The fear I deal with when I pick up a Brian McLaren book today, is much different then the fear I used to have when I picked up his books. I used to be scared I would be fired from my job at a church, or that I would loose my religion in light of a challenging read. Now as I have made my way through many, if not all, of his published work I find myself with a new fear. Can he live up to what he has started? Will he push the envelope?
Brian has become somewhat of a virtual friend to me. His writings changed my life, as well as my faith, and he even endorsed my own publication, but I still get nervous when I pick up his books. My latest anxiety isn’t that I will be changed in a way that will screw up my life, but rather it’s like watching a world champion try to break their own record.
My fear was laid to rest when I again was floored by Brian’s latest work, A New Kind of Christianity. He takes a well developed, revolutionary, and wise voice to explain what has culminated in his life work. This is the closest I think we will see to a defense of his theology. Instead of using the vehicle of a semi-fictional narrative he digs deep into personal stories and illustrations that bring home what he was playing with in the TNKC Trilogy and the themes that he picked up in his most recent works.
The humble voice of ‘the godfather of Emergent’ gains strength and direction in his latest book. It is as we see Gandolf, the wise and soft spoken wizard take up the staff and forge into a more direct personality while retaining his humility and sagaciousness. Lines like:
Paradigms and dogma can be defended and enforced with guns and prisons, bullets and bonfires, threats and humiliations, fatwas and excommunications. But paradigms and dogma remain profoundly vulnerable when anomalies are present. They can be undone by something as simple as a question — a question about the divine right of kings, the origin of species, the relation between matter and energy, how races can and should relate to one another, the motion of planets, and the standard operating procedures used by the church. [pg 16]
To the average reader there is still a non-didactic humility in those words, but to someone who has been following Brian’s generous orthodoxy we can see a bit of revolutionary tones in his use of words. I would argue the most in his public writing yet. And this is not to say that this book is about rallying the troops. But this book is about creating a concrete explanation of Brian’s developing theology.
Brian rewrites the story line of the Bible, but he really just argues for a different view, and he doesn’t stop there, he continues to sexuality, community, God’s violence, the Bible’s authority, Jesus, the Evolution of God, and what the gospel is.
What I like about this book is that you can feel Brian forming some solid questions and formulating some firm answers. Brian’s theology has developed to the extent that he can start to define it, even if just lightly. It is like if Neo, from Brian’s earlier trilogy wrote a theological book that defended those pesky little notions he was submitting to his pastor friend.
Enjoy it, Brian has done it again, and with his work leading the way, maybe everything will change.
Some Linkage
Our last podcast with Brian Mclaren
The book – A New Kind of Christianity
Tags: a new kind of christianity, brian mclaren, emergent, podcast
I immensely value Brian McLaren’s thoughts and have read most of his work. Although I have not met him personally, I really do think he is a special person and that he demonstrates the type of creative, hopeful perspective that our world (not to mention the church) needs. I’m looking forward to this book.
nick! can’t wait to read your book hopeful skeptic. going to pick it up this week. am a huge fan of brian as well and feel exactly as you do…as if he is a virtual friend. it is awesome to run into someone else on a similar journey. makes me feel less like a crzy person. you are an inspiration as i am in my late twenties and have been married about a year. i should also mention that i have been in church work for almost a decade, and have argued for a long time that skepticism breeds true faith. but you have a book and a sick website! i think i will get out of bed early tomorrow thanks to you. i needed some inspiration. anyway you seem really genuine and i am hoping to use your book (based on your ooztv interview it will be the perfect tool) as a book study for our college group and get some good questions out there. keep up the great work! thanks
joe
Joe, it’s great to meet you and hear your excitement about the book. I’m going to send you an email as a more personal response, but thanks for checking out the interview, the book, and the website. You’ve made my day.
Nick,
I was a self-described Christian Agnostic. I don’t do very well on either the fundamentalist left or right. My theology has shifted to where my current self-deliniation is now an Agnostic Christian (yep, I’m a true postmodern, but I hope in the best sense possible).
I’ve read the first third of McLaren’s new book to date, and I’m eating it up. I skipped ahead and read the chapter on dealing with other religions and I loved the respect for the “other” which he communicated.
He understands postmodernity very well (most likely because he really lives and breathes “the” basic thinking which it encompasses, as I do) and that there are a lot of people out there (like me) who are being shut out of the church for the kinds of questions we are starting to brave to ask as we genuinely pursue our journeys of authentic seeking after God.
The pastor at the church I am attending is still attempting (and lovingly so) to convert me to a much more literalist understanding of Christianty, and I keep telling him that my brain (not sin) won’t let me do that. The effectivenes of narrative and metaphor predominates and resonates with me to the point that I commit my whole to God, through Jesus (though I still struggle with the whole deity of Jesus and Trinity thing). If I were no longer being coerced into the more dogmatic forms of the Christian Tradition, I might even consider scratching out the word agnostic when describing myself.
My faith is in God, through Jesus and the Bible (I profit immensely from other religions and beneficial ideologies as well). I have no certainties to predicte my faith upon, and I am hoping that others in my midst will find that it’s not necessary to reject me because of my apparent “non-belief.” The faculty of faith is much more nuanced and difficult to box in these days as our understanding of it has increased (James W. Fowler comes to mind). An oveall better understanding of this fact would most likely go a long ways in our culture and benefit the Chruch tremendously, because our focus would be reoriented toward the way in which we choose to live out our faith, not so much on just the “what ” of faith.
Jesus said, “Trust in God, and trust in me.” This much I can do, but I realy TRUST, which doesn’t require me to hold in a dogmatic way ideas which can be proved by way of certainty. Otherwise, faith would be useless the way I see it. I guess my faith will most likely always be tentative, but real none-the-less.
Chris, sounds to me like you might be a Hopeful Skeptic. . . he says knowingly pointing to book in the top left of this page. . . but seriously thanks for your thoughts. I think I can confidently say I understand where you are coming from.
Well, I finished McLaren’s book and it’s a pretty darn good fit for me, personally. Then I began to read some of the negative reviews about it out there, and I am now convinced that we humans just perceive Reality differently from one another. How does one who leans heavily in McLaren’s spiritual orientation get along with those who would adamantly disagree with him on almost everything? Christianity makes so much more sense to me now than it ever did, and it appears that I am going to be one of those whom McLaren said this book could complicate the life of, more than what it already is. And the unfortunate thing is, is that I am going to the most open-minded church in my town which is primarily filled with fundamentalist believers (and I’m not knocknig fundamentalism, I’m just not a person who understands that somehow certainty and religion can be united in a cohesive manner). Well, I’m off to church this morning, so I can just sit there and remain silent for a couple of hours, so as not to stir up any “divisiveness.”
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