/anti-abolition movements were in the 19th — conserving an unjust status quo that deserved to be left behind? Out of love for their party and the good things it could potentially stand for in 2012 and beyond, don’t they want to step forward now and be counted? Brian McLaren ☀
When people tell me that we are or have been a Christian nation, I want to ask, “When?” Was it in the colonial era or during westward expansion, when we began stealing the lands of the Native Americans, making and breaking treaties, killing wantonly, and justifying our actions by the Bible? Was it in the era of slavery or segregation, when again, we used the Bible to justify the unjustifiable? Was it in more recent history, when we dropped the first nuclear bomb and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, when we overthrew democratically elected governments in the Cold War era, when we plundered the environment without concern for the birds of the air or flowers of the field, or when we sanctioned or turned a blind eye to torture earlier this decade? Was it earlier this week, when I turned on the TV or radio and heard people scapegoating immigrants and gay people and Muslims? Brian D. McLaren ☀
Postmodern” is a really squirrel-y term. It’s very hard to nail down and different people use it to mean opposite things. When some people use it, they mean relativistic, nihilistic (meaningless). For some people it means, everything bad rolled into one. For other people, the word postmodern means a kind of accelerating change in our culture over the last fifty years. We have the sense that we’re emerging out of modernity into something new-and that’s where the term “emerging church” comes from. We’re trying to deal in healthier ways with a rapidly changing culture. I don’t actually like the term “emerging church” because it sounds like it’s one set of denominations as opposed to others. For me it’s more a matter of conversation; it’s a group of people talking together and asking questions together about what it means to practice our faith in this new context. Brian McLaren ☀
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